Olaudah Equiano
Author, Merchant & Abolitionist
c. 1745–1797 · West Africa / Britain
His autobiography gave the abolition movement one of its most influential firsthand accounts of enslavement and freedom.
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Olaudah Equiano, Author, Merchant & Abolitionist, wrote an autobiography that gave the abolition movement one of its most influential firsthand accounts of enslavement and freedom. Equiano wrote one of the era's most important autobiographical accounts of the Atlantic slave trade and his life after purchasing his freedom. He became a sailor, merchant, writer, and abolitionist in Britain. His published narrative helped humanize the realities of enslavement for a large reading public. His 1789 Interesting Narrative became an international bestseller and the slave trade's most damaging eyewitness indictment; with the Sons of Africa, he lobbied Parliament directly as a free Black author.