Solomon Northup was an African-American who was kidnapped and sold as into slavery. Northup was born a free man in New York and after twelve years as a slave he was able to get word to to New York and was freed. Northup would go on to write Twelve Years a Slave, a famous memoir on his experiences. The book was published a year after Uncle Tom's Cabin and helped support some of the facts presented. Twelve Years a Slave was recently turned into a movie which won the Oscar for best motion picture of the year in 2013.