tive freedoms of shipboard life meant that he was
able to learn to read and write. Swindled out of his
wages and prize money in 1763, Equiano was sud-
denly sold to Robert King, a Quaker merchant in
Montserrat. His literacy and his maritime training
protected him from the harshest forms of servi-
tude, however, and by petty trading and hard sav-
ing, Equiano raised enough cash to buy his own
freedom, which he did on July 11, 1766: “the hap-
piest day I had ever experienced.”
As a free man, Equiano spent 20 years involved
in a variety of mostly maritime occupations, from
ship’s steward to hairdresser. He was extremely well
traveled in both Europe and the New World, and
he even joined an expedition toward the North
Pole in 1773. In 1774, he underwent a conver-
sion to Methodism and, shortly after, was briefly
involved in a project to settle a colony on the
Mosquito Coast (modem Nicaragua). Equiano’s
role in buying slaves for this colony and the eager-
ness with which he sought to convert the Native
Americans to his newfound faith have been seen
as problematic by modem commentators. In the
1770s, however, early abolitionists mostly agreed
that abolition should go hand in hand with evan-
gelization. Equiano thus acted entirely within the
expectations of his age.
In the 1780s an organized abolition campaign
was instituted in London, and Equiano quickly
became involved. As early as 1774, he had been
in touch with the slavery campaigner Granville
Sharp. In 1785, Equiano began to write letters to
campaigners and prominent figures in British po-
litical life. The following year, he was appointed
as a Commissary of Provisions and Stores to the
project, supported by the British government, to
resettle poor black Londoners in Sierra Leone in
West Africa. Equiano thus became the first black
civil servant in British history. However, he soon
realized that the scheme was heading for disaster
because of corruption and incompetence. When
he tried to remedy the situation, he was fired.
After this, he devoted all his attention to the abo-
lition movement, and in May 1789 the Narrative
of the Life was published to much critical acclaim.
Equiano vigorously promoted the book on an
exhausting lecture tour around the British Isles.
In 1791, the first U.S. edition was published, the
same year that Equiano married Susanna Cul-
len in Cambridgeshire. Equiano spent the last
six years of his life promoting his book and the
cause of abolition. He died on March 31, 1797, a
full 10 years before the British and American slave
trades were abolished, 40 years before slavery was
ended in British colonies, and 68 years before the
abolition of slavery in the United States. Although
Equiano did not live to see these events, his Narra-
tive of the Life played an important part in bring-
ing them about.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Carretta, Vincent. Equiano, the African: Biography of
a Self-Made Man. Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 2005.
———. “Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa? New
Light on an Eighteenth-Century Question of
Identity.” Slavery and Abolition 20, no. 3 (Decem-
ber 1999): 96–105.
Costanzo, Angelo. Surprizing Narrative: Olaudah
Equiano and the Beginnings of Black Autobiogra-
phy. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987.
Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative and
Other Writings. Edited by Vincent Carretta, 2nd
ed. New York and London: Penguin, 2003.
Samuels, Wilfred. “Disguised Voice in The Interesting
Narrative of Olaudah Equiano.” Black American
Literature Forum 19 (1985): 64–69.
Sandiford, Keith. Measuring the Moment: Strategies of
Protest in Eighteenth-Century Afro-English Writ-
ing. London: Associated University Presses, 1988.
Walvin, James. An African’s Life: The Life and Times of
Olaudah Equiano, 1745–1797. Washington: Cas-
sell, 1998.
Brycchan CareyEssence
The maiden issue of Essence magazine appeared in
May 1970, promising to “delight and to celebrate
the beauty, pride, strength, and uniqueness of all
Black women.” For the next 30 years, Essence was a
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