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Solomon Northup's Odyssey
''Solomon Northup's Odyssey'', reissued as ''Half Slave, Half Free'', is a 1984 American television film based on the 1853 autobiography ''Twelve Years a Slave'' by Solomon Northup, a free black man who in 1841 was kidnapped and sold into slavery. The film, which aired on PBS, was directed by Gordon Parks with Avery Brooks starring as the titular character. It was the second film to be funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, following '' A House Divided: Denmark Vesey's Rebellion'' in 1982. Parks returned to direct the film after years of absence. He chose to work in the Deep South and to collaborate with a crew of mixed races. The film first aired on PBS on , 1984 and as part of PBS's ''American Playhouse'' anthology television series in the following year. It was released on video under the title ''Half Slave, Half Free''. ''Solomon Northup's Odyssey'' was the first film adaptation of ''Twelve Years a Slave''. A second film adaptation, the Academy Award for Best Pict ...
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Twelve Years A Slave
''Twelve Years a Slave'' is an 1853 memoir and slave narrative by American Solomon Northup as told to and written by David Wilson. Northup, a black man who was born free in New York state, details himself being tricked to go to Washington, D.C., where he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South. He was in bondage for 12 years in Louisiana before he was able to secretly get information to friends and family in New York, who in turn secured his release with the aid of the state. Northup's account provides extensive details on the slave markets in Washington, D.C. and New Orleans, and describes at length cotton and sugar cultivation and slave treatment on major plantations in Louisiana. The work was published eight years before the Civil War by Derby & Miller of Auburn, New York, soon after Harriet Beecher Stowe's best-selling novel about slavery, ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (1852), to which it lent factual support. Northup's book, dedicated to Stowe, sold 30,000 copies, ma ...
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Joe Seneca
Joe Seneca (January 14, 1919 – August 15, 1996) was an American actor, singer, and songwriter. He is best known for Willie Brown in ''Crossroads'' (1986), Dr. Meadows in ''The Blob'' (1988), and Dr. Hanes in ''The Cosby Show''. Life and career Seneca was born Joel Seneca McGhee, Jr. in Cleveland, Ohio. Before his acting career, he belonged to the R&B singing group The Three Riffs, which was active from the late 1940s and performed at upscale supper clubs in New York City. He was also a songwriter and had big hits with " Talk to Me", sung by Little Willie John, and "Break It to Me Gently," which was a smash hit by Brenda Lee in 1962 and by Juice Newton in 1982. In the 1982 film, ''The Verdict,'' Seneca plays the supporting role of Dr. Thompson, a small-town women's hospital physician brought in by attorney Frank Galvin (Paul Newman) to support his belief that two famous doctors' incompetence left his client alive but in a coma. Arguably his most well-known roles are that of bl ...
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Savannah, Georgia
Savannah ( ) is the oldest city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia and is the county seat of Chatham County, Georgia, Chatham County. Established in 1733 on the Savannah River, the city of Savannah became the Kingdom of Great Britain, British British America, colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. A strategic port city in the American Revolution and during the American Civil War, Savannah is today an industrial center and an important Atlantic seaport. It is Georgia's Georgia (U.S. state)#Major cities, fifth-largest city, with a 2020 United States Census, 2020 U.S. Census population of 147,780. The Savannah metropolitan area, Georgia's List of metropolitan areas in Georgia (U.S. state), third-largest, had a 2020 population of 404,798. Each year, Savannah attracts millions of visitors to its cobblestone streets, parks, and notable historic buildings. These buildings include the birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low (f ...
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Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta in South China. With 7.5 million residents of various nationalities in a territory, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the world. Hong Kong is also a major global financial centre and one of the most developed cities in the world. Hong Kong was established as a colony of the British Empire after the Qing Empire ceded Hong Kong Island from Xin'an County at the end of the First Opium War in 1841 then again in 1842.. The colony expanded to the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 after the Second Opium War and was further extended when Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898... British Hong Kong was occupied by Imperial Japan from 1941 to 1945 during World War II; British administration resume ...
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Leadbelly (film)
''Leadbelly'' is a 1976 film chronicling the life of folk singer Huddie Ledbetter (better known as "Lead Belly"). The film was directed by Gordon Parks, and starred Roger E. Mosley in the title role. The film focuses on the troubles of Lead Belly's youth in the segregated South including his time in prison, and his efforts to use his music to gain release. Plot Huddie Ledbetter leaves his father's house just barely into his twenties and arrives at a brothel on Fannin' Street run by Miss Eula, who nicknames him Leadbelly and has him play at the bar. For a while, she takes care of him until the police arrive, breaking up a party. Leadbelly and an old man escape via a train and Leadbelly buys a twelve-string acoustic guitar from the old man. Seeking work, he takes a job picking cotton. He soon leaves on a train to Silver City where he meets Blind Lemon and they start playing shows together. At one show, a drunken man tells Leadbelly to keep playing, and threatens him. Leadbelly re ...
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Organization Of American Historians
The Organization of American Historians (OAH), formerly known as the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history. OAH's members in the U.S. and abroad include college and university professors; historians, students; precollegiate teachers; archivists, museum curators, and other public historians; and a variety of scholars employed in government and the private sector. The OAH publishes the ''Journal of American History''. Among its various programs, OAH conducts an annual conference each spring, and has a robust speaker bureau—the OAH Distinguished Lectureship Program. The organization's mission is to promote excellence in the scholarship, teaching, and presentation of American history, and encourage wide discussion of historical questions and equitable treatment of all practitioners of history. Membership is open to all who wish to support its mission. In 2010 its individual membership ...
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Denmark Vesey
Denmark Vesey (also Telemaque) ( July 2, 1822) was an early 19th century free Black and community leader in Charleston, South Carolina, who was accused and convicted of planning a major slave revolt in 1822. Although the alleged plot was discovered before it could be realized, its potential scale stoked the fears of the antebellum planter class that led to increased restrictions on both slaves and free blacks. Likely born into slavery in St. Thomas, Vesey was enslaved by Captain Joseph Vesey in Bermuda for some time before being brought to Charleston. There, Vesey won a lottery and purchased his freedom around the age of 32. He had a good business and a family, but was unable to buy his first wife Beck and their children out of slavery. Vesey worked as a carpenter and became active in the Second Presbyterian Church. In 1818 he helped found an independent African Methodist Episcopal (AME) congregation in the city, today known as Mother Emanuel. The congregation began with t ...
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Roots (1977 Miniseries)
''Roots'' is an American television miniseries based on Alex Haley's 1976 novel '' Roots: The Saga of an American Family''. The series first aired on ABC in January 1977. ''Roots'' received 37 Primetime Emmy Award nominations and won nine. It also won a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award. It received unprecedented Nielsen ratings for the finale, which holds the record as the third-highest-rated episode for any type of television series, and the second-most-watched overall series finale in U.S. television history. It was produced on a budget of $6.6 million. A sequel, '' Roots: The Next Generations'', first aired in 1979, and a second sequel, '' Roots: The Gift'', a Christmas television film, starring Burton and Louis Gossett Jr., first aired in 1988. A related film, ''Alex Haley's Queen'', is based on the life of Queen Jackson Haley, who was Alex Haley's paternal grandmother. In 2016, a remake of the original miniseries, with the same name, was commissioned by the History ch ...
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Slavery In The United States
The legal institution of human chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of Africans and African Americans, was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865, predominantly in the South. Slavery was established throughout European colonization in the Americas. From 1526, during early colonial days, it was practiced in what became Britain's colonies, including the Thirteen Colonies that formed the United States. Under the law, an enslaved person was treated as property that could be bought, sold, or given away. Slavery lasted in about half of U.S. states until abolition. In the decades after the end of Reconstruction, many of slavery's economic and social functions were continued through segregation, sharecropping, and convict leasing. By the time of the American Revolution (1775–1783), the status of enslaved people had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry. During and immediately ...
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The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as '' The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national " newspaper of record". For print it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 1896, through a dual-class share structure after its shares became publicly traded. A. G. Sulzberger, the paper's publisher and the company's chairman, is the fifth generation of the family to head the pa ...
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Kermit Moore
Kermit Moore (March 11, 1929 – November 11, 2013) was an American conductor, cellist, and composer. Early life and education Of African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ... heritage, Moore was born in Akron, Ohio. While still in high school, Moore studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In Manhattan, Mr. Moore studied the cello with Felix Salmond at the Juilliard School while simultaneously studying for a master's degree in composition and musicology at New York University. Career Moore was one of the founders of the Symphony of the New World, the first racially integrated orchestra in the United States. Together with his wife Dorothy Rudd Moore and others, he founded the Society of Black Composers. He was also a member and board member of th ...
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John Saxon
John Saxon (born Carmine Orrico; August 5, 1936 – July 25, 2020) was an American actor who worked on more than 200 film and television projects during a span of 60 years. He was known for his work in Western (genre), Westerns and horror films, often playing police officers and detectives. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Saxon studied acting with Stella Adler before beginning his career as a contract actor for Universal Pictures, appearing in such films as ''Rock, Pretty Baby'' (1956) and ''Portrait in Black'' (1961), which earned him a reputation as a teen idol and won him a Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actor. During the 1970s and 1980s, he established himself as a character actor, frequently portraying law enforcement officials in horror films such as ''Black Christmas (1974 film), Black Christmas'' (1974) and ''A Nightmare on Elm Street'' (1984). Saxon appeared in numerous Italian films from the early sixties. In a 2002 interview, he said of this ...
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