"In all of these dramas, the black people's stories are simple, almost banal. As the kidnapping victim in 12 Years a Slave says, 'I don't want to survive. I want to live.' He simply endures, with all the courage and dignity he can muster. His situation, the heroism of his situation, is easy to understand."

"The slave owner, played by Michael Fassbender, is a far more mysterious, more fascinating type: What kind of man wants to flog nearly to death the mother of the child he adores? What kind of man rests against people as if they were furniture? It is a testament to the power of American denial that Fassbender's portrayal of a slave owner is the finest ever put down on film."

"They arranged to meet up with her at a Walmart in north Stockton on Saturday under the pretense of making the marriage work, according to Lt. Mike Jones, of the San Joaquin Sheriff’s Department.

She willingly got in the car."

UPDATE:

“She said she was able to text her boyfriend,,…”

An early case was that of the Scypion sisters, who sued the most prominent family in St. Louis and won their freedom, on the grounds that their mother was Native American and so could not have been legally enslaved. Lydia Titus, a free woman living in Illinois, watched helplessly as white men kidnapped her five children and two grandchildren in the middle of the night, taking them across the border to the slave state of Missouri. Titus enlisted the law to prove that their capture was illegal, and eventually the family was reunited. An enslaved man named John Merry tried to buy his freedom for $100 and a horse, but his master took the horse and the money and kept John Merry as a slave—until John Merry took him to court.

Slaves risked jail time for bringing suits, because, as disputed property, they could be essentially impounded while the court made its decision. But jail also kept them safe from retaliation, as slave owners who were sued sometimes kidnapped the plaintiffs and sold them farther south. The slaves, meanwhile, got no support or encouragement from abolitionist groups back East. “These folks were on their own,” VanderVelde says.

Conservative firebrand Sean Hannity unleashed another volley of racially charged polemic on his radio show Thursday morning, this time targeting the critically acclaimed drama “12 Years a Slave.” Hannity called the film, which recounts the true story of a free slave, Solomon Northup, who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841, “a sham” and “nothing more than an attempt to exploit white guilt and divide America.”

Director Steve McQueen’s historical drama has been lauded by critics for its unflinching portrayal of slavery’s horrors and drawn equal praise from filmgoers. Those who caught the film in its limited release last weekend assigned it an average grade of A, according to market research firm CinemaScore.

But Hannity encouraged his loyal supporters to “avoid falling into the liberal trap of a slavery guilt trip” as the film heads for wide release this weekend. “Seriously, how long has it been? How many times can you keep bringing [slavery] up after 150 years?” Hannity admitted that he has not seen the film, but said he could “tell that it draws out and exaggerates the bad parts of slavery the way only Hollywood can.”

“The only thing another slavery movie does, on top of pitting blacks against whites, is enable a minority culture of laziness and excuses. Maybe they should make a movie about black students who run away from hard work and responsibility. Call it ‘12 Years in School.’...”