Samuel Ringgold Ward (October 17, 1817 – c. 1866) was an African American who escaped enslavement to become an abolitionist, newspaper editor, labor leader, and Congregational church minister. He was author of the influential book Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro: his anti-slavery labours in the United States, Canada and England, written after his speeches throughout Britain in 1853. It enabled him to raise funds for the Anti-slavery Society of Canada, where many escaped slaves from the USA were arriving in the 1850s.