Solomon Northup

author

Solomon Northup

b. 1808

Kidnapped from freedom and sold into slavery, he turned his survival into one of the most powerful firsthand accounts of 19th-century America. His story in Twelve Years a Slave is both deeply personal and historically important.

1 Audiobook

Twelve Years a Slave Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation near the Red River in Louisiana

Twelve Years a Slave Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation near the Red River in Louisiana

by Solomon Northup

About the author

Born in Minerva, New York, around July 1807 or 1808, he was a free Black man, the son of a formerly enslaved father and a free mother. Before his kidnapping, he worked as a farmer and a skilled violinist, building a life with his wife Anne Hampton Northup and their children in New York.

In 1841, he was lured to Washington, D.C., drugged, and sold into slavery in the South. He spent twelve years enslaved in Louisiana before regaining his freedom in 1853. Soon after, his memoir Twelve Years a Slave was published and became a major testimony against slavery.

His later life is less certain, but his book endures as a vivid record of injustice, endurance, and the fight to be believed. Today, he is remembered not only for what he suffered, but for the clarity and courage with which he told the story.