Olaudah Equiano

Olaudah Equiano
Born	c. 1745 Essaka, Eboe (claimed)
Died	31 March 1797 (aged 51–52)
Other names	Gustavus Vassa, Graves
Ethnicity	Igbo (pronounced as Eboe)
Occupation	Explorer, writer, merchant, slave, abolitionist
Known for	Influence over British abolitionists; his autobiography
Religion	Anglican
Spouse(s)	Susannah Cullen
Children	Joanna Vassa and Anna Maria Vassa

Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 – 31 March 1797)^[1] also known as Gustavus Vassa, was a prominent African involved in the British movement for the abolition of the slave trade. He was enslaved as a child in his home town of Essaka in what is now south eastern Nigeria, shipped to the West Indies, moved to England, and successfully purchased his freedom. Throughout his life Equiano worked as an author, a seafarer, merchant, hairdresser, and explorer in South an Central America, the Caribbean, and the Arctic, the American colonies, and the United Kingdom, where he settled by 1792. His autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, depicts the horrors of slavery and influenced the enactment of the Slave Trade Act of 1807.^[2]

In his account, Equiano gives details about his hometown Essaka and the laws and customs of the Igbo people (written Eboe), he also gave description of some of the communities he passed through as he was forced to the coast. His biography details his voyage on a slave ship, the brutality of slavery in the West Indies, Virginia, and Georgia, and the disenfranchisement of freed people of colour (including kidnap and enslavement) in these same places. Equiano was particularly attached to his Christian faith which he embraced in 1759 and is a recurring theme in his autobiography; he identified as a protestant of the Church of England. Several events in his life drew him to question his faith, as well as almost losing it completely after a black cook named John Annis was kidnapped from a ship in England and then tortured on the island of Saint Kitts.^[3]

As a free man, Equiano's life was still filled with stresses and even had suicidal thoughts before he became a born again Christian and found peace in his faith. Earlier in his freedom, he resolved never to visit the West Indies or the Americas again because of the brutality about, but was drawn back there because of his duties to various captains. Later in his life, Equiano married an English woman named Susannah Cullen and had two children. He died in 1797; the exact location of his gravesite is unknown, although there are plaques commemorating his life lived in buildings around London. There have been efforts in Nigeria to find about his birthplace and home town, Essaka. Additionally, there have been contentions, even in his lifetime, that Equiano was not African born at all, instead, a slave from The Carolinas, with apparent documented evidence. A few hypothesis have been made to support his African origin and to find the whereabout of his hometown, none of which have been substantiated.

Early life and enslavement

According to his own account, Olaudah Equiano was born in 1745 to the Igbo people in the region now known as Nigeria. His name, Olaudah, means one who has a loud voice and is well spoken, and signifies vicissitude and good fortune. As the youngest son, he had five older brothers and a younger sister. His father was a titled man who he remembers bearing scarifications on his forehead which signified his fathers status; Equiano expected when he was matured to receive the same scarification as males did in his community. Equiano recollects his mother teaching him self defence and Equiano also witnessed her partaking in communal wars. His mother particularly impressed on him the religious rites of his country as he recounted the times she would carry him along to an ancestral shrine in the wild where his maternal grandmother was buried and would give offerings to the shrine and also weep by its side. His early life was filled with what his people considered good omens or mysterious signs, particularly he was on a path in his village when he accidentally stood on a large snake and was left unharmed.

Equiano remembered an incident when an attempted kidnapping of children was thwarted by adults in his villages. Around the age of eleven, he and his sister were left alone to look after their families compound living quarters as was usually done when adults went out of the house for work. Before they could act they were both kidnapped and taken far away from their hometown, separated, and sold to slaveholders. After changing hands several times, he met his sister again, but they were separated for the last time and he was taken over what he described as a large river which he had never seen to the coast where he was held by European slave traders.^[1][4] He was transported with 244 other enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to Barbados in the West Indies, from where he and a few others were soon transferred to the British colony of Virginia. Literary scholar Vincent Carretta argued in a 2005 biography that Equiano may have been born in colonial South Carolina, not in Africa.^[5][6]

He was bought by Michael Pascal, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy. Pascal renamed the boy as Gustavus Vassa, after the Swedish noble who had become Gustav I of Sweden, king in the 16th century.^[1] Equiano had already been renamed twice: he was called Michael while on the slave ship that brought him to the Americas; and Jacob, by his first owner. This time Equiano refused and told his new owner that he would prefer to be called Jacob. His refusal, he says, "gained me many a cuff" – and eventually he submitted to the new name.^[4]:62

Equiano wrote in his narrative that domestic slaves in Virginia were treated cruelly, suffering punishments such as an "iron muzzle" (scold's bridle), used around the mouth to keep house slaves quiet, leaving them unable to speak or eat. He thought that the eyes of portraits followed him wherever he went, and that a clock could tell his master about anything Equiano did wrong. Shocked by this culture, Equiano tried washing his face in an attempt to change its colour.^[7]

As the slave of a naval captain, Equiano was trained in seamanship and traveled extensively with his master during the Seven Years War with France. Although Pascal's personal slave, Equiano was expected to assist the crew in times of battle; his duty was to haul gunpowder to the gun decks. Pascal favoured Equiano and sent him to his sister-in-law in Great Britain, to attend school and learn to read.

At this time, Equiano converted to Christianity. His master allowed Equiano to be baptized in St Margaret's, Westminster, on February 1759. Despite the special treatment, after the British won the war, Equiano did not receive a share of the prize money, as was awarded to the other sailors. Pascal had promised his freedom, but did not release him.^{[citation needed]}

Pascal sold Equiano to Captain James Doran of the Charming Sally at Gravesend, from where he was transported to Montserrat, in the Caribbean Leeward Islands. He was sold to Robert King, a Quaker merchant from Philadelphia who traded in the Caribbean. Pascal had instructed Doran to ensure that he sold Equiano "to the best master he could, as he told him Equiano was a very deserving boy, which Captain Doran said he found to be true."^[8]

Release

King set Equiano to work on his shipping routes and in his stores. In 1765, when Equiano was about 20 years old, King promised that for his purchase price of forty pounds, the slave could buy his freedom.^[9] King taught him to read and write more fluently, guided him along the path of religion, and allowed Equiano to engage in profitable trading on his own, as well as on his master's behalf. Equiano sold fruits, glass tumblers, and other items between Georgia and the Caribbean islands. King enabled Equiano to buy his freedom, which he achieved by his early twenties; he urged Equiano to stay on as a business partner, but Equiano found it dangerous and limiting to remain in the British colonies as a freedman; while loading a ship in Georgia, he was almost kidnapped back into slavery.

Pioneer of the abolitionist cause

Equiano travelled to London and became involved in the abolitionist movement, which had been particularly strong amongst Quakers, but was by 1787 non-denominational. As early as 1783 he had been passing information about the slave trade to abolitionists such as Granville Sharp, and the publicisation of the Zong massacre (a cause célèbre for the abolitionist movement) can ultimately be attributed to Equiano.^[10] Equiano was a Methodist, having been influenced by George Whitefield's evangelism in the New World.

Equiano was befriended and supported by abolitionists, many of whom encouraged him to write and publish his life story. Equiano was supported financially by philanthropic abolitionists and religious benefactors; his lectures and preparation for the book were promoted by, among others, Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon.

His account surprised many with the quality of its imagery, description, and literary style. Some who had not yet joined the abolitionist cause felt shame at learning of his suffering. Entitled The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, it was first published in 1789 and rapidly went through several editions. It is one of the earliest known examples of published writing by an African writer to be widely read in England. It was the first influential slave autobiography. Equiano's personal account of slavery and of his experiences as a black immigrant caused a sensation on publication. The book fueled a growing anti-slavery movement in Great Britain.

The autobiography goes on to describe how Equiano's adventures brought him to London, where he married into English society and became a leading abolitionist. Equiano's book became his most lasting contribution to the abolitionist movement, as it vividly demonstrated the humanity of Africans as much as the inhumanity of slavery.

Equiano records his and Granville Sharp's central roles in the movement. As a major voice in this movement, Equiano petitioned the King in 1788. He was appointed to an expedition to resettle London's poor Blacks in Sierra Leone, a British colony on the west coast of Africa. He was dismissed after protesting against financial mismanagement.^[11]

The book was not only an exemplary work of English literature by a new, African author, but it also increased Equiano's personal revenue. He traveled extensively throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland promoting the book. The returns gave him independence from benefactors and enabled him to fully chart his own purpose. He worked to improve economic, social and educational conditions in Africa, particularly in Sierra Leone.

Related to the abolitionist cause, Equiano was also a leader of the Poor Black community in London. Because of his connections, he was a prominent figure in the political realm, and he often served as a voice for his people. Equiano's reactions and remarks were frequently published in newspapers like the Public Advertiser and the Morning Chronicle. He had more of a voice than most Africans, and he seized various opportunities to use it.^[12]

Marriage and family

At some point, after having travelled widely, Equiano decided to settle in Britain and raise a family. On 7 April 1792, he married Susannah Cullen, a local girl, in St Andrew's Church in Soham, Cambridgeshire. The original marriage register containing the entry for Equiano and Cullen is held today by the Cambridgeshire Archives and Local Studies at the County Record Office in Cambridge.

He announced his wedding in every edition of his autobiography from 1792 onwards. Critics have suggested he believed that his marriage symbolised an expected commercial union between Africa and Great Britain. The couple settled in the area and had two daughters, Anna Maria (1793–1797), and Joanna (1795–1857).

Susannah died in February 1796 aged 34, and Equiano died a year after that on 31 March 1797,^[1] aged 52 (some historians will say otherwise ). Soon after, the elder daughter died, age four years old, leaving Joanna to inherit Equiano's estate, which was valued at £950: a considerable sum, worth over £80,000 today.^[13] Joanna married the Rev. Henry Bromley, and they ran a Congregational Chapel at Clavering near Saffron Walden in Essex, before moving to London in the middle of the nineteenth century. They are both buried at the Congregationalists' non-denominational Abney Park Cemetery, in Stoke Newington North London.

Last days and will

Although Equiano's death is recorded in London in 1797, the location of his burial is unsubstantiated. One of his last addresses appears to have been Plaisterer's Hall in the City of London, where he drew up his will on 28 May 1796. He then moved to John Street, Tottenham Court Road, close to Whitefield's Methodist chapel. (It was renovated for Congregationalists in the 1950s. Now the American Church in London, the church recently placed a small memorial to Equiano.) Lastly, he lived in Paddington Street, Middlesex, where he died. Equiano's death was reported in newspaper obituaries.

In the 1790s, at the time of the excesses of the French Revolution and close on the heels of the American War for Independence, British society was tense because of fears of open revolution. Reformers were considered more suspect than in other periods. Equiano had been an active member of the London Corresponding Society, which campaigned to extend the vote to working men. His close friend Thomas Hardy, the Society's Secretary, was prosecuted by the government (though without success) on the basis that such political activity amounted to treason. In December 1797, apparently unaware that Equiano had died nine months earlier, a writer for the government-sponsored Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner satirised Equiano as being at a fictional meeting of the "Friends of Freedom".

Equiano's will provided for projects he considered important. Had his longer-surviving daughter Joanna died before reaching the age of majority (twenty-one), half his wealth would have passed to the Sierra Leone Company for continued assistance to West Africans, and half to the London Missionary Society, which promoted education overseas. This organization had formed the previous November at the Countess of Huntingdon's Spa Fields Chapel in north London. By the early nineteenth century, The Missionary Society had become well known worldwide as non-denominational, though it was largely Congregational.

Controversy of origin

Historians have disagreed about Equiano's origins. Some believe he may have fabricated his African roots and his survival of the Middle Passage not only to sell more copies of his book but also to help advance the movement against the slave trade. According to Vincent Carretta,

Equiano was certainly African by descent. The circumstantial evidence that Equiano was also African American by birth and African British by choice is compelling but not absolutely conclusive. Although the circumstantial evidence is not equivalent to proof, anyone dealing with Equiano's life and art must consider it.^[5]

Baptismal records and a naval muster roll appear to link Equiano to South Carolina. Records of Equiano's first voyage to the Arctic state he was from Carolina, not Africa.^[14] Equiano may have been the source for information linking him to Carolina, but it may also have been a clerk's careless record of origin. Historians continue to search for evidence to substantiate Equiano's claim of birth in Africa. Currently, no separate documentation supports this story. Carretta holds that Equiano was born in South Carolina, based on the documents mentioned above.^[15]

For some historians, the fact that many parts of Equiano's account can be proven lends weight to accepting his story of African birth. As Adam Hochschild has written: "In the long and fascinating history of autobiographies that distort or exaggerate the truth. ...Seldom is one crucial portion of a memoir totally fabricated and the remainder scrupulously accurate; among autobiographers... both dissemblers and truth-tellers tend to be consistent."^[16]

Nigerian writer Catherine Obianuju Acholonu argues that Equiano was born in a Nigerian town known as Isseke, where there was local oral history that told of his upbringing.^[17] Before this work, however, no town bearing a name of that spelling had been recorded. Other historians, including Nigerians, have pointed out grave errors in the research.

Another point of contention is the detail of his account of the ocean crossing. "Historians have never discredited the accuracy of Equiano's narrative, nor the power it had to support the abolitionist cause [...] particularly in Britain during the 1790s. However, parts of Equiano's account of the Middle Passage may have been based on already published accounts or the experiences of those he knew."^[18]

Commemoration

The Equiano Society was formed in London in November 1996. Its main objective is to publicise and celebrate the life and work of Olaudah Equiano.^[19]

Equiano lived at 13 Tottenham Street, London, in 1788; in 1789 he moved to what was then 10 Union Street and is now 73 Riding House Street, where a commemorative plaque was unveiled on 11 October 2000 in the presence of Paul Boateng MP, Professor Carretta from the University of Maryland and Burt Caesar, as part of Black History Month celebrations. Student musicians from Trinity College of Music played a fanfare specially composed for the unveiling by Professor Ian Hall.^[20]

His life and achievements were made part of the National Curriculum in 2007 but it has been reported (at the end of 2012) that these will be dropped.^[21] In January 2013 Operation Black Vote launched a petition to request Education Secretary Michael Gove not to drop both Equiano and Mary Seacole from the National Curriculum.^[22] Rev. Jesse Jackson and others wrote a letter to The Times protesting against the mooted removal of both figures from the National Curriculum.^[23][24]

In horse racing, the champion sprinter and dual winner of the King's Stand Stakes in 2008 and 2010 was named after Equiano.

A statue of Equiano, made by pupils of Edmund Waller School, was erected in Telegraph Hill Lower Park in 2008

Media portrayal

• A BBC production in 1996 Son of Africa: The Slave Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, directed by Alrick Riley, employed dramatic reconstruction, archival material and interviews with scholars such as Stuart Hall and Ian Duffield to provide the social and economic context of the 18th-century slave trade.^[25]
• Equiano was portrayed by the Senegalese singer and musician Youssou N'Dour in the 2006 film Amazing Grace.
• African Snow, a play by Murray Watts, takes place in John Newton's mind. It was first produced at the York Theatre Royal as a co-production with Riding Lights Theatre Company in April 2007 before transferring to the Trafalgar Studios in London's West End and a National Tour. Newton was played by Roger Alborough and Equiano by Israel Oyelumade.
• Stone Publishing House published a children's book Equiano: The Slave with the Loud Voice (2007). Illustrated by Cheryl Ives, it was written by Kent historian Dr. Robert Hume.^[26]
• In 2007, David and Jessica Oyelowo appeared as Olaudah and his wife in Grace Unshackled – The Olaudah Equiano Story, a radio adaptation of Equiano's autobiography. This was first broadcast on BBC 7, April 2007.^[27]
• The British jazz artist Soweto Kinch's first album, Conversations with the Unseen (2003), contains a track entitled "Equiano's Tears".
• Equiano is portrayed by Danny Sapani in the BBC series Garrow's Law (2010).

See also

• Ottobah Cugoano, an African abolitionist active in Britain in the late eighteenth century
• Phillis Wheatly, first African-American poet; first African-American woman to publish a book

References

External links

• Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African Brycchan Carey's comprehensive collection of resources for the study of Equiano.
• The Equiano Project The Equiano Society and Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
• Africans in America – Olaudah Equiano at PBS
• Olaudah Equiano at the BBC
• Works by Olaudah Equiano at Project Gutenberg

v t e Slave narrative Slave Narrative Collection Captivity narrative Individuals by continent of enslavement Africa Robert Adams (b. c. 1790 US) Francis Bok (b. 1979 Sudan) James Leander Cathcart (1 June 1767 Ire – 6 October 1843 US) Thomas Pellow (b. 1705 Eng – ?) Caribbean Juan Francisco Manzano (1797 – 1854, Cuba) Mary Prince Venerable Pierre Toussaint (1766 Saint-Dominque – June 30, 1853 NY) Europe Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 Nigeria – 31 March 1797 Eng) Ukawsaw Gronniosaw (c. 1705 Bornu – 1775 Eng) North America: Canada Marie-Joseph Angélique (c. 1710 Portugal – 1734 Montreal) North America: United States Sam Aleckson William J. Anderson Jared Maurice Arter Polly Berry Henry Bibb Leonard Black John Brown William Wells Brown Peter Bruner (1845 KY – 1938 OH) Ellen and William Craft Hannah Crafts Lucinda Davis Noah Davis Lucy Delaney Ayuba Suleiman Diallo Frederick Douglass Kate Drumgoold Jordan Winston Early (1814 – after 1894) Sarah Jane Woodson Early David George Moses Grandy William Green (19th century MD) Josiah Henson John Andrew Jackson Harriet Ann Jacobs Thomas James (minister) Fountain Hughes (1848/1854 VA – 1957) Boston King Lunsford Lane J. Vance Lewis Solomon Northup John Parker (1827 VA – 1900) William Parker James Robert Moses Roper Omar Ibn Said William Henry Singleton Venture Smith Austin Steward (1793 VA – 1860) Venerable Pierre Toussaint (1766 Saint-Dominque – 1853 NY) Harriet Tubman Wallace Turnage Bethany Veney Booker T. Washington Wallace Willis (19th century Indian Territory) Harriet E. Wilson Zamba Zembola (b. c. 1780 Congo) See also Treatment of slaves in the US, Exodus narrative in Antebellum America, Slavery among the indigenous peoples of the Americas Books Non-fiction The Slave Community (1972) Fiction Beloved (1987) The Bondwoman's Narrative Clotel (1853) Confessions of Nat Turner (1967) Dessa Rose (1986) Jubilee (1966) The Heroic Slave (1852) Kindred (1979) The Known World (2003) Unburnable (2006) Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) Walk Through Darkness (2002) Child / Young adult Good Fortune (2010) Essay To a Southern Slaveholder (1848) Related literature African-American literature Caribbean literature Documentaries Frederick Douglass and the White Negro (2008) Unchained Memories (2003)

Authority control WorldCat VIAF: 22258358 LCCN: n50027909 ISNI: 0000 0001 1022 5228 GND: 119003120 BNF: cb125621965

Persondata
Name	Equiano, Olaudah
Alternative names
Short description	British activist
Date of birth	1745
Place of birth	Essaka, Benin Empire
Date of death	31 March 1797
Place of death	York PA