[Church of England] Congregation members from two parishes will be marking the United Kingdom’s Black History Month – October – by celebrating their connection to one of the 18th century’s most famous figures in the campaign to abolish the transatlantic slave trade.
Writer and campaigner Olaudah Equiano, who was enslaved but later bought his own freedom, was married in Soham Parish Church in Cambridgeshire in 1792 to Susannah Cullen. The couple’s elder daughter is commemorated in a memorial at St. Andrew’s Chesterton, in Cambridge, where she is buried.
Equiano, who died in 1797, a decade before abolition, was the first person of African descent to write an extended account of his life before and after enslavement, including his experience of transportation from west Africa to the Americas, in his book “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African.”
Publication of the book brought him widespread fame, and it is thought that he could have met his wife on a tour to promote it in Cambridge, then a center of the abolitionist movement, in 1789 or 1790.
In recent years, a dramatic presentation by Collisions Theatre Company, telling Equiano’s story and the history of the abolitionist movement, has taken place in both churches. In Soham, the audience has included more than 1,300 local school children.
In Chesterton, an Equiano Family Project at the church is using the arts as a way to connect with wider community interest in the Equiano connection to the area. The project includes plans for a new Equiano Family Window for the church. The parish also holds a service every year in memory of Equiano’s elder daughter, Anna Maria Vassa.
The Rev. Philip Lockley, vicar of St. Andrew’s Chesterton, said, “The congregation are very proud of these links. The Equiano family story is one of liberation, justice, love and mercy.”
The vicar of St Andrew’s Soham, the Rev. Eleanor Whalley said, “Our efforts to promote Equiano’s story are about ensuring his phenomenal achievements continue to influence the course of history today, building a better world.”
St. Andrew’s Soham will host a talk on the latest archival research findings into Equiano’s wife and daughters, with Victoria Avery of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, independent researcher Dawnanna Kreeger and Carol Brown-Leonardi from the Open University, on Oct. 8.