Talk:Twelve Years a Slave

Vandalism
There was a comment posted by an someone with this information 9 September 2010 68.39.88.153: "Northup was not permitted to give evidence in the case, as he was black doggy."

The racist comment "black doggy" I removed. To other editors, please watch these pages because ones on the topic of slavery get a lot of vandalism and overt racist comments added.Ebanony (talk) 02:29, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Sue Eakin's book
The article says:
 * "In 2007, Dr. Eakin completed development of an updated and expanded version that includes over 150 pages of new background material, maps and photographs, shortly before her death at age 90."

I'm unable to find this book. Does anyone know an ISBN or link? -- Green Cardamom (talk) 17:23, 4 August 2013 (UTC)


 * It looks like it is this. There is also this on Amazon.com. Erik (talk &#124; contribs) 20:49, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

"African American"
I'm not sure I mind much either way, but a recent edit changed "American black man" to "African American", as the "more standard" usage, from the edit summary. I appreciate the article uses US English, but that is a _very_ specifically American usage, and also a term coined in the 1980s seems slightly odd in an article about the mid 19th century. Any opinions? Pinkbeast (talk) 17:49, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Maybe we should use "American free black" as that was a term of the time.Parkwells (talk) 17:52, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Fine with me. Prefer that to the anachronistic and uncomfortable "African-American", like saying someone is "European-American".. there's a right context for that term but not always. -- Green Cardamom (talk) 18:25, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Not Quite Accurate
This line, "After being beaten for claiming his free status in the slave pen in Washington, D.C., Northup in the ensuing 12 years did not reveal his true history again to a single person, slave or owner.", is not quite accurate. He does reveal his history to a sailor when he is being shipped to New Orleans. The sailor helps him get a pen, ink, and paper to write a letter and then delivers it to the post office for him. It is a while after that that he decides to not reveal his history to anyone, so the statement is true for all of the time following this event.

Orphaned references in Twelve Years a Slave
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Twelve Years a Slave's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "smith": From Washington County, New York: History of Warren County, edited by H. P. Smith - Chapter XVI: To the Present Time From Freedom suit: Eric Ledell Smith, "Rescuing African American Kidnapping Victims in Philadelphia as Documented in the Joseph Watson Papers," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 129 (2008), pp. 317, 330-332 

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 15:37, 16 April 2015 (UTC)