Twelve Years a Slave
Solomon Northup, 1853
A free Black man is kidnapped into slavery and spends twelve years using memory, music and stubborn hope to survive and testify.
Solomon Northup
1808–1864
Northup was kidnapped in Washington, D.C., in 1841 and rescued in Louisiana in 1853; his memoir appeared that same year, and he sued his kidnappers.
Feels like society, dread and freedom.
In the very shadow of the Capitol, freedom is put up for sale.
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! Books by Solomon Northup
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