Solomon Northup Monument

The Solomon Northup Monument Plaza will house the commemorative work of art honoring Northup and his path from freedom to wrongful enslavement to freedom.

The Solomon Northup Committee for Commemorative Works commissioned Emmy and Oscar-winning sculptor Wesley Wofford to create a bronze likeness of Solomon Northup.

Wofford, a Cashiers resident, is the sculptor who designed Harriet Tubman—Journey to Freedom, a dramatic 9-ft bronze sculpture which was displayed in Sylva in 2021.

The sculpture, Hope Out of Darkness, will be the centerpiece for the plaza, located in front of the Avoyelles Parish Courthouse in downtown Marksville where Northup regained his freedom on January 4, 1853.

The monument site is adjacent to the Solomon Northup historical marker erected in his honor in January 2018 to commemorate the 165th anniversary of his regained freedom. The site is also located across from the Marksville Post Office, where carpenter Samuel Bass mailed letters notifying Solomon’s family and friends of the circumstances of his whereabouts—letters which led to his rescue.

Solomon Northup was a farmer and a professional violinist living in Saratoga Springs, New York. In 1841 he was offered a traveling musician’s job and went to Washington, D.C. (where slavery was legal); there he was drugged and kidnapped into slavery. He was shipped to New Orleans, purchased by a planter, and held as a slave for 12 years in the Red River region of Louisiana, mostly in Avoyelles Parish.

Northup remained a slave until he met Samuel Bass, a Canadian working on the plantation where Northup was being held. Bass helped get word to New York, where state law provided aid to free New York citizens who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. Aided by the Governor of New York, Washington Hunt, Northup regained his freedom on January 3, 1853.

In 1853 Northup wrote and published his memoir, Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation near the Red River in Louisiana.

From 1853 to 1857 Northup engaged in extensive speaking tours against slavery. He joined the Underground Railroad and spent several years in New England helping escaped slaves reach Canada. During the Civil War, around 1863, Northup dropped out of sight and was never heard from again. The time and circumstances of his death, as well as his place of burial, are unknown.

Northup’s memoir provided the basis for director Gordon Parks’s television docudrama Solomon Northup’s Odyssey (1984), and director Steve McQueen’s film 12 Years a Slave (2013).

View more of Wesley Wofford’s work at www.woffordsculpturestudio.com. Learn more about the Solomon Northup Monument Plaza at snccw.com.