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Solomon Northup's harrowing tale has been made into a Hollywood film. The movie is based on his memoir 12 Years A Slave, published in 1853. Northrup was born a free man but kidnapped and sold into slavery. Movie is so powerful some critics walked out while others left in tears.Of all the slaves owned by Edwin Epps, a 23-year-old woman was by far the best at picking cotton. Her hands moved so quickly they could hardly be seen as she worked from dawn until dusk, with only a 15-minute break for a meagre lunch of cold bacon. Whereas most slaves...

An Indiana county judge has held that the Hoosier state's right-to-work law is unconstitutional based on an Indiana constitutional provision that originated in 1816 and was meant to limit slavery. Lake County Judge John Sedia, however, delayed implementation of the ruling until it could be appealed. The decision is almost certain to be overturned. The suit was brought by the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150, AFL-CIO and some individuals. In essence, they argue that the duty of fair representation is the same thing as slavery. This is not the first time the plaintiffs have made such an outlandish...

There’s another attempt afoot to collect reparations for the appalling effects of the slave trade and slavery. This time it’s certain of the Caribbean countries demanding that Britain, Holland and France should cough up compensation for those horrors. The unfortunate point about such attempts to collect money being that actually, in the British case at least, the money should be flowing the other way. To the British, not from them that is. Even the most basic economic analysis proves this so I’m always amused by the repeated attempts to make us pay rather than collect. Before anyone gets too hot...

Homaidan al-Turki had been held at the Limon Correctional Facility and was moved to the Federal Correctional Institution Englewood, a minimum security prison. ... Al-Turki's request to serve out his sentence in Saudi Arabia was denied in March by then prisons' chief Tom Clements. Clements was shot and killed the following week when he answered his front door.

In his 1835 book Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville noted that for Americans, "equality is their idol." Among such a democratic people, he reports, "there are certain epochs at which the passion they entertain for it swells to the height of fury." They prefer equality in freedom, he noted, but if "they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery." Even barbarism, servitude, and poverty are acceptable offerings to "this irresistible passion." The same-sex marriage debate might have focused on the purpose of sexuality, or the nature of homosexuality, or the etiology of marriage. Instead, the dominant...

On September 3, 1838, Frederick Bailey undertook the riskiest journey of his life. The 20-year-old slave made a daring escape from his master in Baltimore, and with his newfound freedom came a new name -- Frederick Douglass... After Douglass’ attempt to escape slavery two years prior was betrayed by a fellow slave, he had been jailed, sent to Baltimore by his master and hired out to work in the city’s shipyards. Undeterred, Douglass vowed to try to escape again on September 3, 1838, although he knew the risk. "I felt assured that if I failed in this attempt, my case...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)One of the more stirring and heartfelt songs from the civil rights era is When Will We Be Paid, by the Chicago soul and gospel group The Staple Singers. In plainspoken but soulful terms Mavis Staples unpacks the backbone of American prosperity: black slave labor. We worked this country From shore to shore Our women cooked all your food And washed all your clothes We picked cotton and laid the railroad steel Worked our hands down to the bone at your lumber mill The Staples released the song in 1970 on We’ll Get Over, their second album on the Stax...

**SNIP** Despite the chatter from the right about concerns over global warming being overblown, Gore expressed optimism about a vibrancy in environmental activism. He especially expressed excitement that deniers are being “hit politically.” “They’re being subjected to ridicule … the ability of the raging deniers to stop progress is waning every single day.”

Liberals love their fantasies about slavery in America. It makes them feel superior to insist America was founded by “Old White Men” (OWM) who loved slavery. They refuse to acknowledge that those same OWMs often freed their own slaves although not until their death. They love their own fairy tale that, “freeing slaves had nothing to do with the Civil War.” Allowing that would force them to credit Lincoln and the (hated) Republicans with freeing the slaves – a gross violation of the false liberal narrative of American history. They are so desperate to keep the truth of who were...

During Revolutionary times, to be “enlightened” often meant having enough compassion that you were willing to free your slaves — but only upon your death. So when founding fathers such as George Washington began to pass away around 1800, their slaves were set free into a country that had no desire for them. The result, as James Ciment writes in this thorough account of an experimental nation, was to send free blacks whence they came, to Africa. Liberia was the country created by freed American slaves who, perversely, became slave owners themselves.

After attacking Bill O'Reilly's history last week, I'll defend his sociology this week. On Monday, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell ridiculed Fox News' O'Reilly for saying that single motherhood is responsible for the the high black crime rate. O'Reilly said, quite correctly: "The reason there is so much violence and chaos in the black precincts is the disintegration of the African-American family. Right now, about 73 percent of all black babies are born out of wedlock. That drives poverty. And the lack of involved fathers leads to young boys growing up resentful and unsupervised. And it has nothing to do with slavery....

Today’s term is psycho-political projection |siko'p?'litiko'pr?'jekSH?n|.  This contraction of words labels the political application of the word projection in the Oxford Dictionary of Sociology, “…in a psychoanalytic context, it describes the unconscious process in which the individual attributes to others his or her own emotions and impulses.  Sigmund Freud regarded it as a common defence mechanism, used by the ego to control unacceptable feelings, thereby helping to reduce anxiety.” This is the syndrome that I hereby assign to those of the LEFT who so freely launch accusations for which they themselves harbor a secret sense of guilt.  The pattern for...

In Easton, Md., an untold story of free African-Americans is being discovered through bits of glass, shards of pottery and oyster shells. Piece by piece, archaeologists and historians from two universities and the community are uncovering the history of The Hill, which they believe is the earliest settlement of free African-Americans in the United States, dating to 1790. Treme, in New Orleans, is recognized as the oldest free black community in the nation, dating to 1812. But researchers say that could change based on findings from the Easton dig. "It's not just a black story. It's an American story," said...

Leaders of more than a dozen Caribbean countries are launching a united effort to seek compensation from three European nations for what they say is the lingering legacy of the Atlantic slave trade. The Caribbean Community, a regional organization that typically focuses on rather dry issues such as economic integration, has taken up the cause of compensation for slavery and the genocide of native peoples and is preparing for what would likely be a drawn-out battle with the governments of Britain, France and the Netherlands.....

Yes, there's a war on women in America. But it's not the phony "war" that tampon-hurling feminists are always shrieking about -- as they did last week in Texas to protest tougher regulations on dangerous late-term abortion clinics. No, I'm talking about a real war on women waged by Saudi royals and elites who've imported human trafficking and abuse of domestic workers onto U.S. soil. Meet Meshael Alayban of Saudi Arabia, wife of Abdulrahman bin Nasser bin Abdulaziz al-Saud. She apparently thought we Americans would look the other way at human trafficking and abuse of domestic workers -- you know,...

Freepers, I don't post much, but have supported FreeRepublic for over a decade. I believe this film is important enough to share with all freepers. We simply must get the word out on the history of our country and how that history has been hidden by Academia to remove the role of Democratic Party Racism. I am convinced if more Black Americans knew the history of our country, they would not vote for the Democratic party. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ewUerLPHPEs

Obama is backing these savages. Thank heaven there are still decent human beings in Congress: Intelligence panels cut off aid to Syrian rebels, Obama says he will arm them anyway "Syria: Christian Girl Falls Victim to Horrendous Crimes" Persecution. org, July 4, 2013 Rape and atrocities on a young Christian in Qusair ICC Note: Troubling news continues to pour out of Syria as the war-torn country becomes a hotbed for religious extremism. Witnesses report civilians suffer immensely at the hands of rebel-imposed Shari’ah law. One, a young Christian girl from rebel-controlled Qusair, was systematically married, raped and divorced 15 times,...

By Chris Mitchell, Middle Eastern Bureau Chief JERUSALEM, Israel -- From the West Coast of Africa to the deserts of Sinai, Bedouin tribes are conducting a human trafficking trade on a massive scale. It's no secret. The trade reaps millions of dollars and deals with human misery. It could be stopped but so far no one has dared. "By that time I had lost sense (sensation) in both my hands," an Eritrean torture victim told CBN News. "It was a result of the accumulated torture but mainly because (both) of my wrists were tied up so tightly, (and I was)...

It was another devastating blow for black Africa’s most powerless from the world’s most powerful black American. Like in his 2009 African visit when he visited a former European slave depot in Ghana, during his recently concluded 2013 African tour U.S. President Barack Obama again deemed that the defunct trans-Atlantic slave trade was the only past black African slavery worthy of his attention. While paying homage to the victims of the trans-Atlantic trade is obviously necessary for myriad reasons, the U.S. president failed once more not only to mention Africa’s other historical slave trade, Arab slavery, that also involved millions...

One weekday morning in April 2004, a Libyan girl named Soraya was accorded one of her nation’s highest honors: Col. Moammar Khadafy was visiting her school, and Soraya alone had been chosen to present him with a bouquet. “You can’t imagine the excitement,” she recalled. “To see Khadafy in person . . . His face had been known to me since I was born.” Soraya was ushered into a makeshift dressing room, where she changed into traditional garb for the Libyan woman: red pants and tunic, small hat. “My heart was beating a hundred miles a minute,” Soraya said. She...