Since the mid-16th century there have been small numbers of Black people resident in Ireland, mainly concentrated in the major towns, especially Dublin. Many of those in the 18th century were servants of wealthy families. There were other Africans in Ireland who were not slaves, notably Olaudah Equiano (also spelled Olauda Ikwuano), who not only lived in Belfast, but wrote and self-published best selling accounts of his experience in and with slavery.
Lord Edward FitzGerald was saved in 1781 by Tony Small, a freed slave, after the Battle of Eutaw Springs. Small returned with Lord Edward to Ireland, and in 1786 his portrait was painted by John Roberts.
Black slavery was rare in Ireland at this date, although the legal position remained unclear until a judgement in England in 1772, the Somersett's Case. Others were tradesmen, soldiers, travelling artists or musicians. Never very numerous, most of them were assimilated into the larger population by the second third of the 19th century.
Famous quotes containing the words black people, black, people and/or ireland:
“There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.”
—Alice Walker (b. 1944)
“If a child were kept in a place where he never saw any other but black and white till he were a man, he would have no more ideas of scarlet or green, than he that from his childhood never tasted an oyster, or a pineapple, has of those particular relishes.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
“Guns have metamorphosed into cameras in this earnest comedy, the ecology safari, because nature has ceased to be what it always had been—what people needed protection from. Now nature tamed, endangered, mortal—needs to be protected from people.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“No people can more exactly interpret the inmost meaning of the present situation in Ireland than the American Negro. The scheme is simple. You knock a man down and then have him arrested for assault. You kill a man and then hang the corpse.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)