Black heros, white saints?

Olaudah Equiano (c.1745 - 1797) was born in what is now Nigeria. Kidnapped and sold into slavery in childhood, he was taken as a slave to the New World and worked as a slave for a captain in the Royal Navy, and later for a Quaker merchant. As a seaman, he travelled the world, including the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Atlantic and the Arctic, the, latter in an abortive attempt to reach the North Pole. Coming to London, he became involved in the movement to abolish the slave trade, an involvement which led to him writing and publishing his own strongly abolitionist autobiography: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa the African (1789). The book became a bestseller furthering the anti-slavery cause.

Quobna Ottobah Cugoano (c.1757 - c.1801) was an African abolitionist who was active in England in the latter half of the 18th century. Born in what is now Ghana, Cugoano was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1770. Shipped first to the West Indies, he arrived in England in 1772.

Together with Olaudah Equiano and other Africans living in Britain, he was active in the Sons of Africa, an abolitionist group that wrote frequently to the newspapers of the day, condemning the practice of slavery.

Cugoano was one of the most outspoken members of the group, describing the history of the slave trade, and concluding that a major source of the problem was European colonialism in the Americas, where slaves were needed to work the massive plantations.

In his writing, he blamed all British people for allowing slavery to exist, and called on the slaves themselves to rebel. These ideas were forcibly expressed in his book, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (1787).

Mary Prince (1788 - c.1833) recalled that in the slave market in Bermuda, where she was put up for sale, the buyers' talk 'fell like cayenne on the fresh wounds of our hearts'. During her life as a slave she was taken from Bermuda to Turks Island and the to Antigua, eventually arriving in London where, in 1828, she reported the cruelty of her master and mistress to the Anti-Slavery Society.

The History of Mary Prince (1831) was the first life of a black woman to be published in Britain. This extraordinary testament of survival and ill-treatment was both a protest and a rallying-cry for emancipation that provoked two libel actions and ran into three editions in the year of its publication.

Ignatius Sancho (1729 - 1780) is thought to have been born a slave on a ship crossing the Atlantic from Africa to the West Indies. His earliest memories were of Greenwich, near London, where he worked as a child slave. He composed music, appeared on the stage, and entertained many of the famous figures of literary and artistic London. The first African to vote in a British election, he wrote a large number of letters which were collected and published in 1782, two years after his death. As: The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African.

The second, was the alliance formed with other organised working people who opposed the slave trade in the 1790s, the United Irishmen and other organised labour groups who rose up in protest to signal the death knell of slavery.

The 'Transatlantic Slave Trade' describes the sale and exploitation of African slaves by Europeans, that occurred in and around the Atlantic Ocean during the period from the 15th century to the 19th century. Most slaves were transported from West and Central Africa, to the new world. It is estimated that 12 million Africans arrived in the new world, making it one of the largest forced migrations in human history. The transatlantic slave trade formed part of the notorious 'Triangular Trade' between Europe, Africa and the Americas. The profits from which, partly funded Britain's industrial revolution, which was to make Britain one of the richest countries in the world.

The Middle Passage refers to the sailing voyage of slave ships from Africa to the Americas. The passage could take anywhere from six weeks to three months, during which the African captives were considered as 'cargo' and inhumanely packed together, below the deck of a ship for the majority of the journey.

The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed in Parliament on 25 March 1807. It prohibited the capture, transport, buying and selling of slaves within the British Empire from 1 May 1807. Although it did not end slavery, the act signalled the end of the slave trade in Britain and the colonies. There was a mass movement behind the act that brought together many different members of society from enslaved Africans to British abolitionists.

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