Life and setting
Wilberforce was a British member of Parliament and evangelical reformer who became the best-known parliamentary leader of the campaign against the transatlantic slave trade.
Evangelical Reform • Anglican Evangelical
William Wilberforce
1759 – 1833 • Politician and abolitionist
Why this person matters
His long campaign contributed to the 1807 abolition of the British slave trade and the 1833 act abolishing slavery through much of the British Empire.
What should not be sanitized
Abolition was a broad movement led by Black activists, formerly enslaved witnesses, Quakers, evangelicals and many others; Wilberforce should not be treated as its sole architect.