...For many years there were many slave narratives coming from slaves that were born into slavery and found their freedom either through emancipation or escaping. These narratives personified the harsh and cruel reality of slavery while also justifying their escape. Never was it know the true unbiased good and bad of slavery until 1853 with the publication of 12 Years A Slave by Solomon Northrup a free born man of Saratoga, NY that was kidnapped, sold into slavery, and escaped to his freedom and how he viewed and survived slavery based on what he experienced as a slave and what he knew as a free man. Once Northrop regains his freedom he begins to travel and lecture about his time of bondage and writes this novel with the purpose of gaining the attention of people in the north more specifically white people in the north that have no true understanding of the south, the institution is slavery in the south, and the treatment of slaves in that area. Due to his appeal to those with little to no prior knowledge of the south and slavery in the south he has to write and speak in a way that everyone can understand. He must give explicit details of his life before slavery living as a free man in New York making wages by playing the Violin and doing other skilled work, and his life as a slave such as picking cotton and being a victim of whippings and abuse at the hands on an angry master. Northrup is also speaking to anti- slavery groups and abolitionists to prompt them to work more in their...
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...Evan Hartman 3/15/16 Writing & Film 12 Years a Slave Notebook Class Notes * Mise-en-scene is pretty much everything you see through the entire camera during a scene. The director picks everything and anything that is in the shot. * When looking through my camera during class, I think the lights need to be dim; the walls need to be painted a dark tan to make the room darker than the white walls would. I would take out the desks sitting in the middle of the room and have everyone sitting closer to each other. There needs to be tile floor so you can hear his heavy footsteps as he enters the room. The sound of his footsteps would let you know his attitude. The camera needs to be at a long angle with a medium shot when showing him walking into the room. The camera should also get higher as he gets closer to the students. I would have windows instead of the room not having windows so it will let in the sunlight. The camera would be in front of the room panning every ones reaction to the teacher walking in. The student’s faces would be terrified and shocked because the teacher would be freaking out. * The second option would be film this scene in Warde 4th floor. I would film it there because it is an older and creepier setting than the viewing room would be. * The Hanging scene- Costumes * Worn down * White * Boots * Cowboy hat * Coat * The whites had nicer clothes than the slaves do; the slave’s clothes are worn down form...
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..."12 Years A Slave" is a true autobiography about an African American man named Solomon Northup who is deceived and kidnapped and sold into slavery. He does everything in his power to try get back home to his family. Solomon Northup was a free man before he had become a slave. He would play his fiddle at gatherings and special events for the cause. Playing the fiddle was his passion, yet he was receiving little money from it. Solomon didn't get a lot of gigs which meant not a lot of money was coming in to support his family, but he was offered a job to play music all around the world by two men. His wife, Anne Northup was offered a job as a cook for a wealthy family, but Solomon didn't want her to take the job. Eventually Solomon gives his...
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...12 YEARS A SLAVE This is the true story of Solomon Northup, who was born and raised as a freeman in New York. He lived the American dream, with a house and a loving family - a wife and two kids. Then one day he was drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery in the south of America for 12 years. His extraordinary journey proves the resiliency of hope and the human spirit despite the most grueling and formidable of circumstances. The conflict of the story is When Solomon protests his captivity and asserts his right to freedom, Burch, a brutal slave trader in Washington, D.C, responds by beating him into submission and threatening to kill him if he ever mentions his freedom again. If I faced the same conflict, I would feel very angry because my...
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...My name is Ida B. Wells Barnett was in born in Holly Springs, Mississippi on July 16, 1862. Six months after my birth the Emancipation Proclamation was signed to freed the slaves. My parents James and Elizabeth Wells were born slaves and I was the oldest of seven siblings. My father was one of the first broad members of Rust College, so education was very important to my parents. In 1878 the tragic outbreak of the yellow fever took my parents and one of my youngest sibling lives. At the age of sixteen I drop out of school and raised five siblings with the help of friends and relatives (Baker, 1996). Having to be a caretaker and provider, I convinced the school administrator that I eighteen year old and landed a teaching job. In 1883 my siblings and I moved to Memphis with my aunt who gives me the opportunity to seek employment and help me with rise my youngest siblings (Baker, 1996). In Memphis I took training courses and was qualify to teach first grade students in Woodstock, Tennessee. On May 4, 1884 I purchased a first class ticket to Nashville, Tennessee on the train, I was outrage when a train conductor order me to give up my seat for a white man I refused and I got off at the next stop after causing so much commotion (Baker, 1996). As soon as I reached Memphis I hired a lawyer and sued the railroad company and winning a settlement of five hundred dollars, but the Tennessee Supreme Court later overturned the decision. After justice was not service to and I was treated unfair...
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...1800s in America. In the novel Twelve Years a Slave and the poems, Solomon Northrup and George M. Horton had portrayed the brutal outcome of slavery to people’s mentally and perspective of life. They both discussed the inhuman actions made by slave owners and how societies discerned them, thus provided the readers some aspects of animalism acting on people. In the poem “On Liberty and Slavery” written by George M. Horton, clearly implied that slavery had decreased his own value of life and ultimately complained his existence in humanity. Since Solomon himself was a freeman once, he understood the ideology of being a human. He was treated with equal respect and people greeted him as if greeting a white man. Inhumanity thus struck Solomon when he was kidnapped into slavery, and this situation had led us, as readers, to argue and and discuss what exactly is being a human and inhuman....
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...My name is Bird Wohampack I’m 12 years old. I was born a slave but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood. I had no name so my name is Bird because when I was sold my owner thought I sounded like a bird so my name was Bird. I didn’t know who were my parents because when I was 5-year old I was locked up and chained. I was useless and hit most of the time because I’m a girl. I was being resold because I’m a useless person for my owner and I’m now 13 and I’m getting resold for $100. When I became 14 I was sold to a rich family it was the Jam family and they also had another slave called Hippo, they were white folks. During that time I became friends with Hippo Delhip, she was more like a sister to me because we talk a lot together...
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...All blacks struggled to survive the slave era in early America no matter what age group. A majority of slave owners worked all of their slaves from children to the elderly as much as they could. Though everyone struggled, being an enslaved child could have possibly been the worst age to be during this time. Most slave children were torn from their blood families which created a lack of love and affection which every child should have in their younger years of life. Thus, these children were forced into their slave owners homes which created a new family for them, sometimes positive or negative. Most importantly, slave children weren’t given much of a childhood; they were torn from their human rights of freedom, education, equality, and many other civil liberties. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a fictional work by Harriet Beecher Stowe, accurately compares to the real accounts of former slaves on the subject of enslaved children. Along with Stowe’s book, many slave narratives talk about these unfortunate events enslaved children went through. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harry is the first child Stowe introduces to the reader. Even though his story ends up having a happy ending, his family had always been incomplete while they were enslaved. Harry is Eliza and Henry Harris’s son; due to Eliza and Henry being on different farms, Harry would rarely ever see his father. Therefore, Harry and his father could not engage in many bonding experiences white children and their fathers could enjoy. In chapter...
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...Harriet was a slave to the Brodas family of Dorchester County, on Maryland’s eastern shore when she was six, she was hired out to work as a house slave and nursemaid. Later, she would work out on the fields. In her twenties she met and married John Tubman, who was a free black man. Harriet took his last name and took her mother’s first name and that’s how she became Harriet Tubman. In 1849 Harriet started hearing rumors that some slaves were going to be sold so she decided to run away. Harriet was helped by a friend a white women who guided Harriet to the people who help with the (secret pathway) and that’s when her journey to the Underground Railroad began. It will take her many nights to reach freedom. The next year Harriet would return on the sly to Maryland she ferried her children and her sister out of slavery. Harriet’s husband John was already a free man and decided to stay and later would remarry another women and have a child. Harriet rescued her brothers and their friends and many others. A couple of days later slave owners were offering a $40,000 reward for Harriet’s capture. That did not stop her it just made her smarter and more clever. In all Harriet made nineteen trips and conducted more than three hundred people along the underground railroad some e people called her Moses and some called her the “the General’’. Throughout this book Harriet has been a slave, conductor, and patriot and along the way she has shown that she is brave. Being a slave wasn’t the best...
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...G U I D E T E A C H E R’S A TEACHER’S GUIDE TO TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE BY SOLOMON NORTHUP bY Jeanne M. McGlInn anD JaMes e. McGlInn 2 A Teacher’s Guide to Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup Table of Contents SYNOPSIS......................................................................................................................................3 ABOUT THE AUTHOR...............................................................................................................3 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY GUIDE............................................................................3 MEETING COMMON CORE STANDARDS.............................................................3 THE SLAVE NARRATIVE GENRE...............................................................................3 HISTORICAL OVERVIEW..........................................................................................................4 DURING READING.....................................................................................................................6 SYNTHESIZING DISCUSSION QUESTIONS.......................................................................9 ENRICHMENT ACTIVITIES.......................................................................................................9 ACTIVITIES FOR USING THE FILM ADAPTATION........................................................ 11 ADDITIONAL RESOURCES.....................................................................................
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...A Gumbo of Influences: Louisiana’s Slave History, 1763 to Statehood The state of Louisiana has a very diverse and rich heritage and unique history. The history that will be referred to in this essay is that of Louisiana's slaves and slave laws. Much of the country’s slave history is easily traceable through the original thirteen colonies before the Revolutionary War and declaration of the states’ independence from British rule. But what about the slave territories that were later added to the Union? Being the eighteenth state to join the Union, Louisiana’s slave history originates from a different colonial super-power; but which one? Many are lead to believe that to be the French. While they are not incorrect, they are not entirely correct in saying that. Louisiana was a territory transferred through the hands of many. Louisiana was most touched by the hands of the Company of the West Indies, the French Crown, as well as the Spanish Crown and each hand left its own print in the territory’s slave history. First, one needs to take an initial look into some general concessions about Southern Slavery and the so called Southern Slave System. The purpose of slavery was to acquire cheap labor. There is also what many people refer to as the “Chattel System” or “Chattel Principle” which held slaves to a numeric value. A fugitive slave, J.W.C Pennington, recalled this principle: any slave’s identity might be disrupted as easily as a price could be set and a piece of paper passed from...
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...middle passage on a slave ship bound for the New World. After a short period of time in Barbados, Equiano was shipped to Virginia and put to work weeding grass and gathering stones. In 1757, he was bought by a naval captain (Captain Pascal) for about £40, who named him Gustavas Vassa. Equiano was about 12 when he first arrived in England. For part of that time he stayed at Blackheath in London with the Guerin family (relatives of Pascal). It...
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...survives the darkness of loosing everything. This book was called 12 years a slave by Solomon Northup. This book is an auto biography about a part of his life when he had to fight for his given freedom by law. This story is an auto biography because it’s a true story that is written by he (Solomon Northup) I could say that this book attracted me because it looked so amazing I couldn't wait to read it. But no the reality of it was i hated reading i picked it because i saw it had a tag on it now a major motion picture. I thought “oh perfect i can just watch the movie for my oral book talk” i did not even think i was going to read it. How i read it was a got a sight of pure bordom in a long drive to my grandmothers and it was only me and the book. I picked it up and read the first few pages and those few pages turned in to many. I couldent stop reading it, the book was glorius . His way of using casual words and turning them into deep words that make you undersatnd ever emotion he was feeling, every thought i could hear. Surprisingly i never watched the movie and i may never becuase the book satisfied wih just reading....
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... History books mainly reflect the involvement of men. The abolitionists (Clarkson and Wilberforce), the Slave traders (Canot) and the enslaved (Equaino). In portrayal of enslaved people, men appear more frequently. In the movie Amistad it is told from the point of view of Cinque; in the TV series Roots it follows Kunta Kinte. This male dominated history fails to acknowledge, belittles and devalues the role of women at all levels of slavery. What about the female slave traders, slave owners, enslaved females, female rebels and abolitionists? Are they really invisible? Verene Shepherd, in Women in Caribbean History states that up until the 1970s Caribbean books neglected women because early historians looked at colonisation, government, religion, trade and war fare, activities men were more involved in. Also some historians felt that women’s issues did not merit inclusion and where women could have been included, such as slave uprisings, their contributions were ignored. Shepherd believes changes occurred with the influence of women’s groups who tried to correct the gender neutral or male biased history. There was also a shift into social history, looking at the non elite and into topics such as family life. Books started to look at women’s social and political activities. Unfortunately there was a lack of first hand accounts from the period of the transatlantic slave trade – accounts written by men at the time either ignored women or perpetuated the myth of female inferiority...
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...On April 12, 1864, some 3,000 rebels under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest overran Fort Pillow, a former Confederate stronghold situated on a bluff on the Tennessee bank of the Mississippi, some 40 miles north of Memphis. The garrison consisted of about 600 Union soldiers, roughly evenly divided between runaway slaves-turned-artillerists from nearby Tennessee communities and white Southern Unionist cavalry mostly from East Tennessee. Under a flag of truce which his men violated by creeping up on the fort, Forrest demanded the garrison’s surrender, threatening that if it refused he would not be responsible for the actions of his men. Believing Forrest was bluffing, Bradford refused, whereupon the Confederates swarmed over the parapet. CT: Fort Pillow Massacre," blackpast.org, accessed November 13, 2013, http://www.blackpast.org/aah/fort-pillow- massacre-1864. KB: This is great to show K: Rebels, Confederates Precisely three years after the Civil War began, one of the cruelest deeds in the annals of warfare occurred at Fort Pillow, forty miles north of Memphis, Tennessee, on the bank of the Mississippi River, when both black troops of the 6th US Colored Artillery and white troops of the 13th Tennessee Union Cavalry were murdered in cold blood. General Nathan Forrest considered a slave in uniform with a gun a direct challenge and threat to the way of life in the South, a situation that could never be tolerated. At Fort Pillow, Forrest would take the "no...
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