18 Facts About Ottobah Cugoano

Ottobah Cugoano was sold into slavery at the age of thirteen and shipped to Grenada in the West Indies.

In 1772, he was purchased by a merchant who took him to England, where Cugoano learned to read and write, and was emancipated.

Ottobah Cugoano joined the Sons of Africa, a group of Black abolitionists in Britain, and died at some point after 1791.

Ottobah Cugoano was born Quobna Ottobah Cugoano in 1757 in Agimaque in the Gold Coast.

Ottobah Cugoano was born into a Fante family and his family was close to the local chief.

At the age of 13, Ottobah Cugoano was kidnapped with a group of children, sold into slavery and transported from Cape Coast on a slave ship to Grenada.

Ottobah Cugoano worked on a plantation in the Lesser Antilles until he was purchased in 1772 by Alexander Campbell, a Scottish plantation owner, who took him into his household.

Late in 1772, Campbell took him with him on a visit to England where Ottobah Cugoano was able to secure his freedom.

In 1784, Ottobah Cugoano was employed as a servant by the artists Richard Cosway and his wife, Maria.

Together with Olaudah Equiano and other educated Africans living in Britain, Ottobah Cugoano became active in the Sons of Africa, an abolitionist group whose members wrote frequently to the newspapers of the day, condemning the practice of slavery.

Ottobah Cugoano contacted Granville Sharp, a well-known abolitionist, who was able to have Demane removed from the ship before it sailed.

In 1787, possibly with the help of his friend Olaudah Equiano, Ottobah Cugoano published an abolitionist work entitled Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species.

Ottobah Cugoano devoted pages to his own first-hand experience, describing how he had been betrayed by African slave traders who had sold him and other children to European traders.

Ottobah Cugoano vividly recalled his exact worth, being equal to that of a gun, cloth and some lead.

Ottobah Cugoano called for the establishment of schools in Britain especially for African students.

Ottobah Cugoano's last known letter, written in 1791, mentions travelling to "upwards of fifty places" to promote the book and that he found that "complexion is a predominant prejudice".

Ottobah Cugoano wished to travel to Nova Scotia to recruit settlers for the proposed free colony of African Britons in Sierra Leone but it is not known if he did so.

In November 2020, an English Heritage blue plaque honouring Ottobah Cugoano was unveiled on Schomberg House in Pall Mall, London, where he had lived and worked with the Cosways from 1784 to 1791.