Slave Voices

"Slavers" used inhuman devices to control their victims while ships bound for the "new world" were crowded and foul.

What was it like for an African child who had been kidnapped from his home and country and made to do the "white man's" bidding? Olaudah Equiano, born in 1745 (in what is now Nigeria), answered that question. He was a chief's son, and one of the first Africans to both live through slavery and write about it.

His book, initially published in 1789, describes life in his own country and recounts the horrors of his "middle passage" and decades of bondage. He later became the leading black abolitionist in Britain. (Thanks to the Library of Congress, you can read an early edition of his Narrative by following this link.)

Equiano asks compelling questions:

• How could it be reasonable for white people to consider Africans inferior when many "haughty" Europeans were themselves descended from barbarians?



• "Oh nominal Christians! Is this what your God meant when he said do unto others...?"