Photo courtesy o Library of Virginia
Shockoe Bottom’s slave-trading past will be revisited on March 20 through the eyes of a famous captive. Immortalized in the Oscar-winning 2013 film 12 Years a Slave, Solomon Northup’s story began in 1841, when he was kidnapped as a free man and then sold. In a free talk titled “Solomon Northup and the Tragic Voyage of the Orleans,” Arizona State University scholar Calvin Schermerhorn will follow Northup’s transit to Richmond, where he boarded a ship, the Orleans, bound for the Deep South. Schermerhorn notes that incidents of kidnapped slaves being traded “may have been underestimated.” 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Virginia State Capitol, Senate Room 3. 692-3500 or lva.virginia.gov.
