A statue was unveiled in Avoyelles Parish on Sunday to commemorate the 165th anniversary of the liberation of a wrongfully enslaved man. Solomon Northup was born a free black man in upstate New York in 1807; Melissa Howell, a direct descendant, says in 1841, two men approached him with what seemed to be a lucrative offer.
“They had heard that he was quite the violinist, and said, ‘We could pay you a nice wage, why don’t you come with us for a day?’ And so he did, and then that decision changed his life for nearly 12 years,” Howell explained.
That change was not for the better. Howell says the men tricked Northup into slavery.
“They wined and dined him, happened to drug him, and he woke enslaved, in chains, in a slave town in the Capitol,” Howell said.
Northup’s 12-year slavery journey ultimately led him to Louisiana, where a carpenter named Samuel Bass befriended him and ultimately helped him escape. Howell says the location of the statue of Northup, who was given the name “Platt Hamilton” by his slave masters, is very significant.
“The moment that Platt Hamilton emerges from slavery, and steps forth into his reclaimed freedom,” Howell said.
The statue was sculpted by Wesley Wofford. Northup’s story is immortalized in his 1853 autobiography, “12 Years a Slave,” which was adapted in 2014 into an Academy Award-winning motion picture of the same name. A screening of that film was held over the weekend in Marksville.