Olaudah Equiano known as Gustavus Vassa was a slave freed by Sons of Africa
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Sons of Africa Sons of Africa was a late 18th-century British group that campaigned to end slavery. Its members were educated Africans in London, freed slaves who included Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano and other leading members of London's black community. It was closely connected to the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, a non-denominational group founded in 1787, whose members included Thomas Clarkson.
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Olaudah Equiano Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 – 31 March 1797), known in his lifetime as Gustavus Vassa ( ), was a prominent African in London, a freed slave who supported the British movement to end the slave trade. His autobiography, published in 1789, helped in the creation of the Slave Trade Act 1807 which ended the African trade for Britain and its colonies.
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Octaviano Olympio Octaviano Olympio (died 1940) was an Afro-Brazilian trader who helped expand Lomé, the future capital of Togoland and Togo. Son of Francisco Olympio Sylvio, Octaviano Olympio studied as a young man in Nigeria and London before working with his brothers Chico and Cesar at a branch office of the British trading firm A. and F. Swanzy. In 1882, Octaviano and Chico were commissioned to open a new branch office in the growing trading center of Bey Beach on the Gulf of Guinea. The office was immediately successful, allowing the founding of the Olympio family in what would soon become the city of Lomé.
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Kalulu Ndugu M’Hali or Kalulu (ca. 1865 – 28 March 1877) was an African slave and adopted child of the explorer and journalist Henry Morton Stanley. Kalulu died young but in his short life he visited Europe, America and the Seychelles. He had a book dedicated to him, a model in Madame Tussauds, and was a guest at Dr. Livingstone's funeral.
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Sierra Leonean Americans Sierra Leonean Americans are Americans who are descended from Sierra Leoneans. The population of Sierra Leonean Americans is relatively large and consists, according to surveys of 2013, of 21,538 people. However, many African Americans are descended also from Sierra Leonean slaves who were exported to the United States since the 18th until the early 19th century, so the number of people with that heritage should be much higher. So, the number of slaves from present Sierra Leone exported to present United States exceeded the 25.000 people. A peculiar group of people of partially Sierra Leonean descent in United States is that of the Gullah, who, descendants of slaves, fled their owners at the end of the 18th and early 19th century and they established in parts of South Carolina, Georgia, and the Sea Islands, areas in which, even today, they retain their cultures. Moreover, according to the American Community Survey there are 34,161 Sierra Leoneans immigrants living in United States.
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Bayano Wars The Bayano Wars were armed conflicts in the Isthmus of Panama that occurred between the Bayano of Panama and the Spanish crown. The First War of the Bayano took place from 1548 to 1558, while the Second War took place from 1579 and 1582. Slavery, practiced since the early sixteenth century in Panama, brought many enslaved people from Africa to Spanish America. This brought successive uprisings of slaves against the rulers of the time, which was the origin for the Bayano Wars.
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Passmore Williamson Passmore Williamson (February 23, 1822 - February 1, 1895) was an abolitionist and businessman in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a free state in the antebellum years. Secretary of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society and a member of its Vigilance Committee, Williamson is best known for helping Jane Johnson and her two sons gain freedom from slavery on July 18, 1855.
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Oroonoko Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave is a short work of prose fiction by Aphra Behn (1640–1689), published in 1688 by William Canning and reissued with two other fictions later that year. The eponymous hero is an African prince from Coramantien who is tricked into slavery and sold to British colonists in Surinam where he meets the narrator. Behn's text is a first person account of his life, love, rebellion, and execution.
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Blockade of Africa The Blockade of Africa began in 1808 after Britain outlawed the Atlantic slave trade, making it illegal for British ships to transport slaves. The Royal Navy immediately established a presence off Africa to enforce the ban, called the West Africa Squadron. Although the ban initially applied only to British ships, Britain negotiated treaties with other countries to give the Royal Navy the right to intercept and search their ships for slaves. A notable exception was the United States, which refused such permission. The 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves technically abolished the intercontinental slave trade in the United States but the ban was not widely enforced and many of the slave ships which escaped the blockade were destined for the southern United States.
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The Slave Community The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South is a book written by American historian John W. Blassingame. Published in 1972, it is one of the first historical studies of slavery in the United States to be presented from the perspective of the enslaved. "The Slave Community" contradicted those historians who had interpreted history to suggest that African American slaves were docile and submissive "Sambos" who enjoyed the benefits of a paternalistic master-slave relationship on southern plantations. Using psychology, Blassingame analyzes fugitive slave narratives published in the 19th century to conclude that an independent culture developed among the enslaved and that there were a variety of personality types exhibited by slaves.
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Solomon Northup Solomon Northup (July 10, 1807 or 1808 –  1863 ) was an American abolitionist and the primary author of the memoir "Twelve Years a Slave". A free-born African American from New York, he was the son of a freed slave and a free woman of color. A farmer and a professional violinist, Northup had been a landowner in Hebron, New York. In 1841, he was offered a traveling musician's job and went to Washington, D.C. (where slavery was legal); there he was drugged, kidnapped, and sold as a slave. He was shipped to New Orleans, purchased by a planter, and held as a slave for 12 years in the Red River region of Louisiana, mostly in Avoyelles Parish. He remained a slave until he met a Canadian working on his plantation who helped get word to New York, where state law provided aid to free New York citizens who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. His family and friends enlisted the aid of the Governor of New York, Washington Hunt, and Northup regained his freedom on January 3, 1853.
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Twelve Years a Slave Twelve Years a Slave is an 1853 memoir and slave narrative by American Solomon Northup as told to and edited by David Wilson. Northup, a black man who was born free in New York state, details his being tricked to go to Washington, D.C., where he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South. He was in bondage for 12 years in Louisiana before he was able to secretly get information to friends and family in New York, who in turn secured his release with the aid of the state. Northup's account provides extensive details on the slave markets in Washington, D.C. and New Orleans, and describes at length cotton and sugar cultivation and slave treatment on major plantations in Louisiana.
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Agaja Agaja (also spelled Agadja and also known as Trudo Agaja or Trudo Audati) was a King of the Kingdom of Dahomey, in present-day Benin, who ruled from 1718 until 1740. He came to the throne after his brother King Akaba. During his reign, Dahomey expanded significantly and took control of key trade routes for the Atlantic slave trade by conquering Allada (1724) and Whydah (1727). Wars with the powerful Oyo Empire to the east of Dahomey resulted in Agaja accepting tributary status to that empire and providing yearly gifts. After this, Agaja attempted to control the new territory of the kingdom of Dahomey through militarily suppressing revolts and creating administrative and ceremonial systems. Agaja died in 1740 after another war with the Oyo Empire and his son Tegbessou became the new king. Agaja is credited with creating many of the key government structures of Dahomey, including the "Yovogan" and the "Mehu".
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Gordon (slave) Gordon, or "Whipped Peter", was an enslaved African American who escaped from a Louisiana plantation in March 1863, gaining freedom when he reached the Union camp near Baton Rouge. He became known as the subject of photographs documenting the extensive scarring of his back from whippings received in slavery. Abolitionists distributed these carte de visite photographs of Gordon throughout the United States and internationally to show the abuses of slavery.
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Stolen Childhood Stolen Childhood: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America is a 1995 history book about nineteenth century slave children in America by Wilma King. As the first full-length book on the subject, it began the scholarship of slave childhood. The book uses historical documents to argue that enslaved children were deprived of experiences now understood to constitute childhood, due to early work responsibilities, frequent bodily and emotional trauma, and separations from family. The book covers themes of the children's education, leisure, religion, transitions to freedmen, and work expectations. It was published in the Indiana University Press's Blacks in the Diaspora series, and a revised edition was released in 2011.
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Emancipation Proclamation The Emancipation Proclamation, or Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. It changed the federal legal status of more than 3 million enslaved people in the designated areas of the South from slave to free. As soon as a slave escaped the control of the Confederate government, by running away or through advances of federal troops, the slave became legally free. Eventually it reached and liberated all of the designated slaves. It did not cover slaves in Union areas that were freed by state action (or by the 13th amendment in December 1865). It was issued as a war measure during the American Civil War, directed to all of the areas in rebellion and all segments of the executive branch (including the Army and Navy) of the United States.
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Scipio Kennedy Scipio Kennedy (c. 1694–1774) was a slave taken as a child from Guinea in West Africa. After being purchased at the age of five or six by Captain Andrew Douglas of Mains, he served as a slave under his daughter, Lady Jean, wife of Sir John, the 2nd Baronet Kennedy of Culzean in Ayrshire. He was granted a manumission (freedom from slavery) in 1725, but continued to work for the Kennedy family and was given land on the estate. He married in 1728 and had at least eight children. At least one living descendant is known from the West of Scotland and has published the story of his ancestor in a Scottish national newspaper.
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L'enfant Roi Once upon a time on the African continent, there was a village called Nidiobina that was ravaged by flames. Foudi Mamaya and his wife had no choice but to leave their village in search of food, leaving behind their only son, Bouba, with his grandfather Wali. The old man teaches the boy how to become a man, and Bouba turns out to be a gifted pupil.
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Barnabas Root Barnabas Root, born Fahma Yahny, (Sherbro Island, Sierra Leone, West Africa) was the grandson of an American-born slave who had moved to Africa through the efforts of the American Colonization Society. Yahny attended the original Mendi Mission school in Mendiland, Sierra Leone, where he was educated by Mary McIntosh, an alumna of Knox College, in Galesburg, Illinois, which was founded in the Calvinist tradition. The College and many of the Congregational churches of the city were active with the American Missionary Association.
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The Immortal Ten The Immortal Ten were a group of militant Kansan abolitionists and Free-Staters who on July 23, 1859, freed John Doy from a Missouri jail, where he was being held for allegedly abducting slaves. The group included George R. Hay, Silas Soule, Charles Doy, Capt. John E. Stuart [Stewart], S. J. Willis, Thomas Simmons, Joseph Gardner, Jacob Senix, Capt. Joshua A. Pike and Major James B. Abbott.
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Beninese Americans Beninese American are Americans of Beninese descent. According to the census of 2000, in the United States there are only 605 Americans of Beninese origin. However, because in the first half of the eighteenth century many slaves were exported from Benin to the present United States, the number of African Americans with one or more Beninese ancestors could be much higher. So, the number of slaves from Bight of Benin exported to present United States exceeded 6,000 people, although this might consist not only in Benin, but also washes the shores of Ghana, Togo and Nigeria. It is also important to note that they were slaves from modern Benin (along with the Haitian immigrants arrived in the United States in the late nineteenth century), who planted voodoo in Louisiana. Currently, there Beninese communities in cities such as Chicago or Washington D.C and in other states as New York.
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Spartacus Spartacus (Greek: Σπάρτακος "Spártakos "; Latin: "Spartacus;" c. 111–71 BC) was a Thracian gladiator who, along with the Gauls Crixus, Gannicus, Castus, and Oenomaus, was one of the escaped slave leaders in the Third Servile War, a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic. Little is known about Spartacus beyond the events of the war, and surviving historical accounts are sometimes contradictory and may not always be reliable. However, all sources agree that he was a former gladiator and an accomplished military leader.