William Wilberforce and Hull

This wall is in Nelson Mandela Gardens by the University of Hull's Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation (WISE), just off Hull High Street (actually now quite a distance removed from the city center), which bears the names of a number of people variously associated with opposition to the slave trade and/or who have make significant steps toward emancipation in general. From left to right in descending order: Steve Biko, Aung San Soo Kyi, Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King,  Nelson Mandela, Raoul Wallenberg,  Rosa Parks, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sylvia Pankhurst, Edmund Morel, Mahatma Gandhi, José Martí, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass,  Harriet Beecher Stowe, Thomas Clarkson, Olaudah Equiano, Toussaint L'Ouverture, Granville Sharp, Tom Paine.

William Wilberforce, M.P. and campaigner for the abolition of the slave trade, was born in this house opposite WISE on High Street, Hull in 1759.

The base of the statue in the front garden reads:

'WILLIAM WILBERFORCE

BORN IN HULL 24TH AUGUST, 1759

DIED IN LONDON 29TH JULY, 1833

MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT FOR HULL

FROM 1780 TO 1784

MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT FOR YORKSHIRE

FROM 1784 TO 1812

---------------------------------

ENGLAND OWES TO HIM THE REFORMATION OF MANNERS.

THE WORLD OWES TO HIM THE REFORMATION OF SLAVERY'

The towering Wilberforce Monument stands in front of Hull College of Further Education off Wilberforce Drive and slightly to the east of Queen's Gardens.

A close-up of the statue of Wilberforce at the top of the monument.

The first stone of the monument was laid on the same day as the abolition of slavery in 1834, one year after the death of William Wilberforce.