Graman Quassi

Graman Quassi (c. 1692 – 12 March 1787) was a Surinamese physician, botanist and planter. Born in the Guinea region of West Africa, Quassi was taken to the Dutch colony of Surinam via the Atlantic slave trade, where he was initially enslaved on a sugar plantation before managing to emancipate himself. Assisting the Dutch colonial authorities in suppressing the activities of local maroons, he managed to rise to the top of the colony's small community of free people of color and eventually became a plantation owner himself. He gave his name to the plant genus Quassia.