12 Years A Slave,
a movie based on the life of Solomon Northup who was a free man from the North that was sold into slavery, is one of the most powerful films I have seen in my life. Although
I don’t want this to be a movie review, if you have not watched this movie you
should stop reading this blog post and go watch the movie or read Solomon
Northup’s autobiography. As soon as I walked out of the movie and was able to
get my bearings after being so emotionally shaken, I concluded that this film
should be added to the history curriculum of all public schools in the United
States.
The film was released in November
of 2013 and 2 months later, much to my surprise and satisfaction, the National
School Board Association announced that the film, along with the original 1853
memoir that inspired the movie and a study guide, would become part of all
public high school’s curriculum on slavery. Television personality Montel
Williams is funding the distribution of the film and Steve McQueen, the
director of the film said that it was always his dream that the story would be
taught in schools.
On September 25 of this year at
Howard University, there was a launch honoring the 50th anniversary
of the Civil Rights Act and the addition of the film in the collection of films
used to educate high school students. The teacher and the school district will
have the opportunity to choose whether or not to show the film and will have
free access to the film and all other resources if they choose to do so. This
follows on the heels of last year’s educational campaign that put copies of
Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” into classrooms for educational purposes.
I believe that this film is very
important in portraying the brutality and injustice that Solomon Northup and
many other slaves endured during this time in history. I believe that the
master narrative in public schools was that slavery was bad because
African-Americans were here working against their will, but I don’t believe
this begins to even touch on the horrific incidents that happened and leaves
out many other narratives and complexities within the narrative of slavery. Just as every
student learns about Anne Frank during the Holocaust, Steven McQueen believed
that Solomon Northup was a figure that every student should know about.
This is not just African-American history, but this is United States history
that continues to have major implications in society today. Steve McQueen also
wants his film to spread awareness of modern day slavery and doesn’t want
students in 200 years to be reading a story about the Solomon Northup of our
time.
Jackson, you've got me intrigued-- I definitely want to watch this film, because it seems like there is a lot I could get out of it.
ReplyDeleteIn your concluding paragraph, you said "this is not just African American history, but United States history," and that really struck me. I feel like it needs to be incorporated into what children learn starting with their early years at school, that it is a history of African Americans but they are a part of the United States!! Many people want to separate the history into it's own category, but that I feel only furthers an idea of it being a history for a separate identity of people.
I remember in elementary school learning very little about slavery, and prominent African American figures… Rosa Parks, George Washington Carver, MLK, Fredrick Douglas. It would have served me well to have learned about many more figures, because I feel like it would have shown the importance of learning about that history to me at a young age.