Venture smith and olaudah equiano autobiography

Colonial American enslaved African and author

Venture Smith (Birth name: Broteer Furro) (c. 1729 – 1805) was an African-American farmer and craftsman.

Smith was kidnapped when he was six and a half years old in West Africa and was taken to Anomabo on the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) to be sold into slavery.^[1] As an adult, he purchased his freedom and that of his family.

He documented his life in A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa: But Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of America, Related by Himself.^[1] This autobiography is one of the earliest known examples of an autobiographical narrative in an entirely African American literary vericas, only about a dozen left behind first-hand accounts of their experiences.^[2]

Smith was renamed "Venture" by Robinson Mumford, his first white enslaver.

Mumford decided to call him "Venture" because he considered purchasing him to be a busi