12 Years a Slave Movie
This week we are watching 12 Years a Slave as part of our lesson on slavery in the United States. To guide your viewing, read the following questions and come to the viewing with an eye towards answering them. Take quick notes during the film, small bullets to help you remember when you sit down to write out your full answers on a separate sheet.
Sexual violence
Black women often faced a “double burden” under slavery; they were black, and thus subject to the same restrictions placed upon all slaves, but they were also women, which meant they were objects of sexual desire to white masters. Even in committed relationships, enslaved women were expected to take care of the cabin and raise the children. How does 12 Years a Slave explore the additional burdens of being a black woman under slavery?
White women violence
In Southern History Across the Color Line, Nell Painter discusses the relationship between white mistresses, themselves subject to the patriarchal restrictions of 19th Century society, and enslaved women. In older schools of thought, historians had considered southern women as secret abolitionists, sympathetic to the plight of their enslaved women, an interracial sisterhood of sorts. Painter expressly rejects this characterization by demonstrating the routine violence used by white women to maintain racial hierarchies within the plantation household. And since white women often oversaw those slaves working in or new the home, they had much more frequent contact with enslaved women and children than the master or overseers might. How does 12 Years a Slave reveal the violent relationship that existed between white mistresses and enslaved women?
Poor whites’ role in maintaining slavery
As slavery became more profitable in the 19th C., the number of people who could afford slaves shrank. By the time of the Civil War roughly ¼ of southern whites owned at least one slave, but very few could afford one of the mega-plantations where dozens or hundreds of slaves would work. Men like Epps or Ford were hardly representative of most white southerners. Yet, men who would never own slaves themselves played important roles in maintaining the institution. They rented slaves from wealthy neighbors, they served on slave patrols to police black movement, they worked as overseers and sometimes even worked alongside slaves in order to settle debts or out of desperation. Yet, a class consciousness never truly develops here among the lowest ranks of southern society. How does 12 Years a Slave present the role of non-elite whites in maintaining the system of slavery?
Enslaved Resistance and Survival Strategies
As a free man, Solomon Northrup would have been used to casual, everyday racism in the North, but none of that could have prepared him for what awaited in slavery. African Americans adopted a number of strategies to endure the harsh conditions and constant violence that accompanied chattel slavery. At the same time, they found creative ways to resist their condition and improve their chances for a better life, even temporarily. Feigning illness, breaking tools, temporarily running away, and hurting draft animals were all forms of resistance. Sometimes slaves used more violent methods, such as poison, putting ground up glass or feces into cooked food, and suicide as a way to escape their situation. How does 12 Years a Slave show these and other methods of resistance and survival among the slaves Solomon encounters?
The role of Christianity
During the 19th Century, southerners used varying tactics to justify slavery. Particularly as sectional tensions rose, southerners switched from defending slavery as a necessary evil, a tactic common among the founding generation, to calling it a positive institution that was beneficial for black and white alike. One of the most popular defenses of how slavery helped people was to turn to Christianity; slavery was sanctioned by the bible, they argued, and moreover by introducing their slaves to Christ they were saving them, as opposed to their traditional beliefs or the forms of Islam that were widely practiced in Sub-Saharan Africa at the time. African Americans, however, found entirely different lessons than those their masters sought to instill; lessons about suffering, redemption, and everlasting peace. Moses, a man who leads his people out of slavery to a promised land of milk and honey, was particularly popular. How does 12 Years a Slave highlight the role Christianity played in the lives of both master and enslaved alike?
Family separation
One of the most pernicious aspects of enslavement was family separation. Individual family members being sold away to different plantations, even transferred out of state, were a common feature of black life under slavery. How does 12 Years a Slave highlight this issue? Consider both Solomon Northrup’s experience as well as the people he meets during his ordeal.
Write your answers to these questions and turn them in on Brightspace on Monday, November 15 by the end of the day.
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