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.
In London, Cugoano worked as a servant and became involved in abolitionist circles. His 1787 book Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species was the first published work by an African to call for the complete abolition of slavery. The book was a powerful indictment of the slave trade, drawing on his personal experience of enslavement and his Christian faith to argue against the institution.
Cugoano's work was influential in the growing abolitionist movement in Britain. He corresponded with leading abolitionists like Granville Sharp and was involved in the case of the Zong massacre, where enslaved people were thrown overboard for insurance money. His writing combined personal testimony with theological and philosophical arguments against slavery, making it accessible to a wide audience.
Though little is known about his later life, Cugoano's legacy as a pioneering Black abolitionist writer endures. His work represents one of the earliest examples of African intellectual resistance to slavery and helped lay the groundwork for the eventual abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1807.