Olaudah Equiano birthday celebrated for BHM

As the UK celebrates Black History month in October, Google Doodle decided to celebrate what would have been the 272nd birthday of Olaudah Equiano (1746-1767), the African writer whose memoir gave the world for the first time a perspective on the slave trade from a slave’s perspective.

His autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African, was first published in 1789, and was widely lauded following its release and would go on to playing a huge role in teaching eighteenth century audiences of the horrors of the Slave Trade. Equiano personal story from the uprooting of his homelands to serve white masters in America, helped push the abolitionist movement to the point where in 1807, Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which brought to an end human trafficking in the British Empire. Equiano’s work is considered a masterpiece of the colonial period.

Equiano was born on 16 October 1746 in Essaka in the Eboe province of southern Nigeria. Slave traders abducted Equiano and his sister at the age of 11 and shipped them to Barbados with 244 other captives before being sent to the Virginia colony. While a slave in America, Equiano was sold to Lieutenant Michael Pascal, who renamed him “Gustavus Vassa.” Equiano was treated well by Pascal and was taught how to read and write by Pascal’s sister-in-law. In 1765, Equiano was sold to Captain James Doren of the Charming Sally , and was traded again, this time to Robert King, a merchant from Philadelphia. While being owned by King, it was that point in Equiano life that he started earning money doing various tasks for King and this enabled Equiano to ultimately buy his freedom three years later.

With his freedom at last, Equaiano spent the next 20 years travelling the world, visiting Turkey, Central America, and even the Arctic, before finally settling down in London. It was here that he began campaigning for abolition with his fellow “Sons of Africa” which ultimately led him to writing his autobiography.

In his book, he entails of how hard it was to adjust to being free and confessed to entertaining suicidal thoughts before finding peace with his Methodist faith and marriage to Susannah Cullen, with whom they would have two daughters. The family lived in Soham, Cambridgeshire, where he dies in 1797. Olaudah Equiano is just one of many black figures in UK history that deserves to be celebrated during Black History Month for their fight for justice and freedom.

Zak Ott