<i>Stolen into Slavery: The True Story of Solomon Northup, Free Black Man</i> (review)
2012; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 65; Issue: 8 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/bcc.2012.0314
ISSN1558-6766
Autores Tópico(s)Caribbean history, culture, and politics
ResumoReviewed by: Stolen into Slavery: The True Story of Solomon Northup, Free Black Man Elizabeth Bush Fradin, Judith . Stolen into Slavery: The True Story of Solomon Northup, Free Black Man; by Judith and Dennis Fradin. National Geographic, 2012. 120p. illus. with photographs Library ed. ISBN 978-1-4263-0938-0 $27.90 Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-4263-0937-3 $18.95 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-4263-0987-8 $18.95 R Gr. 5-8. Drawn away from his upstate New York home and family in 1841 by a fake offer of well-paid temporary work, Solomon Northup awoke in a foul Washington D.C. cell, unable to prove that he was a freeman. His abductors sold him into slavery, and after managing to get a message off to his wife explaining what had happened, he was sold in New Orleans to owners who changed his name and controlled his fate for the next twelve years. While Solomon, now known as Platt, labored as a field hand, carpenter, and even occasional fiddler, his wife attempted to recover him under an 1840 New York law that mandated state assistance in gaining the release of kidnapped freemen. His changed name and the remoteness of the Louisiana plantation made tracing him nearly impossible, so Solomon waited over a decade for a chance to find an ally, a white itinerant carpenter named Samuel Bass, who would make contact with persons in New York who could attest to his free status and arrange his release. While children's literature is rife with tales of the Underground Railroad and daring, even creative, strategies of escape, the horrifying reality of abducted freemen who simply disappeared and were lost to family and history has received less attention. Northup's experience is thrillingly told, and although it culminated in a happy family reunion, the Fradins make it clear that justice did not follow jubilation-under mid-nineteenth-century law it was virtually impossible for a black man to successfully prosecute a white offender, since his testimony was not allowed in court. The Fradins supplement Northup's own narrative, Twelve Years a Slave, with print and online resources; an index and a timeline that interweaves historical events and Northup's own story are also included. Copyright © 2012 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
Referência(s)