New Google Doodle celebrates slavery abolitionist Mary Prince

Mary Prince was a pretty inspiring woman who is recognised as a galvanising force in abolishing slavery in the British colonies.

And today, she is also the subject of a beautiful Google Doodle. The 18th century anti-slavery campaigner and autobiographer is pictured standing on a beach reading a book surrounded by white seagulls.

The doodle is a celebration of her 230th birthday this year.

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Prince was born into slavery in Bermuda in 1788 and was sold from master to master her whole life, until she ended up in England after slavery was abolished. Legally free but with no means to support herself, Prince became the first woman in England to present a petition to Parliament, arguing for her and others' right to freedom.

Two years later Prince made history again when she became the first black woman in England to publish her own story of living through slavery.

Google shared a couple of paragraphs from Prince's 1831 autobiography, The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, in a blogpost.

“I have been a slave myself. I know what slaves feel—I can tell by myself what other slaves feel, and by what they have told me. The man that says slaves be quite happy in slavery—that they don't want to be free—that man is either ignorant or a lying person. I never heard a slave say so."

Happy birthday, Mary.