Ottobah Cugoano was a powerful voice in 18th-century Britain’s Black abolitionist movement and the first published African to demand the total abolition of slavery. Born around 1757 near modern-day Ajumako on the coast of present-day Ghana, Cugoano was kidnapped at age 13 and trafficked across the Atlantic. After enduring brutal conditions in slave-gangs in Grenada and other parts of the West Indies, he was brought to England in 1772 by his enslaver, Alexander Campbell, and freed shortly after.
