Blog by Artemesia
Stanberry
“I did it, I saw 12
Years a Slave”
From the movie: He better be lucky he is free and white. This is said by a slave owner in the film who
thought he was duped by a white man. You know that commercial that said it is a
good thing it is not this or that,
that it is better to be this and
that- for example nuts and bolts is better than nuts or bolts? Well, Solomon Northup knew that the “and” was
extremely important because being free and black rendered you nothing more than
potential property. Being free and white, just resulted in anger at being duped
by a fellow white man. I just came from seeing “12 years a Slave.” I do
recommend it- highly.
I am always reluctant
to see movies such as this as I read and study the history of slavery in this
country and its aftermath, and unlike so many in this country, I can’t
sugarcoat the brutality of the institution. So hearing how real it was, I didn’t
think I could actually see it at a movie theater. But I did finally see it
because there are threemovies that I want to see (Homefront- I do like Jason
Stratham in movies, Best Man Holiday and Black Nativity and didn’t want to
venture out to see either before seeing 12 years). You know what it is like to
stand in line to get onto a rollercoaster that you really don’t want to ride,
but once you are strapped in, you are in it for the ride. That’s how I felt.
When the clicks made as the roller coaster ascends, your stomach churns for you
know what is in store for you. The tears
started flowing in my eyes during the previews.
There was a movie- I forget the name of it, but it involves fighting and
Woody Harrelson is in it- that had a character named Rodney. And he ended up
missing and his brother says I am not going to give up on finding Rodney. My cousin, who remains in prison for crimes
he did not commit, name is Rodney and I’ve been in a 17 year battle to free and
exonerate him. He is on my mind almost 24 hours a day and sometimes the
feelings are so raw that the mere mention of his name brings tears to my eyes.
Tears because he remains incarcerated and tears because I feel as if I failed
him by not being able to bring about justice.
This is what I live with daily.
Anyway, that started the tears and then the Black Nativity preview- I
mean you have a story of struggle and redemption with gospel music as a sound
track. C’mon.
Anyway, when the previews ended, I braced myself for what I
knew would be a roller coaster of emotions as the life of Solomon Northup would
be played out on the big screen before me.
Northup was a talented violinist with a stable family life parallel to
the brutal institution of slavery that existed. He resided in New York. In
1841, as he was visiting our nation’s capital to take advantage of what free
men take for granted, the opportunity to perform a task on one’s own terms and
to be compensated justly for it. But he
was free AND Black, not free AND White, so he became a cog in the machine of
capitalism-the machine that operated on free labor and considered people as
property to reconcile the notion that all men/people are created free. As one of his more brutal masters said in the
movie, they are my property so I do not have any qualms about treating them as
such. The same person, as I recalled,
compared them to baboons- he had no problem fathering children by forcing
himself on what he saw as baboons. Solomon
is devastated to find himself in this position and when he insists that he is
free, he is beaten to a bloody pulp until he could leave that holding cell
without uttering to anyone that he is a free man named Solomon. Instead, he is a slave named Platt. It is now
when his eyes begin to open to the parallel universe that he and his family
certainly knew to have existed but who believed in the Declaration of
Independence, not realizing that a compromise in the United States Constitution
was to allow runaway slaves, re property, to be returned to their property
owners. But, he was a free man, what
should that matter to him. Ah, but he
was free AND black, not free AND white.
There was money in slavery, relatively few owned slaves, many, many more
benefitted from the institution- including the slave catchers, the free people
catchers, the owners of the holding pen (Paul Giamatti, it will take me awhile
to stop hating you-just kidding, but don’t feel like putting an lol in this
post- watch the film, you’ll understand).
Solomon witnessed the love of a mother for her children and the
apathetic nature of those dealing in slaves had towards keeping that mother and
her children together. He witnessed the
extreme nature of the jealous wife of a slave holder who couldn’t understand
why her husband preferred, what was it- a baboon- over her- I can’t dare lie in
bed with you, wish I could remember the rest of her dialogue. To which he said,
wife, don’t make me choose you or her because… well, go and watch the movie.
The fragile nature of freedom, the destruction of families, the
process of dehumanization, the strength of perseverance of the human spirit,
the failings of man (and woman) were captured in this film. Solomon Northup had to remain vigilant to
obtain his freedom and he had to develop a level of trust in the basic humanity
of others, even those who did not look like him. I don’t want to say too much
for those who haven’t seen the movie or read the book, but within each of us is
a sense of humanity, even when we see brutality and can live comfortably living
alongside it, we can be challenged to escape our comfort zone for the benefit
of others when asked to do so. It took a
leap faith for Solomon Northup to trust others after having relied on said trust
led him to an institution of slavery and almost got him killed. But if we lose this faith and this trust, and
this belief that there are universal truths, then we render ourselves hostage
to the actions of those deserving of nothing.
During the 1990s, I recall watching a movie about the drug sentencing
laws, Guilt by Association, starring Mercedes Ruell. It was based on true incidents involving the
conspiracy theory (ie the portion of the drug sentencing act of 1988 that encouraged
“snitching” to use popular vernacular, to get a sentence reduced). The premise
was a mother who had a boyfriend who was dealing in drugs. She didn’t know, but
because she answered a phone call when a dealer called and told her boyfriend
that he had a call on the line, she became part of the conspiracy and ended up
getting a lot of prison time. After
spending years in prison, she was finally able to get her prison sentence
reduced. As she was walking out, the
cameras panned to the women around her, people deserving to be free just
staring, as they would remain in the system indefinitely. I had that flashback
as “12 Years” concluded. “12 Years a
Slave” and then finally free, as Northup rode off in what one would not and
could not dare call a sunset after what the physical and mental torture he’d
endured, Patsy and so many others remained behind. The legal institution of slavery ended in
1865 with the passage of the 13th Amendment, and then another form
of slavery began, after all the 13th Amendment reads “Neither
Slavery nor involuntary servitude, except
as punishment for crime whereof the party have been duly convicted, shall
exist within the United States, or any place subject to its jurisdiction. People,
as was the case during slavery, found a way to build wealth off of free labor.
Again, a small number of people with an army of soldiers willing to use other
human beings because to be free AND white became a bit more fragile in
post-slavery America, so there had to be some sort continuation of social
capital attached to skin color. I invite you to read Douglas Blackmon’s book Slavery
By Another Name AND/or watch the PBS documentaryhttp://video.pbs.org/video/2176766758/).There
is so much more that can be written, but
I will bring this to a conclusion.
To Nick Cannon, I say more movies do need to be made about
those enslaved in the mode that Steve McQueen made this one. I understand what
you mean about showing positive images of African Americans and how people enslaved
were not savages and had identities, that Africa was not a dark continent
waiting for the transatlantic slave trade to come about to change lives for the
better under the guidance of Christianity, but far too many people do not
understand the true nature of slavery, the fragility of freedom, the wealth
that was built off of uncompensated free labor and the generational
consequences of the institution. John Conyers can’t even get a bill passed
about studying reparations (H.R. 40), but Ronald Reagan can use the term “welfare
queen” and get people to focus on his version of a welfare queen wanting
unearned benefits and less on Steve McQueen’s portrayal of Patsy, who never got
the benefits she and so many others earned for building this country’s wealth.
We can’t wish Patsy away, we can’t wish this history away. This isn’t to say
dwell on it, it isn’t to say hate people, it isn’t to say that we haven’t come
a long way as a country; rather, it is to say remember it as a legacy of this
country and to stop perpetuating the same mistakes of using human beings as
commodities. Reading Michelle Alexander’s
book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness and the
recent ACLU report on the number of nonviolent offenders given life sentences (https://www.aclu.org/living-death-sentenced-die-behind-bars-what)
and collectively ask why does this continue to happen and who does it benefit?
For the record, and this should go without saying, I believe
we are all human beings first and foremost. I have and will continue to have
acquaintances of all colors of the rainbow.
The necessity to remember, embrace, and learn from the past does not
diminish who we are and can continue to be as a nation. Remember an episode from A Different World when Dwayne Wayne and Ron Johnson are at a
football game? They come back to their car to see someone scrawling with black
paint N----r on the car. It was actually Nigg before Dwayne was able to stop
the person. Well each of the individuals are placed in a holding cell because a
fight broke out. The person doing the
spray painting starts saying how his great grandparents immigrated to this
country and made a way for themselves with nothing to which Dwayne Wayne says
very emotionally, my ancestors built this country. The police intervenes, the officer is a white
gentleman with a southern accent speaks and Ron and Dwanye dismissed him,
thinking he didn’t understand their struggles. It turns out that the officer
had marched with Dr. King and understood the struggles and attempted to diffuse
the situation and say you don’t know what a person is about by looking at them.
As the individuals were released and heading back to the car, someone had
spelled out the read of the N’word on the car.
Dwanye, Ron and the person who started the word looked at one another
and said I’ll see you next week- for community service. It was a look that said
let’s start here, to understand one another, so that we all can move forward.
That’s how I feel. Forgive me for taking some liberties with this A Different
World episode but it’s been probably 2 decades since I saw it. 12 Years
a Slave, see the movie.
Peace,
Artemesia Stanberry
All
views expressed in these blogs are mine, as an individual citizen. Sometimes
one needs more space than just twitter and Facebook to express one’s
views. This is the purpose of this blog, nothing more and nothing less. With
regard to the reference to Rodney K. Stanberry, more information about this
wrongful conviction can be found at www.freerodneystanberry.com
or www.freerodneystanberry.com/blog
