Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 – 31 March 1797), known in his lifetime as Gustavus Vassa was a writer and abolitionist from the Igbo region of what is today southeastern Nigeria according to his memoir, or from South Carolina according to other sources. Enslaved as a child, Equiano purchased his own freedom in 1766. He was a promient abolitionist in the British movement to end the Atlantic slave trade. His autobiography, published in 1789, helped in the creation of the Slave Trade Act 1807 which ended the transatlantic slave trade for Britain and its colonies.