If you haven’t heard about the story of Solomon Northup, you will hear about it soon.
It’s about to become a major motion picture featuring Brad Pitt, Alfre Woodard, Paul Giamatti and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
If you’re not the movie-going type, you can experience Northup’s spellbinding story on audio book, performed by actor and humanitarian Louis Gossett Jr.
Free the Slaves will receive 20 percent of the proceeds if you enter FREETHESLAVES into the promo code window when downloading the audio book from Downpour.com.
Originally published in 1853, Northup’s autobiography was an immediate bombshell in the national debate over slavery leading up to the Civil War.
He was born free, but was kidnapped and sold into slavery.
He toiled in bondage for a dozen years before his rescue.
Northup’s true story validated Harriett Beecher Stowe’s fictional account of Southern slavery in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which had significantly changed public opinion in favor of abolition.
Frederick Douglass said this about Twelve Years a Slave: “Its truth is far greater than fiction.”
The audio book is receiving praise as well.
“Gossett infuses the words with a quiet, seething power,” says AudioFile Magazine.
Twelve Years a Slave was lost to history by the early 20th century, when it could not be located by libraries, stores or catalogues. Then a 12-year-old avid reader in central Louisiana ‐ the future Sue Eakin, Ph.D. ‐ reached upon the library shelf of a planation home and discovered a dusty copy of the book. Eakin went on to write her master’s thesis about Solomon Northup’s story, and after decades of research, produced the first authenticated edition of the book in 1968.
