Slavery In American Solomon Northup's Twelve Years A Slave

This memoir and slave narrative, known as Twelve Years a Slave, touched the hearts of many and opened people’s eyes to the truth of the past. This brutal yet truthful film was written by American Solomon Northup. His story is portrayed through this film, which was edited and directed by David Wilson. Solomon Northup was born July 1808 in Minerva, New York. He grew a free black man. However, his father was once enslaved and then released upon his master’s death, and therefore this allowed Solomon and his older brother to grow up free. Solomon worked on a farm, but also enjoyed playing the violin and reading books. As Northup grew older, he met Anne Hampton and on Christmas day in 1829 they got married. The newly weds established a settlement

Our class deals with the issues of race in the past, present, and future. We have discussed the importance of moving forward to a better future filled with equality and justice. However, to do so we must learn about the past and learn from it. In the beginning of the semester we learned about the issue of slavery. We established that race was not found within nature, but created by people in power or who thought they were in power. We learned that slavery was created through empowered Europeans who sought out the Africans and even Native Americans as savages. They decided that these human beings were so different from them due to their skin color and therefore were of less intelligence and equality. They were taken captive, treated poorly, and looked down upon. This issue of race was created from social practice and no other way. These empowered “white” folks decided that if you were not like them then you were less then them. This idea then separated into two types of people, polygenists and monogenists. Polygeny is the idea that human races are separate species and monogeny is the idea that human races represent a variation within a single human species. This created even more controversy and conflict among opinions of people of power, when decided how to identify the human race. This film also relates to the story and life of Fredrick Douglas. Douglas was a formerly enslaved abolitionist, who was also eventually freed. He argued propaganda and refuted racial science. He also published a novel which told his tale of enslavement and his opinion toward the unjust, cruel, and brutal idea of slavery. Lastly, it reflects the issue of eugenics and preventing people with “bad genes” to breed or intermixing those with “good genes” and “bad genes”. In this case, “savages” or minorities are those with the bad genes and the “white people” are those with the good genes. This reflects the