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Delete - Last Modified By: JCA at 15/04/2017 4:05:31 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIqodUJ-UfM - trailer
Check the above link to a new film released this year - '12 Years A Slave' based on the true story of Solomon Northup.
Solomon was born a free man and tricked into being a slave.
The film is based on a novel by Solomon Northup and is not suitable for students at Year 8 level.
SOLOMON NORTHUP,
A CITIZEN OF NEW-YORK,
KIDNAPPED IN WASHINGTON CITY IN 1841
AND
RESCUED IN 1853, FROM A COTTON PLANTATION NEAR THE RED RIVER IN LOUISIANA.
Solomon Northup was born a free man in New York in 1808. In 1841, while on a trip to Washington DC, he was kidnapped by slave traders and sold into slavery in Louisiana. He eventually regained his freedom and wrote an autobiography. 1 In 2013, Northup’s autobiography was turned into a movie, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Lupita Nyong’o, and Benedict Cumberbatch.
Here Northup describes what happened after awaking in a slave-yard after being kidnapped: The building to which the yard was attached, was two stories high, fronting on one of the public streets of Washington. Its outside presented only the appearance of a quiet private residence. A stranger looking at it, would never have dreamed of its execrable uses. Strange as it may seem, within plain sight of this same house, looking down from its commanding height upon it, was the Capitol. The voices of patriotic representatives boasting of freedom and equality, and the rattling of the poor slave's chains, almost commingled. A slave pen within the very shadow of the Capitol! … "Well, my boy, how do you feel now?" said Burch, as he entered through the open door.2 I replied that I was sick, and inquired the cause of my imprisonment. He answered that I was his slave— that he had bought me, and that he was about to send me to New-Orleans. I asserted, aloud and boldly, that I was a freeman—a resident of Saratoga [New York], where I had a wife and children, who were also free, and that my name was Northup. I complained bitterly of the strange treatment I had received, and threatened, upon my liberation, to have satisfaction for the wrong. He denied that I was free, and with an emphatic oath, declared that I came from Georgia. Again and again I asserted I was no man's slave, and insisted upon his taking off my chains at once. He endeavored to hush me, as if he feared my voice would be overheard. But I would not be silent, and denounced the authors of my imprisonment, whoever they might be, as unmitigated villains. Finding he could not quiet me, he flew into a towering passion. With blasphemous oaths, he called me a black liar, a runaway from Georgia, and every other profane and that the most indecent fancy could conceive. During this time Radburn was standing silently by.3 His business was, to oversee this human, or rather inhuman stable, receiving slaves, feeding, and whipping them, at the rate of two shillings a head per day. Turning to him, Burch ordered the paddle and cat-o'-ninetails to be brought in. He disappeared, and in a few moments returned with these instruments of torture. The paddle, as it is termed in slave-beating parlance, or at least the one with which I first became acquainted, and of which I now speak, was a piece of hard-wood board, eighteen or twenty inches long, moulded to the shape of an old-fashioned pudding stick, or ordinary oar.
For more http://www.napavalley.edu/people/bschaffer/Documents/HIST%20120%20Spring%202014/Excerpt%20Northup%2012%20Years%20a%20Slave.pdf