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1759-1833

Wilberforce was a British politician and philanthropist who from 1787 was prominent in the struggle to abolish the slave trade and then to abolish slavery itself in British overseas possessions.
He studied at St. John's College at the University of Cambridge, where he became a close friend of the future Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger. In 1780 both he and Pitt entered the House of Commons, and he soon began to support parliamentary reform and Roman Catholic political emancipation.
Wilberforce's abolitionism was derived in part from evangelical Christianity, to which he was converted in 1784–85. His spiritual adviser became John Newton, a former slave trader who had repented and who had been the pastor at Wilberforce's church when he was a child. In 1787, Wilberforce helped to found the Anti-Slavery Society. He and his associates also formed the Clapham Sect, of which Wilberforce was the acknowledged leader.
In the House of Commons, Wilberforce was an eloquent and indefatigable sponsor of antislavery legislation. In 1789 he introduced 12 resolutions against the slave trade and gave what many newspapers at the time considered among the most eloquent speeches ever delivered in the Commons. In 1807, he finally achieved success when a bill to abolish the slave trade in the British West Indies was carried in the Commons 283 to 16, and it became law on March 25.
The 1807 statute did not, however, change the legal position of persons enslaved before its enactment, and so he urged the immediate emancipation of all slaves. On July 26, 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act was passed by the Commons (it became law the following month). Three days later Wilberforce died.

Bio condensed from: Encyclopedia Britannica - William Wilberforce
Photo - Public Domain: William Wilberforce