![]() ![]() Northup had received an education and had wealthy friends to assist in his emancipation. In 12 Years A Slave, Solomon Northup was able to regain his freedom, but it is important to recognize this was an atypical case. If an enslaver passed away and their estate was divided, or if the enslaver found themselves in debt, enslaved families were often disregarded in order to generate the most profit from sales. Typically, enslaved African Americans lived without a sense of security. ![]() For example, if an enslaved child hit puberty and was considered fit for work, they could be sold for a profit away from parents and siblings – advertisements in our search revealed children as young as twelve being sold alone. Newspaper adverts reveal the never-ending possibilities of families being torn apart by traders who saw Black people as commodities. Our comprehensive sampling of two southern newspapers, published in Alabama and Georgia, demonstrated both the scale of this domestic slave trade and the various types of sales. Savannah Daily Republican, 28 th August 1846, 3. Slave auctions such as the one depicted onscreen in 12 Years A Slave, and the devastating consequences that followed were a lived reality for the overwhelming majority of enslaved Black people living in the US during the nineteenth century.Ī newspaper clipping from the Savannah Daily Republican on the 28th August 1846. ![]() The sense of disorientation, degrading treatment, and the exploitive labour that often followed in the continual drive for profit, undoubtedly had devastating effects on the mental and physical well-being of African Americans in the period. Traders and slave owners focused on making profits by exploiting human beings, calculating the value of enslaved people in relation to their age, gender, colour, skills, height and weight – a crude assessment of human worth focused primarily on physical and reproductive capacity. Enslaved people who were separated from their families by forced migration were still not safe once bought, family ties remained at risk of being torn apart. These sales routinely took place in public spaces, and our search reveals they often occurred on courthouse steps in big cities, or on popular streets in thriving commercial sectors. McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave harrowingly depicts a young woman named Eliza, sold away from her two children at a public auction. Investigating advertisements for the sale of enslaved people in US historical newspapers was the focus of the Graduate Research Internship Scheme we worked on over these past summer months a project that reiterated the importance of raising awareness about the true scale of the American domestic slave trade. Nowhere else is this more apparent than in America’s historical newspapers, which contained daily advertisements for the sale of enslaved women, men and children. In reality, the buying and selling of human beings was widespread across American society. Popular culture often recirculates the myth that slave trading occurred largely in Africa, or that the slave trader - allegedly a social outcast - completed his transactions hidden from public view. In his ground-breaking 1996 monograph, Speculators and Slaves, (and in his later work) the University of Liverpool historian Michael Tadman has estimated that well over one million people were bought and sold by professional slave traders and trafficked to the booming plantation areas within the southern states. Northup was not alone in his experience, as vast numbers of American-born enslaved people were forcibly moved across America in the decades between 17. Many have seen British director Steve McQueen’s multi award-winning film, 12 Years A Slave (2013), based on the memoir of Solomon Northup. Slave Market, Public Square, Louisville, Jefferson County, GA, Library of Congress. Please report broken links and violations of copyright.How 19th-century newspaper advertisements reveal a deeper Truth Behind cinema’s 12 Years A SlaveĪn image of a slave market in the public square of Louisville, Georgia. Unauthorized use of any material on this site is a violation of copyright. Excerpts and links may by used, provided that full and clear credit is given with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Unauthorized use of this material without express and written permission from this website’s author/owner is strictly prohibited. © Copyright Brian Brown Photography/Vanishing Media USA 2008-2023. ![]()
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