# data[].attributes.body
This quote exemplifies Huck's internal moral dilemma with helping Jim, a runaway slave, because his entire life he has been taught to believe abolitionism is a disgusting and unethical practice. As Huck progresses further into the hero's journey he realizes that Jim is so much more than a mere slave, and he decides later he will go to Hell if he has to but he will save Jim.

# data[].attributes.body
"I think slavery is the next thing to hell. If a person would send another into bondage, he would, it appears to me, be bad enough to send him into hell if he could. "
~Harriet Tubman

# data[].attributes.headline
The Emancipation Proclamation as issued by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863

# data[].attributes.subject
The Emancipation Proclamation as issued by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863

# data[].attributes.body
This is a copy of the exact words of the document as written by President Abraham Lincoln.

# data[].attributes.headline
This Ted Talk on modern slavery demonstrates the extent to which it still penatrates the global economy

# data[].attributes.subject
This Ted Talk on modern slavery demonstrates the extent to which it still penatrates the global economy

# data[].attributes.body
Regardless of its permanent stain in global history, slavery is still a prevalent phenomenon occurring today, yet not many know the true depth to which this network extends.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Lisa Kristine: Photos that bear witness to modern slavery

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Photographer Lisa Kristine travels the world documenting the unbearably harsh realities of modern-day slavery. She shares hauntingly beautiful images -- miners in the Congo, bricklayers in Nepal -- that illuminate the plight of the 27 million souls enslaved worldwide.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Emancipation Proclamation and its significance in history

# data[].attributes.subject
The Emancipation Proclamation and its significance in history

# data[].attributes.body
A breif overview of the Emancipation Proclamation and why Abraham Lincoln chose to issue it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On this day in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signs the final Emancipation Proclamation, which ends slavery in the rebelling states. A preliminary proclamation was issued in September 1862, following the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland. The act signaled an important shift in the Union's Civil War aims,expanding the goal of the war from reunification to include the eradication of slavery.

The proclamation freed all slaves in states that were still in rebellion on January 1, 1863. Lincoln used vacated Congressional seats to determine the areas still in rebellion, as some parts of the South had already been recaptured and representatives returned to Congress under Union supervision.Asthe proclamationfreed slaves only in rebellious areas it actually freed no one, since these were areas not yet under Union control. The measure was still one of the most important acts in American history, however, as it meant slavery would end when those areas were recaptured. Most crucially, this measure effectively sabotaged Confederate attempts to secure recognition by foreign governments, especially Great Britain. When reunification was the sole goal of the North, the Confederates could be viewed by foreigners as freedom fighters being held against their will by the Union. But after the Emancipation Proclamation, the Southern cause was now the defense of slavery. The proclamation was a shrewd maneuver by Lincoln to brand the Confederate States as a slave nation and render foreign aid impossible.

The measure was met by a good deal of opposition, as many Northerners were unwilling to fight for the freedom of blacks; however, the proclamation signalled the death knell for slavery andhad the effect on British opinion that Lincoln desired. Britain, which was ideologically opposed to slavery, could no longer recognize the Confederacy, and goodwill towards the Union forces swelled in Britain. With this measure, Lincoln effectively isolated the Confederacy and killed the institution that was at the root of sectional differences.

On New Year's Day 1863, the president greeted a large group of diplomats at a White House reception. Shortly after noon, he slipped upstairs to his office and signed the proclamation. "I never felt more certain," he commented, "that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Emancipation Proclamation takes effect

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On this day in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signs the final Emancipation Proclamation, which ends slavery in the rebelling states. A preliminary proclamation

# data[].attributes.headline
This Emancipation Proclamation freed three million slaves and their descendents from servitude

# data[].attributes.subject
This Emancipation Proclamation freed three million slaves and their descendents from servitude

# data[].attributes.body
This picture demonstrates that freedom is not only a physical state, but that it is also emotional and gives one the power to better their situation and that of their family.

# data[].attributes.headline
The effects of the Emancipation Proclamation and what progress is left to be made

# data[].attributes.subject
The effects of the Emancipation Proclamation and what progress is left to be made

# data[].attributes.body
The Emancipation proclamation attempted to free all slaves in rebelling states. However, many states chose to ignore the order and thousands remained enslaved. In addition, this article explores the idea that slavery has continued on through the poor treatment of the African American community.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
(The Root) - Though President Abraham Lincoln ended slavery with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, slaves in Texas had no knowledge of their freedom until two and a half years later. On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston and declared the end of the Civil War, with General Granger reading aloud a special decree that ordered the freeing of some 200,000 slaves in the state.

Because of the delay, many African Americans started a tradition of celebrating the actual day slavery ended on June 19 (also known as Juneteenth). But for some, their cheers were short-lived. Thanks to the South's lucrative prison labor system and a deceptive practice called debt peonage, a kind of neo-slavery continued for some blacks long into the 1940s. The question then arises: When did African Americans really claim their freedom?

Chattel slavery in the classic sense ended with the Civil War's close and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Reconstruction followed, creating new opportunities for African Americans who owned and profited from their own land and dug into local politics.

"It's important not to skip over the first part of true freedom," says Douglas Blackmon, author of Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans From the Civil War to World War ll and co-executive producer of the eponymous documentary film. "Public education as we know it today and the first property rights for women were instituted by African-American elected officials."

But the social achievements were fleeting.

"Put yourself in that place," Blackmon says. "You're enslaved, then liberated for 30 years, and then all of a sudden, a certain group of people begin a campaign to force you back into slavery."

Across the South, laws were instituted that stripped African Americans of their rights, making celebrations like Juneteenth a distant memory. A prison-labor paradigm developed. Jail owners profited from the hard labor of their black inmates who were incarcerated for petty crimes like vagrancy, which carried long sentences.

Prisons sold their workforce to nearby industrial companies to work as coal miners, for example, for as much as 9 dollars a month, and inmates were often worked to death. Elsewhere, whites fabricated debt owed by blacks, forcing them into peonage and trading years of free work for their freedom, a practice that spread across the Bible Belt.

But in 1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved against that notion. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor during World War II by Japanese troops, Roosevelt signed Circular No. 3591 (pdf), giving teeth to the Anti-Peonage Law of 1867, which criminalized the practice. Dispatching a federal investigation, Roosevelt's team prosecuted guilty whites and effectively ended peonage in 1942.

However, African-American second-class citizenship has reappeared as a result of the war on drugs and draconian laws created during the 1980s. As civil rights litigator and author Michelle Alexander points out in her recent book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, the subjugation of African Americans through criminalization continues through the prison industrial complex.

"Racial caste is alive and well in America," Alexander wrote in the Huffington Post. "Here are a few facts ... There are more African Americans under correctional control today - in prison or jail, on probation or parole - than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. As of 2004, more African-American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race."

But Blackmon explains that the American economy doesn't rely on prison labor for major financial gain the way the New South did. For that reason, he is hopeful that the prison industrial complex won't evolve into a form of modern-day slavery.

"As the crime rates have dramatically dropped in the last decade, people have begun to feel less threatened," Blackmon offers. "Now they can open their eyes and say, 'Why are these young men who really didn't do much of anything in jail?' "
Hillary Crosley is the New York bureau chief of Like The Root on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter. The Root.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
When Were Blacks Truly Freed From Slavery?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
(The Root) - Though President Abraham Lincoln ended slavery with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, slaves in Texas had no knowledge of their freedom until two and a half years later.

# data[].attributes.body
Timeline of important civil rights events including creation of To Kill a Mockingbird.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
to kill a mockingbird, a timeline made with Timetoast's free interactive timeline making software.

# data[].attributes.body
This very popular image from early American history showcases the main grievance of the black slave as they believed in the fundamental right of man:That all men should be treated equal under the law and no man has the right to the possession of any other man.

# data[].attributes.headline
Nine of the twenty-five most significant events in American history are related to African-American rights, and one is the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation

# data[].attributes.subject
Nine of the twenty-five most significant events in American history are related to African-American rights, and one is the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation

# data[].attributes.body
The New York Times compiled a list of the most important events in American history and claims that a large majority are directly related to the advancement of civil rights and liberties. To move forward as a country, it is necessary to examine the rights and treatment of all citizens. #civilrights

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In the roughly two and a half centuries since America first celebrated its independence, there have been plenty of opportunities for moments big and small to sway the course of the nation's history.

That's why, to mark the Fourth of July holiday, TIME History asked 25 experts to pick one such moment. It could have happened on a day that every American child learns about in school - the day Abraham Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg, for example - or it could have happened on a day that might otherwise blend into the rush of history. Big or small, however, it had to have made its mark.

In past years, we've looked at such moments in the 20th century - you can see those lists here and here - but this year we're going back in time even more, to the 19th century. The only rules were that the selections had to be specific moments (so that means "the Civil War" doesn't work) and they had to have happened between Jan. 1, 1800, and Dec. 31, 1899. The results, contributed by email and phone, highlight 25 days out of the hundreds that passed during that century and, in doing so, trace the nation's evolution from infancy to modernity.

The U.S. Naval Fleet Enters the First Barbary War (May 13, 1801)

After 9/11, many pundits claimed that the first war fought by the United States was against Islam. They were referring to the Barbary Wars of the early 19th century, which were fought by the early republic against the city-states of North Africa that had supported acts of piracy against American shipping and the enslavement of American sailors. To say that it was a war against Islam, however, completely misinterprets the events. Just a few years prior, Congress passed the Treaty of Tripoli (1797) whose Article 11 expressly stated that "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." At a time of intense political polarization, this simple statement was unanimously ratified by the U.S. Congress and signed by President John Adams. The reason why the Barbary Wars matter is much simpler, and much more important - and it's why some historians consider the Barbary Wars the "second American Revolution." This oft forgotten moment in American history was the first foreign conflict that brought together once disparate colonies into a united republic.
Mark G. Hanna is the Associate Director of the UC San Diego Institute of Arts and Humanities and author of the Frederick Jackson Turner Award-winning Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire: 1570-1740.

Thomas Jefferson Writes to the Baptists (Jan. 1, 1802)

After the acrimonious 1800 presidential election, Connecticut's Danbury Baptist Association wrote to the new president, Thomas Jefferson, to ask him to declare a day of prayer and thanksgiving to heal the nation. In a written response, Jefferson politely declined, coining the phrase, "wall of separation between Church & State" to explain that the First Amendment prevented him from associating the presidency with a religious declaration. The letter - which drew on his firm belief that government support of any religion through tax revenue or otherwise was discriminatory - provides a pivotal moment in American religious freedom. It emphasized Jefferson's separation of church and state at a time when not everyone agreed with that interpretation of the First Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court would eventually adopt Jefferson's wall metaphor, first, in an 1878 case in which it ruled against polygamy and, next, in a 1947 decision defining more fully why the Constitution prohibits a breach of the wall between religion and government. Jefferson's historic 1801 letter provides the foundation for avoiding religious Balkanization in the United States, allows for John F. Kennedy's Jeffersonian rationale for why his Catholicism should not constitute a bar to his presidential election, and has served as a model of religious tolerance wherever it is embraced throughout the world.
Barbara A. Perry is Director of Presidential Studies and Co-Chair of the Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia's Miller Center.

The 12th Amendment Is Ratified (June 15, 1804)

The people who framed the Constitution didn't imagine any of the political party system that we're in. The Constitution was set up so that the person who got the most votes was president and the person who got the second most was vice president, like the way a high school student council runs. That system worked fine when General Washington was elected, but after he stepped down it became obvious that it did not work very well. In 1796, you had people who ran from opposing parties - and basically couldn't stand each other - become President and Vice President. In 1800 the election resulted in an even stranger situation, where two people from the same party ended up with the exact same number of votes. (The second act of Hamilton is about what happened next.) After Jefferson became President (instead of Aaron Burr), Congress decided to amend the Constitution, so that the electors would vote using distinct ballots for president and vice-president and to create a system for what to do if no one gets a majority . The result was a system in which a strong political party wins the entire executive branch. But for the 12th amendment, we wouldn't have had the political parties, presidential elections, and presidents we have. We'd have President Trump and Vice-President Clinton.

The Transatlantic Slave Trade Is Abolished (Jan. 1, 1808)

On March 2, 1807, the House of Representatives and Senate passed legislation "to Prohibit the importation of Slaves" into the United States. The law would close the traffic in human chattel imported from "any foreign kingdom, place, or country," making the international trade in "any negro, mulatto, or person of colour with intent to hold, sell, or dispose . . . as a slave, or to be held to service or labour," illegal. Yet, the demise of the slave trade was not the demise of slavery, nor was it the demise of slave trading on U.S. soil. As the young nation worked to solidify its independence, this moment instead signified the end of one era in slavery and the beginning of another. Traders shifted their focus to a growing domestic traffic that had been operating since the late-18th century. This legislation, along with new technologies (cotton gin), Westward expansion (Louisiana Purchase), and an emphasis on reproduction through forced breeding, actually fueled the institution of slavery. Three times the number of enslaved people experienced sale through the domestic trade (approximately 1 million souls) than those directly imported on slavers. However, despite this legislation, African "cargo" were illegally brought across the Atlantic until the eve of the Civil War.
Daina Ramey Berry is associate professor of History and African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas (Austin) and author of The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation.

David Walker Writes His Appeal (Sept. 28, 1829)

Most people associate the rise of the radical antislavery movement in the United States with William Lloyd Garrison, a white reformer and journalist, but in fact, the origins of abolitionism lie in the free black community. In the late 1820s, David Walker emerged as the most eloquent spokesperson for those abolitionist activists who called for the immediate end of slavery. His Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829) criticized Americans for failing to live up to the ideals of Christianity and the Declaration of Independence and for what he regarded as the most brutal system of slavery in world history. Walker also called upon free African Americans to "uplift" themselves and to promote the cause of slaves through education and evangelical Christianity, and he predicted a race war if white Americans did not repent of the sins of slavery and racism. Before the emergence of abolitionism, many white leaders of the antislavery movement had promoted colonization-plans for a forced resettlement of free blacks in Africa. Walker forcefully rejected colonization schemes, arguing that blacks had as much right to full citizenship in the United States as did whites.

The First Issue of The Liberator Is Published (Jan. 1, 1831)

The Liberator set the world aflame. First published in 1831, the newspaper and its editor, William Lloyd Garrison, gave voice to a new type of abolitionism. Unlike earlier proponents of ending slavery, who had advocated a cautious approach, Garrison demanded the immediate and uncompensated emancipation of all enslaved people and full citizenship rights for black Americans. The Liberator provided a platform for black Northerners writing against slavery and racism, and Garrison's radical critique of slavery, in turn, was deeply informed by the work of black writers and activists. From The Liberator emerged the American Anti-Slavery Society, a national organization that transformed abolition into a mass social movement. For nearly a century after emancipation, historians considered Garrison and The Liberator fringe, delusional and unimportant to the larger politics of the Civil War. But radical abolitionists pushed Southern politicians to adopt a more vigorous defense of slavery, eventually provoking a response from the North. The Liberator set the stage for a sea change in American politics that forced the sectional conflict over slavery to a head.
Justin Leroy is an assistant professor of history at the University of California, Davis, and a past winner of the Society of American Historians Allan Nevins Prize, for the best-written doctoral dissertation on a significant subject in American history.

The First Electric Telegraph Message Is Sent (May 24, 1844)

By the 1840s, the electric telegraph was a long time coming. Optical telegraphs had been in operation for at least two generations and a series of scientific advancements had gradually created the technology needed for transmitting signals over electromagnetic wires. By the spring of 1844, Samuel F.B. Morse, a fine-arts professor turned scientist, was ready to inaugurate the system he had perfected with the aid of government funding. On May 24, he sent a four-word message over 40 miles of wire, from Washington to Baltimore, where his associate Alfred Vail received it and sent it back. The Old Testament verse Morse chose for the occasion, "What Hath God Wrought," was fittingly dramatic. The electric telegraph was the first device to effectively separate communication from transportation, enabling information to travel instantly over space and catapulting America into the era of telecommunication. During the second half of the 19th century, it played a crucial role in unifying the country, tying together remote individuals, communities and markets into what became the modern United States.
Yael Sternhell is a professor at Tel Aviv University, author of Routes of War: The World of Movement in the Confederate South and the 2017 winner of the Organization of American Historians Binkley-Stephenson Award for the best article that appeared in the Journal of American History.

Britain Repeals Its Corn Laws (May 15, 1846)

The most important moment of the 19th century for the United States took place across the ocean: the Repeal of Britain's Corn Laws. The Corn Laws were simply tariffs, or taxes, that Parliament imposed on foreign grain. Though the Earls of Grantham benefited when it came to selling English grain, the poor paid more for food. A British manufacturer named Richard Cobden argued that tariffs, by slowing commerce, impeded freedom. "The progress of freedom," he said, had more to do with the spread of business than with the actions of governments. The laws were finally repealed in 1846, after the Irish Famine dramatized their injustice.

The repeal cracked England's class structure. Once the tariff wall tumbled, others gradually weakened, including those holding back workers or women. Commerce begat freedom, just as Cobden predicted. Liberal, open Britain inspired others the world over. In the 1930s, a U.S. Secretary of State known as "Tennessee's Cobden," Cordell Hull, helped President Franklin Roosevelt break down high tariffs, reducing the Great Depression's damage. After World War II, U.S. policy moved toward free trade. Today, the world's stronger economies are more Cobden than Corn Law-all because of abolition of an English grain tariff.
Amity Shlaes' bestselling books include Coolidge and The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo Is Signed (Feb. 2, 1848)

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo brought to a close the war with Mexico, yet left in its wake unresolved dilemmas with lasting repercussions for American history. The U.S. expanded by a third, becoming a continental nation for the first time through the acquisition of such rich new territories as California, Arizona and New Mexico. Mexicans already residing on these lands became U.S. citizens, one of the first expansions of citizenship in American history, predating the granting of citizenship to African Americans or Native Americans. The treaty also lay the groundwork for future conflicts: the Civil War, triggered by increasingly furious debates about the expansion of slavery into the territory seized from Mexico; and the Indian Wars, caused in part by the new border slicing through Indian homelands. In Mexico, the war with their northern neighbors and the ensuing treaty loom large in popular consciousness. In the U.S., however, the Mexican-American War has been conveniently obscured - an embarrassingly naked land grab overshadowed by the drama of the subsequent Civil War. Yet the treaty created the border that (with minor modifications) has become such a flashpoint in American politics and it raised enduring questions about the status of peoples of Mexican descent in the U.S.

Women's Rights Activists Meet in Seneca Falls, N.Y. (July 19, 1848)

In 1848, a handful of women activists, including Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, issued a call for a "Woman's Right Convention," in Seneca Falls, N.Y. Most attendees were politically active; Frederick Douglass participated. Perhaps the most important result of the meeting was embodied in "The Declaration of Sentiments," a feminist document modeled on the Declaration of Independence. The authors asserted that "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal." Signed by 68 women and 32 men, the document not only insisted on the still-radical idea that women are equal to men, but also that society rather than nature held women back. "The history of mankind," the authors pointed out, "is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her." The Declaration of Sentiments also called for women to have the right to vote, something that would take another 72 years to accomplish. Women's activists still cite the Declaration of Sentiments as a crucial statement in the long fight for women's rights.
Wendy Warren is an assistant professor of history at Princeton University and the author of New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History.

The "Appeal of the Independent Democrats" Helps Launch the Republican Party (Jan. 19, 1854)

In January 1854, when Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas introduced his bill to organize the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, he admitted privately that it would "raise a hell of a storm." Many in the North were sure to be outraged at the bill's repeal of the Missouri Compromise ban on territorial slavery above the 36°30′ parallel. But how long would the storm last? Led by Ohio Senator Salmon Chase, a handful of antislavery leaders in Washington were determined to make the most of it. Their manifesto, "The Appeal of the Independent Democrats," declared that the Kansas-Nebraska bill was part of an "atrocious plot" to convert the entire West "into a dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves." A masterpiece of propaganda, the "Appeal" circulated widely, channeling Northern outrage away from a narrow defense of the old Missouri Compromise, and toward a much stronger commitment to oppose any extension of slavery whatsoever. Within a year, that commitment became the basis of the new Republican Party, whose uncompromising antislavery stand revolutionized American politics for good.

The U.S. Army Marches Into Salt Lake City (June 26, 1858)

On June 26, 1858, Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston and 2,500 troops marched into an eerily quiet Salt Lake City. President James Buchanan had ordered Johnston to take the Utah capital, which had been settled by the Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). Meanwhile, an orderly evacuation allowed 30,000 Mormons to hide in southern Utah. Having been burned out of Missouri in 1838 and Illinois in 1846, and having kept the U.S. troops away from their city during the 1857-1858 winter, the Mormons knew when to back down. U.S. troops had never before marched on their own citizens. Many Americans hated Mormons because of polygamy, but the U.S. Army traveled 1,000 miles and wintered in the Utah mountains for a different reason: Mormons had defied federal law. When Brigham Young, Mormon leader and first Territorial Governor, refused to give his position to a non-Mormon appointed governor, President Buchanan called it rebellion. A defiant state controlled by church officials, even if those leaders had been elected, could not be tolerated. In an era when the U.S. Army removed Native Americans to open land for white citizens, the federal government demonstrated how far it would go to determine who governed the West and how.
Anne Hyde is a professor of history at the University of Oklahoma, editor of the Western Historical Quarterly, and author of Empires, Nations, and Families: A New History of the North American West, 1800-1860, which was a Bancroft Prize winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist.

The Emancipation Proclamation Is Issued (Jan. 1, 1863)

The Emancipation Proclamation, which was issued by Abraham Lincoln in the midst of Civil War, freed all the slaves in the Confederacy and invited black men to enlist in the Union Army. Even though it was applicable to only those states that were in rebellion against the United States government, it sounded the death knell of slavery in the American republic. An overwhelming majority of American slaves were declared free by it. Lincoln called it the "pivotal act" of his administration and the greatest event of the 19th century. The Proclamation laid the foundation for the ongoing transformation of the United States from a slaveholding nation into an interracial democracy. It marked not just an end to the enslavement of African Americans but also signaled at black citizenship by asking former slaves to join the Union Army. In this sense, it was a precursor to the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, which remade the U.S. Constitution by abolishing slavery and establishing national birthright citizenship, equality before the law and voting rights for black men.
Manisha Sinha is the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition, which won the Avery O. Craven prize for the best book on the Civil War era.
Correction: The original version of this item misstated the date on which the final Emancipation Proclamation was issued. It was Jan. 1, 1863, not Sept. 22, 1862.

Abraham Lincoln Delivers the Gettysburg Address (Nov. 19, 1863)

Gettysburg is the site of the greatest battle fought in North America, the decisive turning point in the greatest event in American history, and the place that prompted the greatest speech in the English language. President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, delivered on Nov. 19, 1863, is a reflection in many ways on what came before and what was to come, creating a new vision for the country focused on equality and self government. Many of the great movements to come are anchored in Lincoln's words, which amounted to a new operating system for a newly reborn republic: that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Ken Burns is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and the co-director with Lynn Novick of The Vietnam War, which will air on PBS in September.

The 13th Amendment Is Ratified (Dec. 6, 1865)

By the time we get to 1865 and the passage of the 13th Amendment, which in effect formally abolished slavery in the United States, we'd had almost 250 years during which people of African descent as well as many Native peoples were enslaved in the U.S. Most people don't realize that the debate over the Amendment began before the end of the Civil War. It was first debated on the Senate floor in March of 1864, but did not garner the necessary majority that was needed to pass as a constitutional amendment. That December, President Lincoln would say in his message to Congress that he hoped it would come up again - and in fact it did, in January of 1865, resulting in a vote where the House passed the amendment. (Lincoln was there to sign the proposed Amendment but would be assassinated before it was ratified.) The 13th Amendment signaled a significant movement forward for the nation as we wrestled with what it means to transition from slavery to freedom, not just for those of African descent but also for all Americans.
Earl Lewis is President of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and President-Elect of the Organization of American Historians.

The Supreme Court Decides Henderson v. Mayor of City of New York (Oct. 1, 1875)

The issue in this U.S. Supreme Court case was the question of who had authority over immigration control. Until the 1870s, state governments - not the federal government - were the primary administrators of immigration control. Northeastern states in particular restricted the immigration of indigent Europeans by requiring shipmasters to pay bonds and capitation taxes for the landing of such foreigners. Henderson declared such a practice unconstitutional for infringing on federal power over foreign commerce. This ruling triggered the emergence of federal immigration policy, as officials in states affected by the ruling campaigned for a national policy that would control immigration in place of invalidated state laws. The result of that campaign was the passage of the federal Immigration Act of 1882, America's first national legislation to regulate general immigration. The act prohibited the admission of people unable to financially support themselves, such as paupers and lunatics, and criminals. This act bridged the eras of state-level and federal immigration control, laying the foundation for subsequent national immigration policy. Even now, as the relationship between the federal government and states over immigration policy is hotly contested, the root of the present debate can be found in Henderson.

Susan B. Anthony Speaks at the Centennial (July 4, 1876)

In 1876, Susan B. Anthony was barred from delivering a speech at the centennial celebration of American independence at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Rather than give up, she and her compatriots distributed printed copies to the audience and then went around the back of the hall, where Anthony read it to a crowd. In this amazing manifesto, written with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the National Woman Suffrage Association, she called for the impeachment of all officers of the federal government, on the grounds that they had not been true to the promises of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Women were taxed without representation. And, because women did not serve on juries, they were not judged by their peers. The speech made little splash at the time, but when we read it today, we can see that there's an anger in it. These women had fought for the vote for decades, but when the franchise was expanded in the 1860s, they were still excluded. They realized that begging was not going to get them anywhere. From that point on, they speak in a different voice - and that struggle goes on. When we look at it, we can see the agenda of the 1970s in the agenda of the 1870s.
Linda K. Kerber is May Brodbeck Professor in the Liberal Arts and Professor of History Emerita at the University of Iowa, and a past president of both the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians.

The Compromise of 1877 Is Reached (Mar. 2, 1877)

Following the Civil War, Reconstruction had offered the promise of social and political equality for the millions of African-Americans who began to vote, pursue education and participate in the political process. That hope was dashed after the election of 1876, when Republican presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes fell short on critical southern electoral votes. With the precise results of the election disputed, it was up a newly generated Electoral Commission (and, ultimately, Congress) to decide whether Hayes or his opponent, Samuel J. Tilden, would be president. Hayes did eventually secure the White House, but the terms of the compromise that got him there would end the period of congressional Reconstruction, reducing Washington's power to intervene in state affairs. Federal troops were removed from the South, allowing southern legislatures and polling districts to return to their pre-Civil War, white supremacist practices. A new era of racist policy arose to continue the long-standing tradition of the degradation of black lives. The Compromise of 1877 ultimately led to a new era of Jim Crow laws, the effects of which would be felt for another century.
Michael Williams, of Warren New Tech High School is the 2017 winner of the Tachau Teacher of the Year Award from the Organization of American Historians.

The Chinese Exclusion Act Is Approved (May 6, 1882)

On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed into law the Chinese Exclusion Act. The exclusion law resulted from two decades of racist agitation on the Pacific Coast by whites, who claimed the Chinese were a degraded, slave-like race. The law, which barred Chinese laborers from entering the U.S. and all Chinese from naturalized citizenship, imposed myriad harms on Chinese people. For those already living in the U.S., it meant decades of family separation, anti-miscegenation and other segregation laws, and racist violence.

Congress repealed the exclusion law during World War II, and in 2012 Congress passed a "resolution of regret." But exclusion has still had long lasting consequences. Racist stereotypes about Chinese people as "unassimilable" persist - and, more broadly, Chinese exclusion set the legal basis for modern American immigration law. To justify discrimination against the Chinese, the Supreme Court ruled in 1889 that immigration was a matter of national security. That decision, which gave Congress nearly unlimited power over the regulation of immigration, remains the basic structure of our immigration system.
Mae Ngai is Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History at Columbia University and author of the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize-winning Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America.

Workers Strike for an Eight-Hour Day (May 1, 1886)

On May 1, 1886, 350,000 workers from coast to coast joined in a coordinated general strike for the eight-hour day. The labor movement, which had grown in response to rapidly increasing inequality during the heyday of American industrialization, demanded that workers share in the great prosperity of the nation. Chicago was the center of these mobilizations, with at least 40,000 workers on strike that day. A coordinated response by employers and police forces defeated the movement at the time, yet over the next decades, American unions succeeded in improving wages and conditions for many workers, helping to build the middle-class society that was a hallmark of the United States. The movement also helped inspire the adoption of May Day as international workers' day. Today, for the majority of the world, May Day is a public holiday; by 1990, it was celebrated in 107 states, prompting a historian to argue that it is "perhaps the only unquestionable dent made by a secular movement in the Christian or any other official calendar." Unbeknownst to most, it originated in the United States, one of the few countries in the world where it is not widely celebrated and not a public holiday.
Sven Beckert is Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard University and author of the Bancroft Prize-winning Empire of Cotton: A Global History, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Hawaii Is Occupied (Jan. 17, 1893)

The occupation of Hawaii ended the existence of an independent state and launched for the U.S. the involvement in annexation of territory beyond the mainland. By the 1820s, missionaries and sugar planters had started arriving in the Kingdom of Hawaii from all over, and the American influence there grew. In 1887, the year the U.S. leased Pearl Harbor, the planters forced the adoption of a document known as the Bayonet Constitution, limiting the monarchy's power. When Queen Liliuokalani attempted to replace it in 1893, the sugar planters organized a coup. One thing to note about the timing of the rebellion was that an 1890 law in the U.S., called the McKinley Tariff, meant that planters had a harder time getting Hawaiian sugar into the states. One solution for them was to make Hawaii an American territory. However, it would take years to approve the annexation, which didn't happen until 1898, when the campaign for war with the Spanish had begun and Hawaii became appealing as a mid-Pacific fueling station. The case for annexation was not a slam dunk. That it succeeded shows a shift in American readiness to become involved in international politics more actively.
Patrick Manning is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of World History, Emeritus, at the University of Pittsburgh and a past president of the American Historical Association.

Coxey's Army Arrives at the U.S. Capitol (May 1, 1894)

In the spring of 1894, unemployed workers from across the country marched on Washington. On May 1, Jacob Coxey, a Populist leader from Ohio, led marchers up to the steps of the Capitol to petition for a "good roads" bill that would put the unemployed to work. Before he could read his petition, Coxey was arrested for "stepping on the grass." But the march still changed America's politics of economic hardship. It did not scapegoat immigrants or minorities as previous protests had done, and was warmly greeted by immigrants in the mill towns and by Washington's black community. It started the tradition of marches on Washington for economic justice and equal rights, which led most famously to the 1963 March for Jobs and Freedom at which Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I have a dream" speech. Finally, it placed on the national agenda that the federal government has a responsibility for the well-being of all citizens, including the poor and most vulnerable. In recognition of this principle, on May 1, 1944, Coxey was invited by Congress to read his petition on the steps of the Capitol, 50 years after his first attempt.

The Supreme Court Decides Plessy v. Ferguson (May 18, 1896)

On May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court decided Plessy v. Ferguson, a case that segregated the South and other parts of the nation for 68 years. It doomed many southern African Americans to three generations of inferior education, derelict housing and stunted economic opportunity. The court ruled that "separate" treatment of blacks and whites under the law was constitutional, as long as that treatment was "equal" - even though the 14th Amendment, which made freed people citizens, prohibited "any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens." Although no southern state upheld the decision's "equal" qualification, all passed laws to segregate black citizens.

It wasn't supposed to turn out this way. Faced with an 1890 state law ordering segregation on trains, citizens of color in New Orleans had mounted a test case against it. Those who had so recently won full citizenship believed it improbable that their rights could be snatched away, and expected a victory. But Plessy v. Ferguson remained federal law until Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The long shadow of Plessy reminds us that progress is not inevitable, and that wrongs may take generations to right.
Glenda Gilmore is the Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History at Yale. With Thomas Sugrue, she is author of These United States: A Nation in the Making, 1890 to the Present.

The USS Maine Is Sunk (Feb. 15, 1898)

In early 1898, as war raged in Cuba, the USS Maine docked in Havana's harbor to signal to Spanish colonial authorities that the United States would protect its citizens and financial interests on the island if threatened. At 9:40 p.m. on Feb. 15, an explosion destroyed the ship, killing 268 American servicemen. The cause of the explosion was never conclusively determined, but Americans, goaded by the "yellow journalism" of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, blamed the fatalities on Spain and demanded retribution. Two months after the explosion, Congress issued a joint resolution authorizing military intervention. American participation in the "splendid little war," as Secretary of State John Hay called the conflict, lasted four months, but had significant consequences for all. Spain lost what remained of its once vast colonial empire and the United States, in turn, acquired Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. U.S. economic interests in the Pacific and the Caribbean expanded as a result of these territorial acquisitions, but not before drawing Americans into a longer and costlier war in the Philippines (1899-1902). The "Spanish-American war" also had consequences for Spain's former colonies, postponing or undermining their sovereignty.
María Cristina García is Howard A. Newman Professor of American Studies at Cornell and a 2016 Andrew Carnegie Fellow.

The Philippine-American War Begins (June 2, 1899)

A seminal but largely forgotten event in our history, the Philippine-American War gave rise to a fierce debate about America's role in the world that is still as relevant today as it was 100 years ago. After a quick and decisive victory over Spanish forces in 1898, the U.S. decided to annex the Spanish colony of the Philippines, provoking nationalist fervor and a determined guerrilla resistance among the populace. Halfway around the world, American troops were soon mired in a bloody and brutal counterinsurgency. The military's tactics - burning villages, torturing villagers, depriving civilians of food and medical supplies - alienated the local population and horrified the American public back home. Though the United States would declare victory in 1902, insurrections in the Philippine Archipelago lasted for another decade, and hundreds of thousands of Filipinos died. It is impossible not to be reminded of so many subsequent American wars in Senator George Frisbie Hoar's rebuke of then-President Theodore Roosevelt: "Your practical statesmanship has succeeded in converting a people who three years ago were ready to kiss the hem of the garment of the American and to welcome him as liberator . . . into sullen and irreconcilable enemies, possessed of a hatred which centuries cannot eradicate."
Lynn Novick is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and the co-director with Ken Burns of The Vietnam War, which will air on PBS in September.

SPONSORED FINANCIAL CONTENT

You May Like

EDIT POST

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the roughly two and a half centuries since America first celebrated its independence, there have been plenty of opportunities for moments big and small to sway the course of the nation's history. That's why, to mark the Fourth of July holiday, TIME History asked 25 experts to pick one such moment.

# data[].attributes.body
These songs were used for everyng from passing time in the fields to telling the path to freedom.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Songs were used in everyday life by African slaves. Singing was tradition brought from Africa by the first slaves; sometimes their songs are called spirituals. Singing served many purposes such as providing repetitive rhythm for repetitive manual work, inspiration and motivation. Singing was also use to express their values and solidarity with each other and during celebrations.

# data[].attributes.headline
This shows how slave songs evolved and continue to impact lives in the United States today

# data[].attributes.subject
This shows how slave songs evolved and continue to impact lives in the United States today

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Rhiannon Giddens: Songs that bring history to life

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Rhiannon Giddens pours the emotional weight of American history into her music. Listen as she performs traditional folk ballads -- including "Waterboy," "Up Above My Head," and "Lonesome Road" by Sister Rosetta Tharp -- and one glorious original song, "Come Love Come," inspired by Civil War-era slave narratives.

# data[].attributes.headline
How past slave songs still hold significance in current African Americans' lives

# data[].attributes.subject
How past slave songs still hold significance in current African Americans' lives

# data[].attributes.body
This dives deeper into the signifigance of the songs and shows how powerful the songs and spirituals are

# data[].attributes.body
This article does a great job summarizing the main principles surrounding the South Carolina Slave Laws including the reverberating idea that slavery is hereditary and perpetual, and it is built on the principle of the complete inferiority of slaves in comparison to the white man.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
(December, 1662) ACT XII. "Negro womens children to serve according to the condition of the mother.

# data[].attributes.body
Mississippi Black Codes were similar to the South Carolina Slave Laws; however, these particular laws were enacted during the reconstruction period, a time when prejudice and bigotry were still extremely prevalent in southern culture.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The status of Blacks was the focal problem of Reconstruction. Slavery had been abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment, but the white people of the South were determined to keep the Black population in "their place," socially, politically, and economically. This was done by means of the notorious "Black Codes," passed by several of the state legislatures.

# data[].attributes.body
Jim Crow laws were the exemplification of the sentiments of segregation and disenfranchisement found in the deep South. Public facilities, services, and transportation may have been considered "separate but equal", but this only existed in theory. The images in this article showcase a horrifying reality faced by the African American community, as they were constantly reminded of their status in society.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Freedom Riders | Article

The segregation and disenfranchisement laws known as "Jim Crow" represented a formal, codified system of racial apartheid that dominated the American South for three quarters of a century beginning in the 1890s. The laws affected almost every aspect of daily life, mandating segregation of schools, parks, libraries, drinking fountains, restrooms, buses, trains, and restaurants. "Whites Only" and "Colored" signs were constant reminders of the enforced racial order.

Signs such as "Colored Waiting Room" constantly reminded travelers of the enforced racial order. Credit: Library of Congress

In legal theory, blacks received "separate but equal" treatment under the law - in actuality, public facilities for blacks were nearly always inferior to those for whites, when they existed at all. In addition, blacks were systematically denied the right to vote in most of the rural South through the selective application of literacy tests and other racially motivated criteria.

Sign at a Greyhound Bus Station in Rome, GA. Credit: Library of Congress

The Jim Crow system was upheld by local government officials and reinforced by acts of terror perpetrated by Vigilantes. In 1896, the Supreme Court established the doctrine of separate but equal in Plessy v. Ferguson, after a black man in New Orleans attempted to sit in a whites-only railway car.

In 1908, journalist Ray Stannard Baker observed that "no other point of race contact is so much and so bitterly discussed among Negroes as the Jim Crow car." As bus travel became widespread in the South over the first half of the 20th century, it followed the same pattern.

"Travel in the segregated South for black people was humiliating," recalled Diane Nash in her interview for Freedom Riders. "The very fact that there were separate facilities was to say to black people and white people that blacks were so subhuman and so inferior that we could not even use the public facilities that white people used."

Transit was a core component of segregation in the South, as the 1947 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) pamphlet and Bayard Rustin song, "You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow" attests. Keeping whites and blacks from sitting together on a bus, train, or trolley car might seem insignificant, but it was one more link in a system of segregation that had to be defended at all times - lest it collapse. Thus transit was a logical point of attack for the foes of segregation, in the courtroom and on the buses themselves.

It would take several decades of legal action and months of nonviolent direct action before these efforts achieved their intended result.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Jim Crow Laws | American Experience | PBS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Freedom Riders | Article The segregation and disenfranchisement laws known as "Jim Crow" represented a formal, codified system of racial apartheid that dominated the American South for three quarters of a century beginning in the 1890s. The laws affected almost every aspect of daily life, mandating segregation of schools, parks, libraries, drinking fountains, restrooms, buses, trains, and restaurants.

# data[].attributes.body
Impacts of slave narratives and Uncle Tom’s Cabin

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
People & Events Slave narratives and Uncle Tom's Cabin 1845 - 1862

# data[].attributes.body
#fromtheslaveseyes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
slave narrative, an account of the life, or a major portion of the life, of a fugitive or former slave, either written or orally related by the slave personally. Slave narratives comprise one of the most influential traditions in American literature, shaping the form and themes of some of the most celebrated and controversial writing, both in fiction and in autobiography, in the history of the United States. The vast majority of American slave narratives were authored by African Americans, but African-born Muslims who wrote in Arabic, the Cuban poet Juan Francisco Manzano, and a handful of white American sailors taken captive by North African pirates also penned narratives of their enslavement during the 19th century. From 1760 to the end of the Civil War in the United States, approximately 100 autobiographies of fugitive or former slaves appeared. After slavery was abolished in the United States in 1865, at least 50 former slaves wrote or dictated book-length accounts of their lives. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the WPA Federal Writers' Project gathered oral personal histories from 2,500 former slaves, whose testimony eventually filled 40 volumes.

The first slave narrative to become an international best-seller was the two-volume Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; or, Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself (1789), which traces Equiano's career from boyhood in West Africa, through the dreadful transatlantic Middle Passage, to eventual freedom and economic success as a British citizen. Introducing the slave ship through the innocent perspective of an African captive, he wrote:

The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror when I was carried on board. I was immediately handled and tossed up to see if I were sound by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me....When I looked around the ship too and saw a large furnace or copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate; and, quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted. When I recovered a little I found some black people about me....I asked them if we were not to be eaten by those white men with horrible looks, red faces, and loose hair.

Documents discovered at the turn of the 21st century, which suggest that Olaudah Equiano may have been born in North America, have raised questions, still unresolved, about whether his accounts of Africa and the Middle Passage are based on memory, reading, or a combination of the two.

With the rise of the abolition movement in the early 19th century came a demand for hard-hitting eyewitness accounts of the harsh realities of slavery in the United States. In response, the narratives of Frederick Douglass (1845), William Wells Brown (1847), Henry Bibb (1849), Sojourner Truth (1850), Solomon Northup (1853), and William and Ellen Craft (1860) claimed thousands of readers in England as well as the United States.

Typically, the American slave narrative centres on the narrator's rite of passage from slavery in the South to freedom in the North. Slavery is documented as a condition of extreme deprivation, necessitating increasingly forceful resistance. After a harrowing and suspenseful escape, the slave's attainment of freedom is signaled not simply by reaching the "free states" of the North but by taking a new name and dedication to antislavery activism. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself (1845), often considered the epitome of the slave narrative, links the quest for freedom to the pursuit of literacy, thereby creating a lasting ideal of the African American hero committed to intellectual as well as physical freedom.

In the wake of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, American slave narratives contributed to the mounting national debate over slavery. The most widely read and hotly disputed American novel of the 19th century, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), was profoundly influenced by its author's reading of slave narratives, to which she owed many graphic incidents and the models for some of her most memorable characters. Revising and expanding his original life story, Frederick Douglass wrote My Bondage and My Freedom in 1855, partly to recount his continuing struggle for freedom and independence against Northern racism. In 1861 Harriet Jacobs, the first African American female slave to author her own narrative, published Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which depicted her resistance to her master's sexual exploitation and her ultimate achievement of freedom for herself and her two children. The Bondswoman's Narrative-published in 2002 but written in the mid-1850s, apparently by an African American woman who signed herself Hannah Crafts-purports to be the autobiography of a fugitive slave from North Carolina. This unique manuscript, however, is also highly fictionalized, making it an important contribution to the novelization of the slave narrative signaled by the complex authorial voice in Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom and the extensive use of dialogue in Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.

After the abolition of slavery in 1865, former slaves continued to publish their autobiographies, often to show how the rigours of slavery had prepared them for full participation in the post-Civil War social and economic order. In Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (1868), Elizabeth Keckley chronicled her successful rise from enslavement in Virginia and Missouri to employment as the modiste and confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln. Former slaves who joined the post-Civil War working class began to publish their stories later in the 19th century, often articulating their disillusionment with specious promises of freedom in the North in the manner of Norvel Blair's Book for the People...Life of Norvel Blair, of Grundy County, State of Illinois, Written and Published by Him (1880).

The best-selling slave narrative of the late 19th and the early 20th century was Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery (1901), a classic American success story that extolled African American progress and interracial cooperation since the end of slavery in 1865. Notable modern African American autobiographies, such as Richard Wright's Black Boy (1945) and The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), as well as famous novels, such as William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), Ernest J. Gaines's The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), and Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987), bear the imprint of the slave narrative, particularly in probing the origins of psychological as well as social oppression and in their searching critique of the meaning of freedom for 20th-century black and white Americans alike.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Slave narrative | African American History & Literature

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Slave narrative, an account of the life, or a major portion of the life, of a fugitive or former slave, either written or orally related by the slave personally.

# data[].attributes.body
The inspiring slave account that received little attention until the movie adaption was created

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Three and a half years before finishing the production of 12 Years a Slave I was lost.

Three and a half years before finishing the production of 12 Years a Slave I was lost.

I knew I wanted to tell a story about slavery, but where to start?

Finally, I had the idea of a free man kidnapped into bondage, but that's all I had. I was attracted to a story that had a main character any viewer could identify with, a free man who is captured and held against his will. For months I was trying to build a story around this beginning but not having great success until my partner Bianca Stigter, a historian, suggested that I take a look at true accounts of slavery. Within days of beginning our research, Bianca had unearthed Twelve Years a Slave, by Solomon Northup.

"I think I've got it," she said. If ever there was an understatement. The book blew both our minds: the epic range, the details, the adventure, the horror, and the humanity. It read like a film script, ready to be shot. I could not believe that I had never heard of this book. It felt as important as Anne Frank's diary, only published nearly a hundred years before.

I was not alone in being unfamiliar with the book. Of all the people I spoke to not one person knew about Twelve Years a Slave. This was astonishing! An important tale told with so much heart and beauty needed to be more widely recognised. I hope my film can play a part in drawing attention to this important book of courage. Solomon's bravery and life deserve nothing less.
* Extracted from the new edition of Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup, published by Penguin Classics on 5 December.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Twelve Years a Slave: the astonishing book that inspired my film

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Three and a half years before finishing the production of 12 Years a Slave I was lost. Three and a half years before finishing the production of 12 Years a Slave I was lost. I knew I wanted to tell a story about slavery, but where to start?

# data[].attributes.body
http://zorak.monmouth.edu/~afam/Stowe2.htmhttp://zorak.monmouth.edu/~afam/Stowe2.htm
A poster demonstrating the book's popularity in Northern States.

# data[].attributes.body
"Let us look at Jim Crow for the criminal he is and what he has done to one life multiplied millions of times over these United States and the world. He walks us on a tightrope from birth."
~Rosa Parks

# data[].attributes.headline
"Well, you're innocent, ain't you!  Does three hundred dollars lay around every day for peole to pick you?  Some folks think the nigger ain't far from here." ~Twain p.58 Huckleberry Finn Ch.11

# data[].attributes.subject
"Well, you're innocent, ain't you!  Does three hundred dollars lay around every day for peole to pick you?  Some folks think the nigger ain't far from here." ~Twain p.58 Huckleberry Finn Ch.11

# data[].attributes.body
This quote explains how financial necessities and the power of money drive people to do immoral deeds such as capturing the runaway slave Jim.

# data[].attributes.headline
"Maybe you can get him to believe that Jim is your nigger. ~Twain p.219 Huckleberry Finn Ch.31

# data[].attributes.subject
"Maybe you can get him to believe that Jim is your nigger. ~Twain p.219 Huckleberry Finn Ch.31

# data[].attributes.body
The practice of slavery is so widespread and commonplace that many people would not doubt whether a young boy such as Huck could own a slave twice his age.

# data[].attributes.headline
This document demonstrates how songs continue to flourish as a way for African Americans to portray emotions

# data[].attributes.subject
This document demonstrates how songs continue to flourish as a way for African Americans to portray emotions

# data[].attributes.body
This is an example of a powerful song and how religion impacted the songs

# data[].attributes.headline
"There was a free nigger there from Ohio...They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain't the wust. They said he could vote when he was at home."  ~Twain p.27 Huckleberry Finn Ch.6

# data[].attributes.subject
"There was a free nigger there from Ohio...They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain't the wust. They said he could vote when he was at home."  ~Twain p.27 Huckleberry Finn Ch.6

# data[].attributes.body
Prior to the 15th ammendment, even educated black men were denied the right to vote in several states which magnified the issue of slavery within the and sought to force the African American community into a lower status.

# data[].attributes.headline
"Yes—en I’s rich now come to look at it. I owns myself, en I’s wuth eight hund’d dollars." ~Twain p.47 Huckleberry Finn Ch. 8 

# data[].attributes.subject
"Yes—en I’s rich now come to look at it. I owns myself, en I’s wuth eight hund’d dollars." ~Twain p.47 Huckleberry Finn Ch. 8 

# data[].attributes.body
Prior to the Civil War, slaves were stripped of all possessions to the point of not even owning themselves. This quote in particular showcases how the human possessive driven mindset was so ingrained in society that Tom bases his entire wealth-and in part self worth- on how much he is valued by Miss Watson.