List of slaves

Slavery
Contemporary Child labour Conscription Debt Forced marriage Bride buying Wife selling Forced prostitution Human trafficking Peonage Penal labour Sexual slavery
Historical Antiquity Ancient Rome Babylonia Ancient Greece Topics and practices Atlantic slave trade Middle Passage Arab slave trade Ghilman Mamluk Saqaliba Aztec Blackbirding Byzantine Empire Coolie Corvée labor Field slaves in the United States House slaves Kholop Medieval Europe Panyarring Thrall Serfs History Russia Slave raiding Naval Galley slave Impressment Pirates Shanghaiing Slave ship
By country or region Africa Contemporary Africa Slavery on the Barbary Coast Barbary slave trade Slave Coast Angola Chad Ethiopia Mali Mauritania Niger Somalia South Africa Sudan Seychelles Americas Americas indigenous U.S. Natives Brazil Lei Áurea Canada Caribbean Barbados Code Noir Cuba Haiti revolt Restavek Latin America Puerto Rico Trinidad United States colonial maps female partus penal labor Slave codes interregional Human Trafficking Virgin Islands Asia Bhutan China Booi Aha Laogai India Debt bondage Chukri System Japan comfort women South Korea Yankee princess North Korea Vietnam Australia and Oceania Blackbirding in Australia Human trafficking in Australia Slave raiding in Easter Island Human trafficking in Papua New Guinea Blackbirding in Polynesia Europe Sex trafficking in Europe British Isles Denmark Dutch Republic Germany in World War II Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia Spain colonies Sweden Middle East and North Africa Iran Libya Human trafficking in the Middle East Ottoman Empire Yemen
Religion Bible Christianity Catholicism Islam 21st century Judaism Bahá'í Faith
Opposition and resistance Timeline Abolitionism U.K. U.S. Anti-Slavery International Blockade of Africa U.K. U.S. Compensated emancipation Freedman manumission Freedom suit Abolitionists Slave Power Underground Railroad songs Slave rebellion Slave Trade Acts International law 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution
Related Common law Indentured servant Unfree labour Fugitive slaves laws Great Dismal Swamp maroons List of slaves owners Slave narrative films songs Slave name Slave catcher Slave patrol Slave Route Project Treatment in U.S. breeding court cases Washington Jefferson Adams Lincoln 40 acres Freedmen's Bureau bit Wage slavery Emancipation Day

Slavery is a social-economic system under which persons are enslaved, referred to as slaves and deprived of personal freedom and compelled to perform labor or services.

The following is a list of enslaved people, in alphabetical order by first name. There are several names which have been added under the letter representing their last name.

A

• Abdulrahman Ibrahim Ibn Sori, a prince from West Africa, was held a slave for 40 years until United States President John Quincy Adams freed him.
• Abraham, a black slave who carried messages between the frontier and Charles Town during wars with the Cherokee, for which he was freed.^[1]
• Abram Petrovich Gannibal (1696–1781), adopted by Russian czar Peter the Great, governor of Tallinn (Reval) (1742–52), general-en-chef (1759–62) for building of sea forts and canals in Russia; great-grandfather of Pushkin. See The Slave in European Art for portraits.
• Absalom Jones, (1746 – February 13, 1818), former slave who purchased his freedom, abolitionist and clergyman – first ordained black priest of the Episcopal Church.
• Aelfsige, a male cook in Anglo-Saxon England, property of Wynflaed, who left him to her granddaughter Eadgifu in her will.^[2][3]
• Aelius Perseus, a freedman of the late Roman Empire, whom T. Aelius Dionysius included by name on a stela for him, his wife, their freedman and those who came after them.^[4]
• Aelstan, a slave in Anglo-Saxon England freed with his wife and all their children (born and unborn) by Geatflæd "for the love of God and the good of her soul".^[5]
• Aesop, Greek poet, c. 6th century BC, author or transcriber of Aesop's Fables.
• Agathoclia, a martyr.^[6]
• Alam al-Malika, slave singer who was promoted to become the de facto prime minister, adviser and ruler of the principality of Zubayd.
• Alexina Morrison, a fugitive slave in Louisiana who claimed to be a kidnapped white girl, and sued her master for her freedom on that ground, arousing such popular feeling against him that a mob threatened to lynch him.^[7]
• Alfred "Teen" Blackburn (1842–1951) was the one of the last living survivors of slavery in the United States who had a clear recollection of it.
• Alice Clifton, (ca. 1772 – unknown; as an enslaved teenager, she was a defendant in infanticide trial in 1787)
• Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish explorer was enslaved by Native Americans on the Gulf Coast after surviving an expedition's collapse.^[8]
• Al-Khayzuran bint Atta, a Yemenite slave girl who became the wife of the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mahdi and mother of both caliphs Al-Hadi and Harun al-Rashid, the most famous of the Abbasids.
• Amanda America Dickson, the daughter of the white planter David Dickson and the slave Julia Frances Lewis, who belonged to his mother. Although technically a slave until emancipation after the American Civil War, Amanda Dickson was raised as her father's favorite. At his death in 1885, she inherited his estate of $500,000.^[9]
• Ammar bin Yasir, one of the most famous sahaba (companions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad) freed by Abu Bakr.
• Amos Fortune (1710–1801) was an African prince who was then a slave for most of his life. A children's book about him, Amos Fortune, Free Man won the Newbery Medal in 1951.
• Andrea Aguyar, a freed Black slave from Uruguay who joined Garibaldi during Italian revolutionary involvement in the Uruguayan Civil War of the 1840s, followed him to Italy, and was killed fighting in defence of the Roman Republic of 1849.
• Ann Calhoun, a white girl and cousin to John C. Calhoun, was enslaved from the age of 4 until she was 7 by the Cherokee.^[10]
• Anna J. Cooper, author, educator, speaker and prominent African-American scholar
• Antarah ibn Shaddad, pre-Islamic Arab born to a slave mother, freed by his father on the eve of battle, also a poet.
• Anthony Burns, (1834-1862) a preacher, escaped slavery to Boston only to be recaptured due to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, then had his freedom bought by those who opposed his recapturing in Boston
• Antonia Bonnelli, captured and enslaved by the Mikasuki tribe in Florida in 1802.
• Antonio and Mundy, the presumed names of 16th Century African slaves brought by Portuguese owners to Macau, who managed to escape into China. The first time when an English person learned Chinese was from one of them.^[11]
• Aputsiaq Høegh sued her master William Daniel for her freedom in Arkansas, alleging that her mother had been a kidnapped and enslaved white woman.^[12]
• Archibald Grimké, born into slavery and son of a white father, became an American lawyer, intellectual, journalist, diplomat and community leader
• Arkil, a slave in Anglo-Saxon England freed by Geatflæd "for the love of God and the good of her soul".^[5]
• Arthur Crumpler (ca. 1835-1910), escaped slavery in Virginia, 2nd husband of Dr. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler.^[13]
• Augustine Tolton (1854–1897), the first black priest in the United States.^[14]
• Aurelia Philematium, a freedwoman, whose tombstone glorifies her marriage with her fellow freedman, Lucius Aurelius Hermia.^[15]
• Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, also known as Job ben Solomon (1701–1773).

B

• Baibars, a Kipchack Turk who became a Mamluk Sultan of Egypt and Syria.
• Bass Reeves (1838-1910), one of the first black Deputy U.S. Marshals west of the Mississippi River, credited with arresting over 3,000 felons and shot and killed fourteen outlaws in self-defense
• Sarah Basset (d.1730), American slave.
• Balthild, a 7th-century Anglo-Saxon woman of elite birth, was sold into slavery on the continent as a young girl and served in the household of Erchinoald, mayor of the palace of Neustria. Later she married King Clovis II. As a Queen – after her husband's death holding power as regent for her son Clotaire – she abolished the practice of trading Christian slaves and sought the freedom of children sold into slavery. Forced into a convent when her son came of age, Balthild was canonised by Pope Nicholas I about 200 years after her death.^[16]
• Batteas, a black slave sold by the Choctaw chief Francimastabe to Benjamin James, was later stolen by Robert Welsh.^[17]
• Betty Hemings (c.1735 – 1807) enslaved mulatto in colonial Virginia, who in 1761 was forced to become the concubine of her master, planter John Wayles, had six mixed-race children with her over a 12-year period, including Sally Hemings and James Hemings
• Bilal ibn Ribah, sixth century, was freed. He converted to Islam and was Muhammad's muezzin.
• Andrew Jackson Beard, inventor, emancipated at age 15 by the Emancipation proclamation.
• Billy, a seven-year-old black boy captured by Creek raiders in 1788; he passed through several hands before being sold at auction in Havana.^[18]
• Henry Bibb, 1815–1854) was an American author and abolitionist who was born a slave. After escaping from slavery to Canada, he founded an abolitionist newspaper, The Voice of the Fugitive. He returned to the US and lectured against slavery.
• Blaesus and Blaesia, whose late Republican Rome tomb inscription name them as the freedman of Caius, and the freedwoman of Aulus.^[19]
• Blandina, a slave and martyr.^[20]
• Boga, a slave in Anglo-Saxon England, and all his family, were freed by his mistress Æthelgifu's will.^[5]
• Booker T. Washington (1856–1915), born into slavery, became an American educator, author and leader of the African-American community after the Civil War.
• Nathaniel Booth (slave) escaped slavery in Virginia and settled in Lowell, Massachusetts. In 1851, the citizens of Lowell purchased his freedom from "slave catchers."
• Brigitta Scherzenfeldt (1698–1733), Swedish memoirist and weaving teacher, was captured during the Great Northern War and lived as a slave in the kingdom of the Kalmyk in Central Asia.

C

• Caenis, a former slave and secretary of Antonia Minor (mother of the emperor Claudius), was the mistress of the Roman emperor Vespasian.
• Pope Callixtus I (died 222), a former slave, became pope from about 217 to about 222, during the reigns of the Roman Emperors Heliogabalus and Alexander Severus. He was martyred for his Christian faith and is a canonized saint of the Roman Catholic Church.^[21]
• Callistratus, an Athenian slave and banker.^[22]
• Carlota, who lead a slave rebellion on Cuba in 1843-1844.
• Cato, an African-American slave who served as an American Black Patriot spy and courier gathering Intelligence with his owner, Hercules Mulligan
• Cevri Kalfa – A Georgian slave girl at the Sultan's harem in Istanbul, who saved Mahmud II's life and was rewarded for her bravery and loyalty by being appointed haznedar usta, the chief treasurer of the imperial Harem (see Mahmud II).
• Charles Ayres Brown, mixed-raced slave, that was born in Buckingham County, Virginia around 1820 or 1821 and was a part of the contraband camp during the American Civil War in Corinth, Mississippi. He was in Company E. He was legally married to Minerva Brown in 1867 and they had 6 children.
• Charles Deslondes, Haitian mulatto tasked with overseeing other slaves on the André plantation, leader of the 1811 German Coast Uprising who was brutally killed by the "militia" which put down the slave revolt.
• Charles Taylor, a slave freed by General Benjamin F. Butler in New Orleans, was described in a Harper's Weekly article as appearing white and having come to a school for emancipated slaves in Philadelphia.^[23]
• Charlotte Dupuy, also called Lottie (1787–1790-after 1866), filed a freedom suit in 1829 against her master, Henry Clay, then Secretary of State, and lost.
• Chica da Silva, also known as Xica da Silva (c. 1732-1796), Brazilian woman who became famous for becoming rich and powerful despite having been born into slavery.
• Christopher Sheels – born in 1774, owned by George Washington and enslaved at Mount Vernon. The location and year in which he died is unknown.
• Claudia Prepontis, a freedwoman, erected a funerary altar to her freedman husband T. Claudius Dionysius; their clasped hands, depicted on it, show the legitimacy of their marriage, possible only once they obtained their freedom.^[24]
• Pope Clement I (died in 100) was the fourth Pope according to Catholic tradition. He may have been a freedman of Titus Flavius Clemens.^[25]
• Cesar Picton ca.1765–1831, enslaved in Senegal, worked as a servant in England, and later became a wealthy coal-merchant.
• Cezayirli Gazi Hasan Pasha (1713–1790) a Georgian slave in the Ottoman Empire who rose to be grand vizier, Kapudan Pasha and an army commander.
• Cole, a slave in Anglo-Saxon England freed by Geatflæd "for the love of God and the good of her soul".
• Colonel Tye/Titus Cornelius, a former slave, became a Black Loyalist soldier and guerrilla leader during the American Revolution.
• Cooper, a black slave around 20 years old, fled to the Creek. He was captured for sale to the whites and killed after he wounded a warrior.^[26]
• Cudjoe Lewis (ca.1840–1935) is considered the last person born in Africa to have been enslaved in the United States.
• Cuffy, (died in 1763), was an Akan man who was captured in his native West Africa, taken to work in the plantations of the Dutch colony of Berbice in present-day Guyana, and in 1763 led a revolt of more than 2,500 slaves against the colony regime. Today, he is a national hero in Guyana.^[27]

D

• Danae, "the new maidservant of Capito", named in lead curse tablet from Republican Rome, which aimed to destroy Danae.^[28]
• Dave Drake, also known as Dave the Potter, (c. 1801–1876)
• David George, a black man who fled a cruel Virginia master and was captured by Creeks and enslaved by Chief Blue Salt.^[29]
• Deborah Squash, with her husband Harvey escaped from George Washington's Mount Vernon, joined the British in New York during the American Revolutionary War, and were evacuated in 1783 as freedmen^[30]
• Denmark Vesey (c. 1767–1822) was an African American slave, and later a freeman, who planned what would have been one of the largest slave rebellions in the United States had word of the plans not been leaked.^[31]
• Dido Elizabeth Belle (1761–1804) was born into slavery as the natural daughter of Maria Belle, an enslaved African woman in the West Indies, and Sir John Lindsay, a British career naval officer. Lindsay took Belle with him when he returned to England in 1765, entrusting her raising to his uncle William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, and his wife Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Mansfield. The Murrays educated Belle, bringing her up as a free gentlewoman at their Kenwood House, together with their niece, Lady Elizabeth Murray. Belle lived there for 30 years. In his will of 1793, Lord Mansfield confirmed her freedom and provided an outright sum and an annuity to her, making her an heiress.
• Diogenes of Sinope, Greek philosopher kidnapped by pirates and sold in Corinth.
• Diondre Hammond, Hails from Africa, sent by British to colonial America, later escaped to what is now Southern California.
• Dincă, the half-Roma slave and illegitimate child of a Cantacuzino boyar in the 19th Century Danubian Principalities (the present Romania). Well-educated, working as a cook but not allowed to marry his French mistress and go free, which had led him to murder his lover and kill himself. The affair shocked public opinion and was one of the factors contributing to the abolition of Slavery in Romania (see ).
• The Roman Emperor Diocletian was, by some sources, born as the slave of Senator Anullinus. By other sources, it was Diocletian's father (whose own name in unknown) who was a slave, and he was freed previous to the birth of his son, the future emperor^[32]
• Dred Scott (c. 1799–1858), attempted to sue for his freedom in Scott v. Sandford.
• Dufe the Old, a slave in Anglo-Saxon England, was freed by his mistress Æthelgifu's will.^[33]

E

• Ecceard the smith, a slave in Anglo-Saxon England freed by Geatflæd "for the love of God and the good of her soul".^[33]
• Ecgferð Aldun's daughter, a slave in Anglo-Saxon England freed by Geatflæd "for the love of God and the good of her soul".^[33]
• Edmond Flint, a black enslaved among the Choctaw Nation who later described it as very like slavery among the whites.^[34]
• Ediþ, a slave in Anglo-Saxon England, who bought her freedom and that of her children.^[35]
• Elijah Abel, born in Maryland as a slave, and believed to have escaped slavery on the Underground Railroad into Canada. He joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in its early days, was among the first blacks to receive its priesthood and the first black to rise to the ranks of an elder and seventy.
• Eliezer of Damascus, The Biblical Abraham's slave and trusted manager of the Partiarch's household.
• Eliza Hopewell, the slave of Confederate spy Isabella Maria Boyd ("Belle Boyd"). in 1862 she helped her mistress' espionage activities, carrying messages to the Confederate Army in a hollowed-out watch case.
• Eliza Moore (1843-January 21, 1948) was one of the last proven African-American former slaves living in the United States.
• Elizabeth Key Grinstead (1630-after 1665) was the first woman of African ancestry in the North American colonies to sue for her freedom and win. Key and her infant son, John Grinstead, were freed on July 21, 1656 in the colony of Virginia, based on the fact that her father was an Englishman and that she was a baptized Christian.
• Elizabeth Freeman (c. 1742–1829), known as Bett and later Mum Bett, was among the first black slaves in Massachusetts to file a "freedom suit" and win in court under the 1780 constitution, with a ruling that slavery was illegal.
• Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (1818–1907) Best known as the personal modiste and confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln, the First Lady of the United States, Keckley wrote and published an autobiography Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (1868).
• Elsey Thompson, a white captive enslaved by a Creek. When trader John O'Reilly attempted to ransom her and Nancy Caffrey, he was told they were not taken captive to be allowed to go back, but to work.^[36]
• Emiline (age 23); Nancy (20); Lewis, brother of Nancy (16); Edward, brother of Emiline (13); Lewis and Edward, sons of Nancy (7); Ann, daughter of Nancy (5); and Amanda, daughter of Emiline (2) were freed in the 1852 Lemmon v. New York court case in New York after they were brought to New York by their Virginia slave owners.
• Emily Edmonson (1835–1895), along with her sister Mary, joined an unsuccessful 1848 escape attempt known as the Pearl incident, but Henry Ward Beecher and his church raised the funds to free them.
• Enrique of Malacca, also known as Henry the Black, slave and interpreter of Ferdinand Magellan, may have been the first man to circumnavigate the globe.
• Epictetus (55–c. 135), ancient Greek stoic philosopher
• Epunuel, a native of Chappaquidick, who was taken captive by English explorers in the 1610s, with twenty-nine others, and was taken to London as a slave.^[37]
• Estevanico, also known as Esteban the Moor, one of only four survivors of the ill-fated Narváez expedition, later a guide in search of the fabled Seven Cities of Gold (ca. 1503–1539) and the first person from the Old World to arrive in Arizona and New Mexico.
• Eucharis, freedwoman of Licinia, described in her epitath as fourteen when she died and a child actress.^[38]
• Euphraios, an Athenian slave and banker.^[22]
• Exuperius and Zoe (died 127 AD), 2nd century Christian martyrs. They were a married couple who were slaves of a pagan in Pamphylia. They were killed along with their sons, Cyriacus and Theodolus, for refusing to participate in pagan rites when their son was born.^[39]

F

• Felicitas, Christian martyr and saint (died March 7, 203).^[40]
• Fiddih- acquired by the Báb when she was no older than 7 years of age, Fiddih served the Báb's wife Khadíjih-Bagum.^[41] Fiddih would die the same night as her master.^[42]
• Flores, Solomon - slave from Northern Alabama.
• Fountain Hughes (1848 or 1854—1957) was interviewed in June 1949 about his life by the Library of Congress as part of the Federal Writers' Project.
• Francis Bok, born 1979, Dinka slave from Sudan now in United States
• François Mackandal, Haitian maroon leader.
• Frederick Douglass (c. 1818–1895), abolitionist writer and speaker.
• French John, a French furtrader captured by the Cherokee and enslaved by Old Hop, apparently making no effort for his freedom for many years, until he ran away when the British offered to buy him.^[43]

G

Medical examination photo of Gordon showing his scourged back, widely distributed by Abolitionists to expose the brutality of slavery.

• Gabriel Prosser (1776–1800), leader of Virginia slave revolt
• Ganga Zumba or Ganazumba, a 17th-century escaped slave in colonial Brazil, first leader of Quilombo dos Palmares.
• George Africanus (1763–1834) an African slave from Sierra Leone who became a successful entrepreneur in Nottingham.
• George Edward Doney (1758–1809), Gambian slave of the Earl of Essex
• George Freeman Bragg (1863–1940), born into slavery, became leading Episcopal priest and social activist
• George Lewis (also known as "Slave George") (1794–1811) was a slave murdered in Kentucky on the night of December 15–16, 1811.
• George Moses Horton (1797-1884) was an African-American poet and the first African-American poet to be published in the Southern United States.
• George Sanders, a black slave among the Cherokee, who described his masters as kind and providing clothes and food.^[34]
• George Washington Carver (1864–1943) an American scientist, botanist, educator and inventor, born in slavery and freed as a young child by the Emancipation Proclamation.
• Glaumur, slave of the outlaw Grettir in early medieval Iceland (protagonist of "Grettis saga"). Glaumur is mentioned as loyally sharing his master's long exile on the lonely island of Drangey, off the northern tip of Iceland, though in the circumstances described in the saga he could have easily escaped.
• Gonzalo Guerrero (?–1536) a sailor from Palos, in Spain who shipwrecked along the Yucatan Peninsula and was taken as a slave by the local Maya.
• Gordon (slave) The images of Gordon's scourged back provided Northerners visual evidence of the brutality of slavery, and inspired many free blacks to enlist in the Union Army.^[44]
• Guðríður Símonardóttir (1598–1682), Icelandic woman taken captive by North African slavers (Barbary Pirates).
• Gustav Badin (d. 1822), butler at the royal Swedish court.

H

• Hababah, beloved concubine of Caliph Yazid II.
• Hagar, biblical figure, belonging to Sarah.
• Hanna, a slave in Virginia, and grandmother of Jackey Wright, who sued for her freedom in Hudgins v. Wright (1806) on the grounds that three generations descended from Butterwood Nan, who was an American Indian, not a black. The Virginia Supreme Court affirmed a lower court decision by George Wythe, that because of Jackey's and Hanna's appearance as mixed Indian and European, she was entitled to the presumption of freedom, given the limited nature of Indian slavery. St. George Tucker and Spencer Roane said that, as most Africans had been imported as slaves and blacks descended from slave mothers, a black would not have the same presumption of freedom.^[45][46]
• Hannah Bond, pen name Hannah Crafts (b.ca.1830s),^[47] wrote The Bondwoman's Narrative by Hannah Crafts after gaining her freedom. Possibly the first novel by an African-American woman, it is the only known novel by a fugitive slave woman.
• Hark Olufs (1708–1754), Danish sailor, was captured by Algerian pirates. Sold to the Bey of Constantine, he became Commander in Chief of the Bey's cavalry. He was released in 1735.
• Harriet Ann Jacobs (1813–1897), author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
• Harriet Powers (1837–1910), American folk artist, quilter, a slave in Georgia.
• Harriet Tubman, nicknamed "Moses" because of her efforts in helping other American slaves escape through the Underground Railroad.
• Harry, the plaintiff in the 1818 Harry v. Decker & Hopkins decision by the Supreme Court of Mississippi (the first among U.S. southern states) to free a slave solely on the basis of prior residence in a free territory.
• Henry Washington was a slave of the first president of the United States, George Washington. His history and linked documents can be found on-line.^[48] Transported as a slave to America, he was bought by Washington in 1763 to work on a project for draining the Great Dismal Swamp.^[49]
• Hercules (chef), head cook at George Washington's plantation Mount Vernon. Escaped and gained his freedom in 1797, but his wife Alice and his three children remained in slavery.
• Hermas, author of the text The Shepherd of Hermas and brother of Pope Pius I.
• Hernado de Escalante Fontaneda, born in Cartagena, was enslaved at the age of 13 when the ship bearing him to Spain for education sank off Florida. A Calusa chief enslaved him and used him as a translator until he was ransomed at 30.^[50]

I

• İbrahim Pasha (?–1536), Suleyman the Magnificent's first appointed Grand Vizier. Greek by birth, he was sold as a slave at the age of six to the Ottoman palace for future sultans. There he befriended Suleiman who was of the same age.
• Icelus Marcianus, a slave, later freedman of the emperor Galba. He was one of the three men who were said to completely control the emperor, increasing Galba's unpopularity.
• Ida B. Wells, African American activist, born a slave, who in later life campaigned against – and succeeded in abolishing – lynching
• Imma, a Northumbrian aristocrat who was knocked unconscious in battle and later pretended to have been a peasant who brought them food, so that his captors did not kill him. His manners and bearing soon betrayed him, and he was sold into slavery.^[51]
• Isfandíyár- a servant in Bahá'u'lláh's house in Tehran,^[52] Isfandíyár passed away in Mazandaran ^[53][54]
• Israel Jefferson (c. 1800-after 1873), known as Israel Gillette before 1844, was born a slave at Monticello, the estate of Thomas Jefferson, and worked as a domestic servant close to Jefferson for years.
• Ivan Bolotnikov (?–1608), a fugitive kholop (slave in Russia) and leader of the Bolotnikov rebellion.

J

• Jackey Wright, an American slave who sued for her freedom, and won, in the famous 1806 Virginia case of Hudgins v. Wright. However, the opinion of the Virginia Supreme Court relied on Wright appearing white and Native American, whereas the lower court George Wythe had tried to establish a presumption of freedom for all people, of whatever race.
• James Baugh, an American slave who sued for his freedom on the grounds that his maternal grandmother had been an Indian.^[55]
• James Hemings (1765-1801), American mixed-race slave owned and freed by Thomas Jefferson, older brother of Sally Hemings and a half-sibling of Jefferson's wife Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson threw their father John Wayles, trained to be a French chef
• James Leander Cathcart (1767–1843), a diplomat, slave, and sailor, he is notable for his narrative as a slave in Algiers for eleven years and for his diplomatic accomplishments while in slavery.
• James Somersett, his escape, supported by abolitionists, led to the milestone Somersett's Case, which effectively ended slavery in Britain, though not in its colonies.
• Jane Johnson gained freedom on July 18, 1855 with her two young sons while in Philadelphia with her master and his family. She was aided by William Still and Passmore Williamson, abolitionists of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society and its Vigilance Committee.
• Jean-Jacques Dessalines (1758–1806), leader of the Haitian Revolution and first leader of independent Haiti.
• Jean Saint Malo, leader of runaway slaves (maroon colony) in Spanish Louisiana and namesake of Saint Malo, Louisiana.
• Jean Parisot de Valette (1495–1568), a knight of the Order of Saint John was captured and made a galley slave in 1541 by Barbary pirates under the command of Turgut Reis. He was freed after about a year and later became Grandmaster of the Order.
• Jeffrey Hudson, English courtier, spent 25 years as a slave in North Africa.
• "Jerry" – see William Henry
• Jim Cuff or Jim Crow was a crippled African slave, variously claimed to have resided in St. Louis, Cincinnati, or Pittsburgh,^[56][57] whose song and dance supposedly inspired the blackface song and dance "Jump Jim Crow" by white comedian Thomas D. Rice. The great popularity of Rice's creation soon led to "Jim Crow" becoming a pejorative word for Blacks, and later to the name being used for the segregationist Jim Crow Laws - a highly unfair posthumous memory of the original crippled slave.
• John Axouch, a Seljuk Turk captured as a child by the Byzantines, freed and raised in the imperial household as the companion of the future Emperor John II Komnenos, and on his accession was given command of the Empire's armies and remained the Emperor's only close personal friend and confidant.
• John "Lit" Fleming was born a slave in Virginia, but later moved to Edmundson, Arkansas with his parents and siblings. He would then move to Memphis, Tennessee and was part owner of the newspaper, "The Memphis Free Speech" with activist Ida B. Wells Barnett.
• John Munroe Brazealle and his mother were the subjects of Hinds v. Brazealle (1838), a case in the Supreme Court of Mississippi which denied the legality and inheritance rights in Mississippi of deeds of manumission executed by Elisha Brazealle, a Mississippi resident, in Ohio to free the pair.
• John Brown (fugitive slave) (c. 1810–1876), escaped and wrote of conditions in Deep South of United States.
• John Casor, the first to be made a slave as the result of a civil case in the English Colonies(Virginia, 1654).
• John Ezzidio (c. 1810 – October 1872), Nigerian slave who became a successful Sierra Leonean politician and businessman.
• John Jea, African-American slave, best known for his 1811 autobiography, The Life, History, and Unparalleled Sufferings of John Jea, the African Preacher.
• John R. Jewitt, spent three years as a captive of Maquinna of the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) people on the Pacific coast of what is now Canada.
• John Punch The first documented slave in the English Colonies(Virginia, 1640).
• John Smith, English soldier, sailor, and author, captured by Turks in 1602 while fighting in Wallachia, escaped and returned to England by 1604. As Smith described it: "we all sold for slaves, like beasts in a market-place."^[58]
• Jordan Anderson, best known for a letter sent to his former master in response to the latter's request that Jordan return to his service.
• Jordan Winston Early (1814–after 1894) was an American Methodist multiracial preacher who was the subject of a book about his life as a slave.
• John White, an enslaved black boy who was captured by Creeks in 1797 and escaped back to New Orleans, where he told Spanish officials of his master's name, to be returned.^[59]
• Joseph, Biblical figure (about 1600 BC).
• Joseph Antonio Emidy, violinist and composer born in Africa, died in Cornwall.
• Joseph Cinqué/Sengbe Pieh, leader of the slaves in a slave rebellion on a ship and the Amistad v. United States case in 1839
• Joseph Jackson Fuller (1825–1908) was one of the earliest slaves to be freed in Jamaica, initially under the partial freedoms of the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act.
• Joseph Knight, successfully sought to get his freedom through the courts in the 18th century Scotland.
• Josephine Bakhita, (1869–1947), Sudanese, a Roman Catholic nun and saint.
• Joshua Glover, fugitive slave saved by abolitionists at Racine, Wisconsin in 1854.
• Juan Francisco Manzano (c.1797–1854) Cuban poet .
• Juan Gros, a free black soldier captured near Pensacola by an Upper Creek, who sold him to a white trader who sold him to the Mitasuki chief Kinache, from whom Spaniards ransomed him.^[60]
• Juan Ortiz, a young Andalusian nobleman enslaved by Chief Ucita in Florida to avenge injuries he suffered at the hands of the expedition Ortiz belonged to.^[61]
• Julia Chinn, an octoroon slave and common-law wife of Richard Mentor Johnson, ninth Vice President of the United States.
• Julia Frances Lewis, mother of Amanda American Dickson by the son of her owner.^[62]
• Jupiter Hammon (1711–before 1806) – in 1761 became the first African-American writer to be published in the present-day United States. Born into slavery, Hammon was never emancipated. He is considered one of the founders of African-American literature.

K

• Kösem Sultan an Ottoman slave, later extremely powerful as wife, then mother and later grandmother of the Ottoman sultan, during the 130-year period known as the Sultanate of Women.
• Kizzy daughter of Kunta Kinte.
• king jajah of opobo in Rivers state of Nigerian he escaped from slavery to find the opobo clan

L

• Lamhatty, a Tawasa Indian captured and enslaved by Creek; he escaped.^[63]
• La Mulâtresse Solitude, slave on Guadeloupe: freed in 1794 by the abolition of slavery during the French revolution, she was executed after having fought for freedom after slavery was reintroduced by Napoleon in 1802.
• Leo Africanus, (1494–1554), a Moor born in Granada in 1494, was taken by his family in 1498 to Morocco when expelled from Spain; as an adult he served on diplomatic missions. Captured by Crusaders while in the Middle East, he was enslaved in Rome and forced to convert to Christianity. Eventually regained his freedom and lived out his life in Tunis.
• Leofgifu the dairy maid, a slave in Anglo-Saxon England, named in her manumission.^[64]
• Leoflaed, a slave in Anglo-Saxon England, whose freedom was bought by a man who described her as a "kinswoman."^[65]
• Leonor de Mendoza, a slave in colonial Mexico who tried to marry Tomás Ortega, a slave of another master; when her master imprisoned Tomás, she appealed to a church court for assistance, and it threatened excommunication for the master if he did not free Tomas.^[66]
• Lewis Adams, a former slave who co-founded the Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University, in Alabama.
• Lilliam Williams, a Tennessee settler who was captured by the Creek while pregnant. The Creek adopted her daughter (whom she named Molly and they named Esnahatchee,); they kept the girl when Williams' freedom was arranged.^[67]
• Jermain Wesley Loguen, African-American escaped slave, became an abolitionist,a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and an author of a slave narrative.
• Lovisa von Burghausen (1698–1733), Swedish writer who published an account of being enslaved in Russia after being taken prisoner during the Great Northern War.
• Lucius Aurelius Hermia, a freedman butcher whose tombstone glorifies his marriage with his fellow freedwoman Aurelia Philematium.^[68]
• Lucius Cancrius Primigenius, a freedman of Clemens in an inscription praising him for breaking spells against the city.^[69]
• Lucius of Campione, who lost a lawsuit in 720s over a man Toto's claimed ownership of him.^[70]
• Lucy, the black slave of John Lang. She was taken captive by the Creek when 12 years old and kept as a slave in Creek territory, where she had slave children and grandchildren.^[71]
• Lucy Ann (Berry) Delaney, former slave; daughter of Polly Berry, listed below
• Lunsford Lane (1803–after 1870) was an African-American slave and entrepreneur from North Carolina who bought freedom for himself and his family. He also wrote a slave narrative.
• Lydia, was a slave shot and wounded by her owner when she struggled to escape a whipping; the action was ruled legal by the Supreme Court of North Carolina in 1830 (see North Carolina v. Mann).
• Lydia Carter, the "Little Osage Captive," captured and enslaved among the Cherokee. She was ransomed by Lydia Carter, who made her her namesake. The Osage attempted to reclaim her, but she took ill and died.^[72]
• Lyde, a slavewoman freed by the Empress Livia.^[73]

M

• Madison Washington, leader of slave revolt on board the slave ship Creole.
• Malinche, translator during the Spanish conquest of Mexico.
• Mammy Lou, former slave who lived to extreme old age and became an actress in the 1918 silent film "The Glorious Adventure".
• Manes, slave of Diogenes of Sinope; he ran away shortly after his master arrived in Athens, and Diogenes failed to pursue him on the grounds that Manes could live without him, it would be disgraceful if he could not equally live without Manes.
• Mann, the name of two slaves in Anglo-Saxon England, one a goldsmith, who were both freed by their mistress Æthelgifu's will; the wife of the Mann not a goldsmith was also freed.^[33]
• Manjutakin (died 1007), a Turkish-born military slave (ghulam) and general of the Fatimids.
• Marcos Xiorro, a Puerto Rican slave who in 1821, planned and conspired to lead a slave revolt against the sugar plantation owners and the Spanish Colonial government in Puerto Rico. Even though the conspiracy was unsuccessful, Xiorro achieved legendary status among the slaves and is part of Puerto Rico's folklore.^[74]
• Marcius Agrippa, a slave of the 3rd century who not only got free but was eventually elevated to senatorial rank by Macrinus
• Marcus Tullius Tiro, Roman author (c. 103–4 BC), slave and secretary of the Roman politician Cicero, later freed; invented a long-lasting system of shorthand and wrote books that are now lost.
• Margaret Garner (1835–1858) was a slave in pre-Civil War America notorious or infamous for killing her own daughter rather than see the child returned to slavery.
• Margaret Morgan was involved in the Prigg v. Pennsylvania United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that the Federal Fugitive Slave Act precluded a Pennsylvania state law that prohibited blacks from being taken out of Pennsylvania into slavery, and overturned the conviction of Edward Prigg as a result.
• Marguerite Scypion, African-Natchez woman, born into slavery in St Louis, who sued for and eventually won her freedom.
• Maria al-Qibtiyya ("Maria the Copt" Arabic: مارية القبطية‎‎) (alternatively, "Maria Qupthiya" or a Coptic slave who was sent as a gift from Muqawqis, a Byzantine official, to the Islamic prophet Muhammad in 628, and was Muhammad's wife. She was the mother of Muhammad's son Ibrahim, who died in infancy. Her sister, Sirin, was also sent to Muhammad; Muhammad gave her to his follower Hassan ibn Thabit. Maria never remarried after Muhammad's death in 632, and died five years later.
• Maria, (died 1716), the leader of a slave rebellion on Curaçao.
• Marie-Cessette Dumas, slave of Marquis Antoine de la Pailleterie; mother of General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, grandmother of Alexandre Dumas, père.
• Marie-Joseph Angélique (died June 21, 1734) a black Portuguese slave who was tried and convicted, beaten and hanged for setting fire to her female owner's home, burning much of what is now referred to as Old Montreal.
• Mark, slave of Captain John Codman.^[75] Mark's body was displayed in chains publicly near Charleston, Massachusetts for twenty years. Mark is mentioned by Paul Revere in a 1798 account of Revere's 1775 midnight ride.^[76]
• Mary Black, charged with witchcraft during the Salem witch trials.
• Mary Calhoun, a white girl, a cousin of John C. Calhoun enslaved by the Cherokee. She was never redeemed.^[1]
• Mary Edmonson (1832–1853), along with her sister Emily, joined an unsuccessful 1848 escape attempt known as the Pearl incident, but Henry Ward Beecher and his church raised the funds to free them.
• Mary Prince (1788–?1833); the account of her life galvanized the anti-slavery movement in England.
• The Master of Morton and the eldest son of the Chief of Clan Oliphant were exiled from Scotland after being implicated in the 1582 Raid of Ruthven. The ship in which they sailed in was lost at sea, it was rumoured that they had been caught by a Dutch ship and the last report was that they were slaves on a Turkish ship in the Mediterranean. A plaque to their memory was raised in the church in Algiers.
• Masúd- initially purchased as a youth by Khál-i Akbar, an uncle of the Báb, Masúd would serve Bahá'u'lláh in Acre.^[77]
• Mende Nazer, a Nuba woman captured in Darfur and transported from Sudan to London, where she eventually won refugee status and wrote the memoir Slave (2004).
• Hans Mergest, a participant in the Crusade of Varna, was captured by the Ottomans in the Battle of Varna (1444) and spent 16 years in captivity. Was the protagonist of a song by the minnesinger Michael Beheim.
• Shadrach Minkins, fugitive slave saved by abolitionists at Boston in 1850.
• Miguel de Cervantes (September 29, 1547 – April 23, 1616), author of Don Quixote de la Mancha, the first modern novel. He spent five years as a slave and property of the viceroy of Algiers after being captured by Barbary pirates.^[78]
• Miguel Perez was the Spanish name of a boy of the Yojuane Native American people. He was among 149 Yojuane women and children taken captive in 1759, during and attack on their camp by an expedition of Spaniards and Apaches.^[79] Many of the captives died of smallpox while those who survived were made into slaves.^[80](See Battle of the Twin Villages). The boy was sold to a Spanish soldier who bestowed the Spanish name on him. Perez became a Hispanicized Indian of San Antonio but he continued to maintain contact with the Yojuanes. In 1786 Perez was recruited to convince the Yojuanes and their Tonkawa allies to go to war with the Lipan Apache. Perez was able to convince the Yojuane such a war was advisable, and they did join with the Tawakonis, Iscanis, and Flechazos in attacking the Apaches.^[79]
• Mingo, the slave of the Titsworth family in Tennessee, was captured by Creeks in a raid on the house, and kept as a slave by them.^[81]
• Minerva (Anderson) Breedlove, mother of Madam C. J. Walker
• Hájí Mubárak- purchased at the age of 5 years old by Hájí Mírzá Abú'l-Qásím, the great-grandfather of Shoghi Effendi and brother-in-law of the Báb, Hájí Mubárak was sold to the Báb in 1842 at the age of 19 for fourteen tomans.^[82] Hájí Mubárak died at about the age of 40 and is buried in the grounds of the Imam Husayn Shrine in Karbala, Iraq.
• Muyahid ibn Yusuf ibn Ali, 11th Century leader of the Saqaliba – slaves of supposed Slavic origin – in Dénia, Spain (then part of Muslim Al Andalus). Taking advantage of the crumbling of the Caliphate of Córdoba, he and his followers rebelled, freed themselves, seized control of the city and established the Taifa of Dénia, a city state which at its peak extended its reach as far as the island of Majorca.

N

• Nancy Caffrey, a white captive enslaved by a Creek. When trader John O'Reilly attempted to ransom her and Elsey Thompson, he was told they were not taken captive to be allowed to go back, but to work.^[36]
• Nanny of the Maroons, also known as Granny Nanny and Queen Nanny, Jamaican Maroons leader.
• Nat Turner (1800–1831), escaped and led revolt in Southampton County, Virginia.^[31]
• Nathan McMillian, who as a freedman sued for the admission of his children to a local "Croatan Indian" school on the grounds that it was for all non-white children, and that his children had Croatan blood on their mother's side.^[83]
• Neaera, a former slave and prostitute whom the Athenian Stephanus married against the law, according to a speech of Demosthenes.^[84]
• Nero Hawley (1742–1817), freed slave, served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, buried Trumbull, Connecticut.
• Newport Gardner (1746–1826), freed slave, in colonial Newport, Rhode Island.
• Ng Akew (d. 1880), Tanka slave in Hong Kong, famed for a scandal around piracy.
• Saint Nino, a 4th-century A.D. Roman woman from Constantinople who is greatly venerated for having brought Christianity to Georgia. By some of the accounts of her life, she originally came to Georgia as a slave kidnapped from her homeland.
• Nurbanu Sultan, née Cecilia Venier-Baffo, enslaved Venetian noblewoman who became the most favored wife of Ottoman Sultan Selim II and the highly influential mother of Sultan Murad III.

O

• Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745–1797), also known as Gustavus Vassa, prominent African/British author and figure in the abolitionist cause whose true identity is heavily contested.
• Omar ibn Said (1770–1864), a writer and Islamic scholar, was enslaved in what is now Senegal in 1807, transported to the United States, and spent the rest of his life as a slave.
• Onesimus, a slave of Philemon of Colossae who ran away and, having met St. Paul, was converted by him. Paul set him back to the Christian Philemon with a letter, which is the Epistle to Philemon. Ignatius of Antioch mentions an Onesimus as Bishop of Ephesus in the early 2nd century, but it is not certain that these are the same men.
• Oney Judge (1773–1848), enslaved by the family of Martha Washington, and then by the First Lady herself, Judge worked at Mount Vernon and elsewhere as a personal servant to Martha Washington until she escaped in 1796.
• Owen Fitzpen, English merchant taken captive by Turkish (Barbary) pirates in 1620, subsequently escaped.
• Owen Breedlove, father of Madam C. J. Walker

P

• Harriet Evans Paine, (ca. 1822-1917), Texas slave, and later oral historian and storyteller.
• Pallas (freedman), secretary to the Roman emperor Claudius.
• Juan de Pareja was a slave of Velàazquez. Velàzquez trained him as a painter and freed him in 1650. See The Slave in European Art for a portrait of Juan de Pareja by Velàzquez.
• Pasion, an Athenian slave and banker.^[22] Late in life, he received the rare honor for a freedman of citizenship.^[85]
• Saint Patrick, abducted from Britain, enslaved in Ireland, escaped to Britain, returned to Ireland as a missionary.^[86]
• Patsey (12 Years a Slave) (c. 1830–) was an African-American slave that lived in the mid 1800s, in South Carolina.
• Paul Jennings (1799–1874), personal servant and slave to President James Madison during and after his White House years, bought his freedom in 1845 from Daniel Webster. Noted for publishing the first White House memoir, 1865's A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison.^[87]
• Paul Smith, a free black who accused the Cherokee headman Doublehead of kidnapping him and forcing him into bondage.^[88]
• Peggy Titsworth, enslaved at 13 after a Creek raid on her Tennessee home.^[81]
• Pete and Hannah Byrne, freed slaves of the Napoleon Bonaparte Byrne family which traveled from Missouri to California overland (a six-month journey) in 1859, leaving the farm in Missouri and bringing six adults (including Pete & Hannah), the four Byrne children and a herd of cattle and settling in Berkeley, California. Pete and Hannah are considered the first blacks living in Berkeley and among the first African-Americans in California.^[89][90]
• Peter Salem (c. 1750-1816), African American born into slavery in Massachusetts, served as a soldier in the American Revolutionary War
• Petronia Justa, a woman in Herculaneum who sued her master claiming to have been born after her mother's emanicipation; the records of the lawsuit were preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius.^[91]
• Phaedo of Elis, captured in war, enslaved in Athens and forced into prostitution,^[92] became a pupil of Socrates who had him freed, gave his name to one of Plato's dialogues, Phaedo and became a famous philosopher in his own right.
• Phaedrus (c. 15 BC – c. AD 50) Roman fabulist
• Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784?), Colonial American poet, the second published African-American poet and first published African-American woman.
• Phoebe, a slave who sued for her freedom in Tennessee, along with her sons Davy and Tom, claiming to be the descendents of an enslaved Indian woman whose sister and other relatives had proven that they were wrongly enslaved.^[93]
• Philocrates, slave of the 2ed Century BC Roman reformer Gaius Gracchus, remained at his master's side when Gracchus was fleeing from his enemies, forsaken by everybody else. Arriving at a grove sacred to the Furies, Philocrates first assisted Gracchus in his suicide before taking his own life, though some rumors held that Philocrates was only killed after he refused to let go of his master's body.
• Phormion, an Athenian slave and banker.^[22] Late in life, he received the rare honor for a freedman of citizenship.^[85]
• Piruz Nahavandi, killer of the Caliph Umar
• Pope Pius I was the Bishop of Rome from about 140 to about 154, during the reign of the Roman Emperor Antonius Pius. He was the brother of the freedman Hermas and therefore likely to have been a former slave himself, though that is not mentioned explicitly in the scant records of his life.
• Polly, the subject of the 1820 Indiana Supreme Court case, Polly v. Lasselle, which resulted in all slaves held within Indiana to be freed.
• Polly Berry, a.k.a. Polly Crockett and Polly Wash, won in 1843 a freedom suit in St. Louis, Missouri, and also gained the freedom of her daughter Lucy Ann Berry.
• Politoria, the subject of a lead curse tablet in ancient Rome; it was a curse on Clodia Valeria Sophrone, that she should not get Politoria into her power. She appears to have been a slave-courtesan who feared being sent to the brothel.^[94]
• Prosper, a slave murdered by his owner Arthur William Hodge, for which Hodge was tried and executed, the first (and virtually only) such case ever recorded.
• A pregnant Thrall whose name is not preserved, who was fleeing for her life in 11th Century Oslo, was given refuge on the boat of Hallvard Vebjørnsson, who tried to shield her but was killed together with her by the attackers' arrows – for which he was canonised and became the patron saint of Oslo.^[95]
• Publilius Syrus (fl. 85–43 BC), a Latin writer, best known for his sententiae. He was a Syrian who was brought as a slave to Italy.
• John Punch (fl. 1630s, living 1640) was an enslaved African who lived in the Colony of Virginia during the seventeenth century.^[96][97] In July 1640, the Virginia Governor's Council sentenced him to serve for the remainder of his life as punishment for running away to Maryland. Many historians consider John Punch the "first official slave in the English colonies,"^[98] and his case as the "first legal sanctioning of lifelong slavery in the Chesapeake."^[96] Historians also consider this to be one of the first legal distinctions between Europeans and Africans made in the colony,^[99] and a key milestone in the development of the institution of slavery in the United States.^[100] In July 2012, Ancestry.com published a paper suggesting that John Punch was an eleventh-generation grandfather of President Barack Obama on his mother's side, on the basis of historic and genealogical research and Y-DNA analysis.^{[101][102][103]} Punch's descendants were known by the Bunch or Bunche surname. Punch is believed to be one of the paternal ancestors of the 20th-century American diplomat Ralph Bunche, the first African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Paul Heinegg believes that Bunche was descended from Bunch ancestors established as free blacks in Virginia before the American Revolution. There were men of the Bunch surname in South Carolina by the end of the 18th century.

Q

• Quock Walker, also known as Kwaku or Quok Walker, sued for and won his freedom in 1781 in a case citing language in the new Massachusetts Constitution (1780) that declared all men to be born free and equal.
• Qutb-ud-din Aybak or Qutbuddin Aibak, Turkish ex-slave, became a soldier, the first of the Sultans of Delhi, founder of India's "slave dynasty".

R

• Rachel, the subject of the 1834 Rachel v. Walker case in the Supreme Court of Missouri which ruled that an Army officer forfeited his slave if he took the person to territory where slavery is prohibited.^[104] This ruling was cited as precedent in 1856 in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case before the Supreme Court of the United States.
• Rachel of Kittery, Maine (d. 1695); enslaved woman murdered by her master whose case set a legal precedent in New England
• Rebecca Huger, a slave freed by General Benjamin F. Butler in New Orleans, and described in a Harper's Weekly article as being to all appearance white, and having come to a school for emacipated slaves in Philadelphia.^[23]
• Remigio Herrera (born 1810s, died 1905) was a Cuban slave who became a revered priest in Regla.
• Robert Blake earned the Medal of Honor as a sailor during the American Civil War, after becoming a contraband and enlisting.
• Robert Drury (born 1687; died between 1743 and 1750) was an English sailor who was shipwrecked on the island of Madagascar in 1702, and remained there as a slave till 1717.
• Robert Smalls (1839–1915), led boatload of slaves to freedom, and was later a politician.
• Robin and Polly Holmes were the plaintiffs in the 1853 Holmes v. Ford court case in the Oregon Territory that freed their children. The decision re-affirmed that slavery was illegal in the territory as outlined in the Organic Laws of Oregon that were continued once the region became a U.S. territory.
• Rosina Downs, a slave freed by General Benjamin F. Butler in New Orleans, and described in a Harper's Weekly article as being to all appearance white, and having come to a school for emacipated slaves in Philadelphia.^[23]
• Roustam Raza, Napoleon Bonaparte's Armenian bodyguard.
• Roxelana, (circa 1500 – April 18, 1558), a concubine and later wife to the sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, and mother of Selim II.

S

• Sabuktigin (full name Abu Mansur Sabuktigin), (ca 942 – August 997), captured and sold into slavery at a young age, rose to become a general and eventually a king and the founder of the Ghaznavid Empire in Medieval Iran.
• Safiye Sultan, enslaved Venetian woman, who was placed in the harem of the Ottoman Sultan Murad III and became the mother of Sultan Mehmed III.
• Salem Poor (1747–1802), African-American slave who purchased his freedom, war hero during the American Revolutionary War
• Sally Hemings, mixed-race slave of Thomas Jefferson; believed by many to have had six children with him, four of whom survived to adulthood.
• Sally Miller or Salomé Müller, an American slave whose freedom suit in Louisiana was based on her claimed status as a free German immigrant and indentured servant.^[105]
• Salvius, also known as Tryphon, leader of the 104 BC slave rebellion in Sicily known as the Second Servile War.
• Sambo, a black captive of Tiger King, a Lower Creek, who told the traveler William Bartram that Sambo was his family property.^[106]
• Samuel Green (1802–1877), a slave who bought his freedom and freedom for his loved ones, involved with Underground Railroad, arrested for carrying a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
• Sandy Jenkins was a slave who Frederick Douglass mentioned in his first autobiography.
• Satrelanus, from Gaul, sold by Ermedruda to Toto in Milan in 725.^[107]
• Scipio Africanus (circa 1702–1720)
• Scipio Moorhead, enslaved artist.
• Servius Tullius, ancient King of Rome said to have started life as a slave (though this was disputed, among both Romans and modern historians).
• Seymour Burr, fought for the Continental Army in the American Revolution
• Shaghab (d. 933), mother and co-ruler of the eighteenth Abbasid Caliph al-Muqtadir.
• Sojourner Truth (c. 1797–1883) abolitionist and women's rights activist.
• Solomon Bayley, wrote a book in 1825 about his life as a slave.
• Solomon Northup (1808–1870?), free-born black man from the North of the United States who was lured into Washington, D.C., where slavery was legal, kidnapped, and sold South. He remained enslaved from 1841 until rescued and liberated. Author of Twelve Years a Slave.
• Sosias the Thracian, an Athenian slave, and later freedman, of Nicias, who later leased him a thousand slaves for his mining operation.^[22]
• Spartacus, gladiator and rebel leader, led the Servile Revolt, died 71 BC
• Sue, a black slave of James Brown, who was captured along with several members of the Brown family and other slaves by Chickamaugas. When the warrior who had captured her threatened another captive, the other captor threatened to kill Sue in retribution.^[108] James's son Joseph later kidnapped Sue and her children and grandchildren—eight in all—in retribution for his captivity.^[109]
• Suhayb ar-Rumi (born c. 587), also known as Suhayb ibn Sinan, enslaved in childhood in the Byzantine Empire, escaped as a young man to Mecca and went on to become an esteemed companion of Muhammad and revered member of the early Muslim community.
• Sumayyah bint Khayyat, a woman slave in Mecca, was one of the first seven converts to Islam made by the Prophet Muhammad in his early career, and was tortured and killed by the new faith's enemies - becoming the first Muslim Shahid.
• Squanto captured by English pirates and sold as a slave later was freed.
• Subh of Cordoba, slave concubine of a Caliph and mother and regent of the next Caliph of Cordoba in the 10th-century
• Suk-bin Choe consort of Sukjong of Joseon and mother of Yeongjo of Joseon

T

• Thomas Peters, (1738–1792) was one of the black loyalists and founding fathers of Sierra Leone. He was a former slave who fled North Carolina during the American Revolutionary War. He was a member of the Black Pioneers, became a sergeant, settled and married in Novia Scotia. He was also one of the influential blacks who recruited African settlers in Nova Scotia for colonization of Sierra Leone and later became a leader in Freetown
• Thomas Sims, (born 1834) enslaved African American who escaped slavery in Georgia to Boston, Massachusetts only to be recaptured under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and to escape to Boston once more
• Thumal, administrator of justice to the eighteenth Abbasid Caliph al-Muqtadir.
• T. Aelius Dionysius, a freedman of the late Roman Empire, who created a stela for himself, his wife, and Aelius Perseus his fellow freedman, and their freedman and those who came after them.^[110]
• T. Claudius Dionysius, a freedman whose freedwoman wife Claudia Prepontis, erected a funerary altar to him; their clasped hands, depicted on it, show the legitimacy of their marriage, possible only once they obtained their freedom.^[24]
• Terence (full name Publius Terentius Afer), Roman playwright, comic poet who wrote before and possibly after his freedom, died 159 BC.
• Tiberius Claudius Narcissus, freed slave who was secretary to the Roman emperor Claudius.
• Tituba, a 17th-century Native American slave woman who was owned by Samuel Parris of Danvers, Massachusetts. Tituba was the first to be accused of practicing witchcraft during the 1692 Salem witch trials.^[111]
• Tomás Ortega, a slave in colonial Mexico who attempted to marry Leonor de Mendoza, a slave of another master; when her master imprisoned Tomás, she appealed to a church court for assistance, and it threatened excommunication for the master if he did not free Tomas.^[66]
• Toussaint L'Ouverture, freed slave who led the slave revolt that led to the independence of Haiti.
• Tula, a leader of the Curaçao Slave Revolt of 1795
• Turgut Reis, a well-known Ottoman Admiral of the 16th Century, was captured by the Genoese at Corsica and was forced to work as a galley slave for nearly four years. He was finally rescued by his fellow admiral Barbarossa, who laid siege to Genoa and secured Turgut Reis' release for the prodigious ransom of 3,500 gold ducats.

U

• Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, freed slave turned writer.

V

• Venture Smith (1729–1805), an African captured as a child and transported to the American colonies as a slave. When an adult, he purchased his freedom and that of his family – his wife Meg and their children Hannah, Solomon and Cuff. His history was documented and published by a schoolteacher, to whom he talked in his old age.
• The "Vestmenn" ("West Men" in Old Norse, referring to the Irish) were a group of Irish slaves brought to Iceland by Hjörleifr Hróðmarsson, one of the early Norse settlers there. He treated them badly, and they killed him and escaped to a group of off-shore islands. Ingólfur Arnarson, Hjörleifur's blood brother, tracked the escaped slaves and killed them all. Though their individual names are unknown, their memory lives on in Icelandic geography, the islands where they sought refuge being known up to the present as "Vestmannaeyjar" – "Islands of the West Men" (i.e. of the Irish).
• Vincent de Paul. (1576–1660) Taken captive by Turkish pirates, sold into slavery, freed in 1607.^[112]
• Vibia Calybeni, a freedwoman of the late Roman Empire, who unusually names herself as a madam on her tombstone.^[113]
• Violet Ludlow, an American woman sold as a slave several times despite her claims to be a free white woman.^[23]
• Volumnia Cytheris, a slave, later freedwoman, in ancient Rome. An actress and courtesan, her lovers include Brutus, Mark Antony, and Cornelius Gallus; her rejection of Gallus provided the theme for Virgil's tenth Eclogue.^[114]

W

Wes Brady, ex-slave, Marshall, Texas, 1937. This photograph was taken as part of the Federal Writers' Project slave narrative collection.

• Wes Brady (1849–?), of Marshall, Texas, was included in the Federal Writers' Project Slave Narrative Collection.
• William Ellison (1790–1861), mixed race, gained his freedom, became a slaveholder himself, producing cotton.
• William and Ellen Craft, slaves who wrote a tale of their flight from slavery (19th century).
• William Harvey Carney, a soldier during the American Civil War who received the Medal of Honor, after his escape from slavery.
• William Henry, nicknamed Jerry, escaped slave in Syracuse, New York, saved in 1851 by abolitionists from being extradited under the Fugitive Slave Law.
• William Lee, personal servant to George Washington, served with him during the American Revolutionary War, the only slave freed via Washington's Will.
• Wulfstan, a slave in Anglo-Saxon England, and his two sons and stepdaugher, were freed by his mistres Æthelgifu's will.^[33]
• Wu Rui (吳瑞) was the youngest of thirteen Chinese men from Wenchang whose ship was at the late 15th century blown off course and who were enslaved in Vietnam. As recorded in the Ming Shilu, his companions were made agricultural laborers while Wu Rui was castrated and became a eunuch attendant at the Vietnamese imperial palace in Thang Long. After years of service, he was promoted at the death of the Vietnamese ruler in 1497 to a military position in northern Vietnam. A soldier told him of an escape route back to China and Wu Rui escaped to Longzhou. The local chief planned to sell him back to the Vietnamese, but Wu was rescued by the Pingxiang magistrate and then was sent to Beijing to work as a eunuch in the palace.
• Wyatt Lee (ca.1822-1863), escaped slavery in Virginia, first husband of Dr. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler.^[115]

X

• Xenon, an Athenian slave and banker.^[22]

Y

• Yaqut al-Hamawi, sold into slavery in 12th century Syria and taken to Baghdad, was provided with a good education by an enlightened owner and later freed. He eventually gained a reputation as a biographer and geographer.
• Yasār, a 7th Century Christian man who had been captured in a campaign of Khalid ibn al-Walid, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad. Yasār was taken to Medina and became the slave of Qays ibn Makhrama ibn al-Muṭṭalib ibn ʿAbd Manāf ibn Quṣayy. He accepted Islam, was manumitted and became his mawlā, thus acquiring the nisbat al-Muṭṭalibī. He had three sons – Mūsā, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, and Isḥāq. His grandson, Ibn Ishaq, became an important early Arab historian.
• York, an African-American slave on the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Z

• Zayd ibn Haritha, given to Muhammad's wife Khadijah, freed, adopted, became known as Zayd ibn Muhammad.
• Ziryab, also known as Abul-Hasan Alí Ibn Nafí, musician, introduced the crop, "asparagus" to Europe (circa 789–857).
• Zoe (Christian Martyr) - see Exuperius and Zoe
• Zumbi, a slave in 17th Century Brazil, escaped and joined the Quilombo dos Palmares, the largest ever settlement of escaped slaves in colonial Brazil, becoming its last and most famous leader.

See also

• 1926 Slavery Convention, an international treaty
• 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery
• Abolition of slavery timeline
• Abolitionism
• Comfort women, sex slaves in WWII
• Human trafficking
• Involuntary servitude
• International Slavery Museum
• List of slave owners
• Slave trade
• Slave Trade Acts
• Slavery
• Slavery in the colonial United States
• Slavery in the United States
• United States National Slavery Museum

References