Lest We ForgetRemembering the forgotten heroines and heroes of the

slave trade abolition

Olaudah Equiano (c.1745 – 31 March 1797), also known as Gustavus Vassa, was an eighteenth century merchant seaman and writer of African descent who lived in Britain's American colonies and in Britain. He was a leading influence in the abolition of slavery.

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines.

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Samuel 'Sam' Sharpe, National Hero of Jamaica was born in 1801 in Jamaica. He was also known as 'Daddy' Sharpe. He was a slave throughout his life, though he had been allowed to become a well-educated man. Because of his education he was highly respected by other slaves and he became a well known preacher and leader. Sharpe was a Deacon at the Burchell Baptist Church in Montego Bay. He spent most of his time travelling to different estates in St. James area educating the slaves about Christianity and freedom.In the mistaken belief that emancipation had already been granted by the British Parliament, Sharpe organised a peaceful strike across many estates in western Jamaica at a critical time for the plantation owners: harvest of the sugar cane.

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines.

Please take a moment to read about them…

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines.

Please take a moment to read about them…Samuel 'Sam' Sharpe cont’d…The Christmas Rebellion (Baptist War) began on December 25, 1831 at the Kensington Estate. Reprisals by the plantation owners led to the rebels burning the crops, but the slaves did not attack the white population. The rebellion was put down by the Jamaican militia within two weeks and many of the ringleaders, including Sharpe, were hanged in 1832. The rebellion caused two detailed Parliamentary Inquiries which contributed to the 1833 Abolition of Slavery across the British Empire.In 1975, the government of independent Jamaica proclaimed Sharpe a National Hero with the title Rt. Excellent Samuel Sharpe.

Harriet Tubman (c. 1822–March 10, 1913), also known as "Moses of Her People," was an African-American abolitionist. An escaped slave, she made approximately 20 voyages to rescue about 300 enslaved friends and family to freedom in Canada. During her lifetime she worked as a lumberjack, laundress, nurse, and cook. As an abolitionist, she acted as intelligence gatherer, refugee organizer, raid leader, nurse, and fundraiser.

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Mary Prince, the daughter of slaves, was born at Brackish Pond, Bermuda, in about 1788. Her father was a sawyer and her mother a house-servant. Mary and her parents were the property of Charles Myners. When Myners died Mary and her mother were sold to Captain Williams. Mary now became the personal slave of his daughter, Betsey Williams. When she was twelve years old Mary was hired out to another plantation five miles away. Soon afterwards Williams sold her to another family. Mary Prince worked as a domestic slave and in the fields and during this period she was constantly flogged by her mistress. She later wrote: "To strip me naked - to hang me up by the wrists and lay my flesh open with the cow-skin, was an ordinary punishment for even a slight offence."

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines.

Please take a moment to read about them…

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines.

Please take a moment to read about them…Mary Prince cont’d…Her master later sold her to another man and in 1806 Mary Prince was sent to work on the salt pans of Turk Island. In 1818 Mary Prince was then sold to John Wood, a plantation owner who lived in Antigua, for $300. She later wrote: “My work there was to attend the chambers and nurse the child, and to go down to the pond and wash clothes. But I soon fell ill of the rheumatism, and grew so very lame that I was forced to walk with a stick.” She began attending meetings held at the Moravian Church where she learnt to read. While in Antigua she met the widower, Daniel Jones, a former black slave who had managed to purchase his freedom. Jones asked Mary to marry him. They were married in the Moravian Chapel in December 1826. John Wood was furious when he found out and once again she had to endure a severe beating with a horsewhip.

Mary Prince cont’dWood and his wife took her as their servant to London. Soon after arriving in England in 1828 she ran away and went to live at the Moravian Mission House in Hatton Gardens. A few weeks later she went to work for Thomas Pringle, a member of the Anti-Slavery Society. In 1831 Pringle arranged for her to publish her book, The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave. The History of Mary Prince (1831) was the first life of a black woman to be published in Britain.

This extraordinary testament of ill-treatment and survival was a protest and a rallying-cry for emancipation that provoked two libel actions and ran into three editions in the year of its publication.

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines.

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Mary Prince cont’dAfter publication of the book John Wood sued the publishers claiming that Mary Prince work had "endeavoured to injure the character of my family by the most vile and infamous falsehoods". Wood lost his case. Two prominent supporters of slavery in Britain, James MacQueen and James Curtin, took up Wood's case and in an article in Blackwood's Magazine, claimed that Prince's book contained a large number of lies. Prince and her publisher sued MacQueen and Curtin for libel and won their case. It is thought that Prince remained in England after 1833, perhaps continuing to work as a servant. Her History is an important contribution to early black writing, and it offers a glimpse into the lives of enslaved men and women whose life stories cannot be traced.

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines.

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Toussaint L'Ouverture, François Dominique c.1744–1803, Haitian patriot and martyr. A self-educated slave freed shortly before the uprising in 1791, he joined the black rebellion to liberate the slaves and became its organizational genius. Rapidly rising in power, Toussaint joined forces, briefly, in 1793 with the Spanish of Santo Domingo and in a series of fast-moving campaigns became known as L'Ouverture [the opening], a name he adopted. Although he professed allegiance to France, first to the republic and then to Napoleon, he was singleheartedly devoted to the cause of his own people and advocated it in his talks with French commissioners. Late in 1793 the British occupied all of Haiti's coastal cities and allied themselves with the Spanish in the eastern part of the island.

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines.

Please take a moment to read about them…

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines.

Please take a moment to read about them…Toussaint L'Ouverture cont’d…He was the acknowledged leader against them and, with the generals Dessalines and Christophe, recaptured (1798) several towns from the British and secured their complete withdrawal. In 1799 the mulatto general André Rigaud enlisted the aid of Alexandre Pétion and Jean Pierre Boyer, asserted mulatto supremacy, and launched a revolt against Toussaint; the uprising was quelled when Pétion lost the southern port of Jacmel. In 1801, Toussaint conquered Santo Domingo, and thus he governed the whole island. By then professing only nominal allegiance to France, he reorganized the government and instituted public improvements.

Toussaint L'Ouverture cont’d…Napoleon sent (1802) a large force under General Leclerc to subdue Toussaint, who had become a major obstacle to French colonial ambitions in the Western Hemisphere; the Haitians, however, offered stubborn resistance, and a peace treaty was drawn. Toussaint himself was treacherously seized and sent to France, where he died in a dungeon at Fort-de-Joux, in the French Jura. His valiant life and tragic death made him a symbol of the fight for liberty, and he is celebrated in one of Wordsworth's finest sonnets and in a dramatic poem by Lamartine.

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines.

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Sojourner Truth (c. 1797– November 26, 1883) was the self-given name, from 1843, of Isabella Baumfree, an American abolitionist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York. Her best-known speech, which became known as Ain't I a Woman?, was delivered in 1851 at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines.

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Paul Bogle (1822 - 1865) was a Baptist Deacon and a Jamaican rebel. Being a Christian, he helped his congregation cope with the poverty and social injustices they experienced by reading and applying lessons from the Bible. During this time, Bogle was one of only 104 men who could vote in his community of St Thomas. He was a leader of the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion, and was captured in October 24 and executed by the United Kingdom (Jamaica was a British colony at that time). He was later named a National Hero of Jamaica with the title Rt. Excellent Paul Bogle. He is depicted on the heads side of the Jamaican 10-cent coin as such.

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines.

Please take a moment to read about them…

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines.

Please take a moment to read about them…Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780) is thought to have been born a slave on a ship crossing the Atlanticfrom Africa to the West Indies. His earliest memories were of Greenwich, near London, where he worked as a child slave. He persuaded the powerful Montagu family to employ him as their butler, an important position, before retiring to run a grocery shop in Westminster. He composed music, appeared on the stage, and entertained many famous figures of literary and artistic London. The first African we know of to vote in a British election, he wrote a large number of letters which were collected and published in 1782, two years after his death. He was thought of in his age as "the extraordinary Negro", and to eighteenth-century British opponents of the slave trade he became a symbol of the humanity of Africans, then disputed by many.

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines.

Please take a moment to read about them…Ottobah Cuguano, was born in the 1750s in West Africa.  He came from a high-ranking family.  His father was a companion to the local chief, and he was brought up with the children of the chief.  He then went to stay with an uncle who lived some way from his home town.  Cuguano and his cousins often went into the woods to play and hunt.  One day, they were taken prisoner by a gang of men, who accused them of a crime against the local chief.  They were marched off and enslaved.  He was taken to the coast, and sold through one of the European trading forts.  He was taken by ship across the Atlantic Ocean and sold to a plantation-owner on the island of Grenada.  He was then sold to a man who moved from Grenada to England, and he came with him as his personal servant.  He wrote Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, published 1787.  By 1788 he was a free man, and working as personal servant to Richard Cosway, who was the court painter to the Prince of Wales.

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines

Paul Bogle (1822 - 1865) was a Baptist Deacon and a Jamaican rebel.

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines

Samuel 'Sam' SharpeNational Hero of Jamaica was born in 1801 in Jamaica.

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines

Bishop Samuel Adjai (Ajayi) Crowther (c. 1807 – 31 December 1891) was a linguist and the first African Anglican bishop in Nigeria

Lest we forget : Heroes and Heroines

Extract from Bloomsbury’s

Church Meeting Minutes of 3 May 1851

Lest we forget : Bloomsbury’s Past

Lest we forget : Slavery Today

Human Trafficking: Chinese labourers were drowned in the rising waters as they picked cockles in Morecambe Bay in the northwest of England. They were being paid the equivalent of less than $2 a day.

Lest we forget : Slavery Today

In Niger, slavery was only criminalised in 2003 - and the local human rights organisation Timidria estimates 870,000 people are still held in bondage there.

Modern day slavery is not usually associated with the West - but tens of thousands of women are trafficked there every year as sex workers and forced labourers.

Lest we forget : Slavery Today

Lest we forget : Slavery Today

A sweatshop factory is one where workers are abused in violation of that country's labour laws