Absolutely Yes. Launching towards the East is a bonus. Doing it near to the Equator is a bigger bonus. USA launches from Florida because it's the southernmost continental state (Hawaii is more southerly but a long and risky way to ship components and fuel). European Union fires from Kourou in Surinam (former French Guyana, on NE coast of South America). You want to be on the eastern seaboard so your failures avoid falling on people.

You might calculate that equatorial speed is about 1500 kilometres per hour, which is only about 4% of escape velocity of around 11.2 kilometres per second. However, in the early days, 4% was about the margin between doing it and not doing it.

Actually, the advantage is much more than that simple calculation would suggest. A large part of the fuel load at launch is used to accelerate some other fuel along with the rocket until it is needed to be burnt, in a kind of logarithmic penalty clause. It is only the final payload that reaches the velocity that achieves the required orbit. So getting the whole initial package up to even 1500 kph for free is quite a big deal.