"Actress Devyn Tyler, from the Oscar-winning film “12 Years a Slave,” will give a personal account of her experiences making the movie during this year’s Solomon Northup Day activities scheduled for 12:30-6 p.m. on Saturday, July 19 at Skidmore College’s Filene Recital Hall."
"Director Steven McQueen's "12 Years a Slave," which follows the adult life of African-American Solomon Northup, was named best picture at the 86th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday. Northup worked in Saratoga Springs' large 19th-century hotels and lived downtown with his wife, Anne, and three children. In March 1841, two white men lured him off Broadway, drugged him and sold him as a slave."
"...a grassroots effort to raise awareness of this compelling story has been going on for the past 15 years, in particular through Solomon Northup Day, an annual celebration launched in 1999 by Saratoga Springs resident and Skidmore College alumna Renee Moore."
[Lupita Nyongo spoke at the 2013 annual Solomon Northup Day prior to her Best Supporting Actress Oscar of 2014.]
"12 Years a Slave" tells the story of Solomon Northup, a free black man, a family man, and a violinist living in Saratoga Springs, New York in the mid-1800s."
Sky News visits Saratoga Springs, the town where Solomon Northup lived before he was kidnapped into slavery in 1841
David Fiske speaks about Solomon, WAMC radio
Ms. Moore initiated a 15-year effort to bring annual focus to the autobiography, Twelve Years A Slave the ordeal of Mr. Northup while celebrating African-American history and culture in Saratoga and the capital region and further to Plattsburgh, NY with the North Country Underground Railroad Historical Association.
"Saturday at Skidmore College, more than 40 of his descendants traveled from all over the country to celebrate the 15th annual Solomon Northup Day, and many shared how he has impacted their lives."
"Northup was born a free man in what is today Minerva, Essex County, in July 1808. He was a literate man who worked on the Champlain Canal. While working as a cabbie and violinist in Saratoga Springs, he was abducted, held in a slave pen in Washington, DC, and sold into slavery in Louisiana for 12 years before regaining his freedom."