Sancho, Ignatius | Joseph Jekyll (essay date 1782)
Joseph Jekyll (essay date 1782)
SOURCE: Jekyll, Joseph. “The Life of Ignatius Sancho.” 1782. Reprinted in The Letters of Ignatius Sancho, edited by Paul Edwards and Polly Rewt, pp. 22-9. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994.
[In the following essay, the original editor of Sancho's letters provides a brief biography of the author and discusses European opinions on the intellectual equality and humanity of Africans.]
‘Quamvis ille niger, quamvis tu candidus esses.’
Virgil
The extraordinary Negro, whose Life I am about to write, was born a. d. 1729, on board a ship in the Slave-trade, a few days after it had quitted the coast of Guinea for the Spanish West-Indies; and at Carthagena he received from the hand of the Bishop, Baptism, and the name of Ignatius.
A disease of the new climate put an early period to his mother's existence; and his father defeated the miseries of slavery by...
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