Equiano’s Narrative

Akynele Umoja

Georgia State University

How does Equiano’s Narrative apply to Georgia Standards

SSUSH1: The student will describe European settlement in North America during the 17th century.

a. Explain Virginia’s development, including the Virginia Company, tobacco cultivation, relationships with Native Americans such as Powhatan, development of the House of Burgesses, Bacon’s Rebellion, and the development of .

SSUSH2: The student will trace the ways that the economy and society of British North America developed.

a. Explain the development of mercantilism and the trans- Atlantic trade. b. Describe the , growth of the African population and African-American culture. Important Concepts

Ethnicity

A group with a “sense of people-hood” and collective identity based upon common origins, history, religion, language, and/ or geography. Important Concepts

Atlantic world

The study of connections between western Europe, west and west-central Africa, and the western hemisphere rooted in contact from the “Age of Exploration” to modern times. Important Concepts

Racial slavery

A system of forced labor rooted in the western hemisphere based upon “race” as the qualifying marker for “slave” status.

Important Concepts

Double consciousness

The inter-play between two essential identities in the shaping of a new identity in an individual or community Important Questions

• Who is ?

• Who was his audience?

• What is Equiano’s objective in the narrative? Who is Olaudah Equiano/ Gustavas Vassa? Nigeria

Equiano’s Village

• Politics

• Customs

• Religion

• Slavery The Igbo and the Middle Passage

“About 1.7 million people were transported from the Bight of Biafra over the course of the transatlantic slave trade, with the vast majority (1.5 million after 1700. Over 90 percent of these people taken by British slavers, and were bound for the Anglophone .”

“Tracing Igbo in the Diaspora” Douglass Chambers Capture and march to the coast

“Their money consisted of little white shells….I was sold …for over one hundred and seventy- two of them…” Olaudah Equiano

“She had one particularly on her head, which locked her mouth so fast that she could scarcely speak; and could not eat nor drink.” Olaudah Equiano ST. Margaret’s Church: Equaino baptised 1759 Greenwich residence: Equiano learns to read here Black Seafarers in Slave Societies Emancipated: Purchases freedom 1766 Kidnapping of “Free” Blacks

Marriage certificate of Equiano and Susannah Cullen (1792) Abolitionist movement White Supremacy and Black inferiority Religious Justifications for racial slavery Ayuba Suleiman Diallo

Anthony Benezet: pioneer abolitionist Themes of Benezet

• Described African life before Middle Passage to challenge notions the Africans were savages

• Challenged notions of Black inferiority

• Abolition of slavery and slave trade Black British Diaspora The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African (1782) Quobena Ottobah Cugoano Common themes of Sancho, Cugoano, and Equiano • challenge the notion that Africans are intellectually inferior

• Atlantic identity: “African by birth, British by acculturation and choice” Vincent Carreta Common themes of Sancho, Cugoano, and Equiano • Present a Christian moral argument against slavery

• Argue European slave trade and racial slavery worse than African counterpart Equiano: publically silent after 1794 Dies in 1797 Facts about the Narrative

• First Published in 1789

• Equiano already known as abolitionist in due to his letters

• Nine editions of the book within a 9 year period (1789-1794) Facts about the Narrative

• Subscription list, included members of Parliament royal family, aristocracy and commercial and intellectual elite

• Used to lobby Parliament to abolish British role in trans-” Questions?