Olaudah Equiano and the Book That Changed Britain

Olaudah Equiano was born in a village in what is now Nigeria, a long time ago.

He remembered it all his life: the compound where his family lived, the food, his mother, and being the youngest son and rather spoiled.

When he was about eleven, he and his sister were stolen away and sold. He was put on a ship and carried across the ocean, far from everyone he knew.

That is a hard thing, and it is true, and it happened to millions of people.

Here is what he did next.

He learned to read. He learned to write. He learned to sail a ship and to navigate by the stars, and he was quick at figures. And when he was allowed to trade a few things of his own on the side — a glass tumbler here, a bag of fruit there — he saved every single coin.

It took him three years.

Then, when he was about twenty-one, he counted out forty pounds, walked up to the man who owned him, and bought himself.

He was free, and he had paid for it himself.

He settled in London. And there he did the bravest thing of all: he wrote down exactly what had happened to him, all of it, and put his own name and his own face on the front of the book.

People in Britain had argued about slavery for years without ever hearing from somebody who had lived it. Now they could. The book sold and sold. He travelled the country for five years, town after town, talking about it to anyone who would come and listen.

He did not live to see the end of it. But when Britain finally stopped the slave trade, it was his book, more than almost anything else, that had changed people's minds.

One boy from one village. One book.

Goodnight, Olaudah. Sleep well.