“Many people told me I should have suppressed it,” Carretta says. “I said ‘I don’t do that.’ Why, I knew it would raise a storm.”
Indeed, many do disagree, including vaunted Harvard scholar Sollors. However, his opposition isn’t an emotional attachment to Equiano.
“I don’t’ think he’s come up with a smoking gun,” he says. “In the 18th century people were already doubting it.”
But, Sollors says that only two documents indicate a Carolina birth, and “neither are handwritten by Equiano.” There’s no additional evidence confirming a Carolina birth, and Sollors thinks someone taking records aboard the ship could easily have mistakenly put down Equiano’s birthplace.
What both scholars do agree on, however, is that Equiano was a remarkable, even if he was born in the U.S. Sollors would be equally awed, if he were born in Carolina.
“He was a fantastic traveler and he went all over the world on these ships, and then bought his freedom and was still eager to sail the seas
“If he was an American, to go to England in the 18th century and pretend your African; sounds like a whole novel plot, and he hung out with a lot of Africans so he must have had more stories,” says Sollors. “What really matters was that he witnessed the slave passage. We know that he did that. The descriptions he drew are real.”
--Christina Asquith
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