Sunday 16 February 2014

12 Years a Slave

A film expected to win the Oscar Best film but hopefully not the Baftas is 12 Years A Slave which I thought covered well trodden ground and a film about slavery today would have much more relevant. There is one outstanding perforamance who should get best supporting actress, Nupito Nyong’o as the slave girl mistress of the master Bendict Cumberbatch has to be in everything these days as Fassbender and Brad Pitt! The film is based on the book by Solomon Northup
 
From wikipedia
Solomon Northup (July 1808 – 1863?)was a free-born African American from New York, the son of a freed slave. A farmer and violinist, he owned a property in Hebron. In 1841 he was kidnapped by slave-traders, having been enticed with a job offer as a violinist. When he accompanied his supposed employers to Washington, DC, they drugged him and sold him as a slave. He was shipped to New Orleans where he was sold to a plantation owner in Louisiana. He was held in the Red River region of Louisiana by several different owners for 12 years, during which time his friends and family had no word of him. He made repeated attempts to escape and get messages out of the plantation. Eventually he got news to his family, who contacted friends and enlisted the Governor of New York, Washington Hunt, to his cause. He regained his freedom in January 1853 and returned to his family in New York.



Northup sued the slave traders in Washington, DC, but lost in the local court. District of Columbia law prohibited him as a black man from testifying against whites and, without his testimony, he was unable to sue for civil damages. Later, in New York State, the two men were charged with kidnapping but two years later the charges were dropped.


In his first year of freedom Northup published an account of his experiences in the memoir Twelve Years a Slave (1853). Northup also gave dozens of lectures throughout the Northeast about his experiences in order to support the abolitionist cause. The details of his death are uncertain.”






 
 

 

 


 
 

 


 

 



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