<span><span>Equiano was an African writer whose experiences as a slave prompted him to become involved in the British abolition movement.
In his autobiography, Olaudah Equiano writes that he was born in the Eboe province, in the area that is now southern Nigeria. He describes how he was kidnapped with his sister at around the age of 11, sold by local slave traders and shipped across the Atlantic to Barbados and then Virginia.
In the absence of written records it is not certain whether Equiano's description of his early life is accurate. Doubt also stems from the fact that, in later life, he twice listed a birthplace in the Americas.
Apart from the uncertainty about his early years, everything Equiano describes in his extraordinary autobiography can be verified. In Virginia he was sold to a Royal Navy officer, Lieutenant Michael Pascal, who renamed him 'Gustavus Vassa' after the 16th-century Swedish king. Equiano travelled the oceans with Pascal for eight years, during which time he was baptised and learned to read and write.
Pascal then sold Equiano to a ship captain in London, who took him to Montserrat, where he was sold to the prominent merchant Robert King. While working as a deckhand, valet and barber for King, Equiano earned money by trading on the side. In only three years, he made enough money to buy his own freedom. Equiano then spent much of the next 20 years travelling the world, including trips to Turkey and the Arctic.
In 1786 in London, he became involved in the movement to abolish slavery. He was a prominent member of the 'Sons of Africa', a group of 12 black men who campaigned for abolition.
In 1789 he published his autobiography, 'The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African'. He travelled widely promoting the book, which became immensely popular, helped the abolitionist cause, and made Equiano a wealthy man. It is one of the earliest books published by a black African writer.
In 1792, Equiano married an Englishwoman, Susanna Cullen, and they had two daughters. Equiano died on 31 March 1797.</span><span>
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The answer would be C. The American colonies
Democrats had been losing elections in what had long been considered solid Democratic territory in the South. Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat who took up the presidency after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, had become associated in the minds of voters with the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement aimed to give black Americans equality. This did not sit well with white voters in the South. In the 1964 presidential election, the Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, won the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. Nevertheless, Johnson prevailed and won the election. But it showed conservative Democrats were willing to shift to the Republican party if they felt it more closely aligned with their views.
The abolitionist movement was a movement in the United States and also in Europe that sought to abolish or end the slave trade and to free slaves. Two early abolitionists in the United States were Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, however, their positions were rather contradictory given that each was a slaveholder. Benjamin Franklin was a leading member of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, a leading early abolitionist organization. Later in the 1800s the abolitionist movement in the North was led by social reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Additionally writers like Harriet Beecher Stowe and John Greenleaf Whittier were also active abolitionists. There were also many black abolitionist activists such as Frederick Douglass and Charles Henry Langston. The Emancipation Proclamation issued during the Civil War freed slaves in the confederate states, however, slavery was not officially ended until the 13th Amendment was passed in December 1865 which outlawed slavery.
