This walk feature activist, writer and journalist Olaudah Equiano and his association with the Lunar Society in Soho, Handsworth. Equiano, a former slave, published a memoir of his life and the terrible, unjustifiable things that happened while enslaved - “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Cassa, the
African”.
During his time, the ‘Enlightenment’ can be described as a period of movement away from a primitive superstitious state, to higher thinking and learning towards an improved state of progress. It was a time when equal rights and ethics were being refined. Ironically, the enlightenment was also the peak of African slave trade in Europe and the New World, with the transatlantic slave trade beginning in 1551. So-called Christian slave traders treated Africans poorly and justified their work because the slaves were introduced to
Christianity through being enslaved by their enlightened Christian ‘master’. This tour focuses on the British biases towards African culture, Birmingham’s link to the transatlantic slave trade and the contradiction and hypocrisy of Birmingham’s facilitation of the ‘Enlightenment’. This project was funded by the Lunar Society.
