Search Results for: slavery

The Kidnapping Case: Seizure and Recovery

Solomon [Northup], the subject of the following narrative, is a free colored citizen of the United States; was born in Essex County, New York, about the year 1808; became early a resident of Washington County, and married there in 1829. His father and mother resided in the county of Washington about fifty years, till their decease, and were both free. With his wife and children he resided at Saratoga Springs in the Winter of 1841, and while there was employed by two gentlemen to drive a team South, at the rate of a dollar a day. In fulfilment of his employment he preceded to New York, and having taken out free papers, to show that he was a citizen, he went on to Washington City, where he arrived the second day of April, the same year, and put up at Gadsby’s hotel. Soon after he arrived, he felt unwell and went to bed.

While suffering with severe pain some persons came in, and, seeing the condition he was in, proposed to give him some medicine and did so. That is the last thing of which he had any recollection until he found himself chained to the floor of Williams’ slave pen in this City, and hand-cuffed. In the course of a few hours, James H. Burch, a slave-dealer, came in, and the colored man asked him to take the irons off from him, and wanted to know why they were put on. Burch told him it was none of his business. The colored man said he as free and told where he was born. Burch called in a man by the name of Ebenezer Rodbury, and they two stripped the man and laid him across a bench, Rodbury holding him down by his writs. Burch whipped him with a paddle until he broke that, and then with a cat-o’-nine tails, giving him a hundred lashes, and he swore he would kill him if he ever stated to any one that he was a free man.

– From the New York Times’ 1853 coverage of the Solomon Northup case. That same year, Northup published a best-selling memoir of his kidnapping into slavery, and remarkable escape. 161 years later, the film adaptation of Twelve Years a Slave won Best Picture at the Oscars.

Image: British Library, Flickr

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The Bohemians: The San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature

Ben Tarnoff | The Bohemians, Penguin Press | March 2014 | 46 minutes (11,380 words)

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For our Longreads Member Pick, we’re thrilled to share the opening chapter of The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature, the book by Ben Tarnoff, published by The Penguin Press. Read more…

‘Still, God Helps You’

Longreads Pick

The story of William Mawwin, who was kidnapped in Sudan when he was six years old and sold into slavery. Mawwin eventually escaped, and, at 34, is going to college in the U.S.:

“In the morning I cook, bring his tea, black tea with milk, his bread. I cook the bread, too. I fold his bed. I cook his lunch, usually chicken. I do his laundry, using a bucket with water and soap. Lay his clothes in the sun to dry. Master would pray five times a day, he was really into the Quran. Then I start going to cattle camp, rotating with his youngest son, three months younger than me, the son he loved more than anything. When this son was around, I had to leave, go to cattle camp, get yelled at, beaten. One time, when I lost one of the cows, Ahmad, the fourth son, stabbed me, told me find the cow or he will kill me. After I find it, he still slaps me, beats me, gets really rough.

“For four years, I didn’t go anywhere. Master told me: Your parents did not want you, now I’m taking care of you. All this is going to be yours one day. I will find you a wife. These are your brothers. You are part of our family. This will be your special cow. So you feel motivated, work very hard. But it is psychological manipulation. Sweet talk. Mind control.”

Published: Aug 5, 2013
Length: 54 minutes (13,599 words)

3 Stories from Young Journalists Honored at the Livingston Awards

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The Livingston Awards are handed out every year to celebrate outstanding work from journalists under 35. Here are this year’s winning stories, honored this week in New York: 

“Slavery’s Last Stronghold” (John D. Sutter & Edythe McNamee, CNN.com)

International Reporting winner: A trip to Mauritania, where an estimated 10% to 20% of the population lives in slavery.

“The Things They Leave Behind” (Rachel Manteuffel, Washingtonian)

National Reporting winner: A closer look at the letters, mementos and other artifacts left behind at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

“In God’s Name” (Alexandra Zayas and Kathleen Flynn, Tampa Bay Times)

Local Reporting winner: An investigation into the abuse of children at unlicensed religious group homes in Florida.

Reading List: 6 Stories for the Science-Fiction Newbie

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Hilary Armstrong is a literature student at U.C. Santa Barbara and a Longreads intern. She also happens to love science fiction, so she put together a #longreads list for sci-fi newbies.

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Have you heard? Science fiction is “in”—nerds at the movies, nerds everywhere. This is thrilling if you are familiar with the genre, but what if you never got into sci-fi in the first place? Where would you start?

Since its inception (ha), speculative fiction has worked as social commentary, satire, and a creative answer to the question “What if?” Here are my personal picks to get you started.

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1. Nightfall, Isaac Asimov (1941)

No sci-fi list is complete without Asimov, and not only due to his creation of the Laws of Robotics. If you like this story, I would suggest moving straight on to his “robopsychologist” Susan Calvin stories.

2. The Veldt, Ray Bradbury (1950)

Bradbury, of Martian Chronicles fame and beyond, writes here about the danger of integrating technology too far into human developmental psychology.

3. Bloodchild, Octavia Butler (1995)

A look at the symbiotic relationship between aliens and humans. If you’ve seen any horror movie featuring extraterrestrials, you’ve pretty much seen them all, but sci-fi stories like this one explore more “alien” ideas than the simple “monster from space” trope.

4. Robot, by Helena Bell (2012)

Robots! Here’s a short and wicked story from Bell, a contemporary sci-fi writer who touches on slavery, mortality, and the horror of a slow decline in life.

5. The Country of the Blind, H.G. Wells (1904)

Wells (War of the Worlds, Time Machine) is the oldest pick on my list, and this story imagines just what its title implies.

6. Understand, by Ted Chiang (1991)

Chiang addresses PTSD, advancements in medical science, and the horror of not trusting your own mind. This story is probably one of the best “straight” sci-fi examples on this list—the clear “What if?” develops steadily, and pushes the reader along to its surprising conclusion. Entire novels have been written in this style—Max Barry’s Machine Man is my personal favorite.

Bonus Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Suggestions

I also recommend this list for more great reading material, and if you want to start with something cyberpunky, look out for Neal Stephenson or William Gibson—they’re mostly novelists, and definitely worth your time.

(cover via umbc.edu)

U.S. Out of Vermont!

Longreads Pick

A secession movement has been blossoming in the liberal state of Vermont:

“In Vermont, Bryan says, there is ‘a commonality of people opposed to large distant bureaucracies telling them how to live their lives. It’s the decentralist commonality of the libertarian right and what I’d call the communitarian left. The right opposes big government, the left opposes big business. It’s really about governing on a human scale.’

“As Bryan notes, Vermont has radical genes, a history rife with alternative thinking. Ethan Allen fought against the British Crown as fiercely as he would fight the Americans. Vermont under Allen produced, in 1777, the first constitution in English to outlaw slavery and allow citizens without property to vote. Nearly two centuries later, Scott Nearing chose Vermont to escape what he called ‘the American Oligarchy, the American Way of Life, the American Century, the American Empire.’ When he published Living the Good Life in 1954, it became a touchstone for the first generation of the simple-living movement, the hippies and Luddites who in the 1960s flooded into the state to follow Nearing’s example. Vermont went almost overnight from a right-wing backwater to a leftist mecca that eventually put in office America’s only avowedly socialist senator, Bernie Sanders.”

Published: Mar 19, 2013
Length: 22 minutes (5,645 words)

As US immigration policy has focused on deporting the greatest possible number of undocumented migrants, no matter what their situation, a great many Salvadoran deportees, some of whom grew up in the United States and hardly speak Spanish, have found themselves back in their country of birth. A number of these unwilling returnees are mareros, who either join the local branch of their organization or try to flee back home (that is, to the United States), joining a migrant trail across Mexico used by hundreds of thousands of would-be US immigrants every year. Along the way, the mareros are often recruited by Mexican drug traffickers, who have developed highly lucrative sidelines in white slavery, child prostitution, and migrant extortion. Assault, robbery, and rape are now an expected part of the migrant journey through Mexico.

“In the New Gangland of El Salvador.” — Alma Guillermoprieto, The New York Review of Books

See more #longreads from Alma Guillermoprieto

In the New Gangland of El Salvador

Longreads Pick

As US immigration policy has focused on deporting the greatest possible number of undocumented migrants, no matter what their situation, a great many Salvadoran deportees, some of whom grew up in the United States and hardly speak Spanish, have found themselves back in their country of birth. A number of these unwilling returnees are mareros, who either join the local branch of their organization or try to flee back home (that is, to the United States), joining a migrant trail across Mexico used by hundreds of thousands of would-be US immigrants every year. Along the way, the mareros are often recruited by Mexican drug traffickers, who have developed highly lucrative sidelines in white slavery, child prostitution, and migrant extortion. Assault, robbery, and rape are now an expected part of the migrant journey through Mexico.

Published: Oct 21, 2011
Length: 16 minutes (4,194 words)

The Women’s Crusade

Longreads Pick

In the 19th Century, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape.

Published: Aug 17, 2009
Length: 22 minutes (5,711 words)