Olaudah Equiano born around 1745 but died on 31 March 1797,known in his lifetime as Gustavus Vassa, was a writer and abolitionist from the Igbo region of southeastern Nigeria. Enslaved as a child, he was taken to the Caribbean and sold as a slave to a captain in the Royal Navy, and later to a Quaker trader. Eventually, he earned his own freedom in 1766 by intelligent trading and careful savings.

According to his memoir, Equiano recounted an incident when an attempted kidnapping of children was foiled by adults in his Igbo village, Isseke (present-day Imo State), in the southeastern part of present-day Nigeria. When he was around the age of eleven, he and his sister were left alone to look after their family premises – as was common when adults went out of the house to work. They were both kidnapped and taken far away from their hometown of Essaka, separated and sold to slave traders. After changing ownership several times, Equiano met his sister again, but they were separated once more, and he was taken across a large river to the coast, where he was held by European slave traders.He was transported with 244 other enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to Barbados in the West Indies. He and a few other slaves were sent further away to the British colony of Virginia. Literary scholar Vincent Carretta argued in his 2005 biography of Equiano that the activist could have been born in colonial South Carolina rather than Africa based on his discovery of a 1759 parish baptismal record that lists Equiano’s place of birth as Carolina and a 1773 ship’s muster that indicates South Carolina. Carretta’s conclusion is disputed by other scholars who believe the weight of evidence supports Equiano’s account of coming from Africa.

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