Click the image or link below for the Slavery Trails exhibit

Solomon Northup 

Augmented reality (AR) 

Marcus Brown, 2022

LOCATION: Esplanade Ave & Chartres St, New Orleans, LA 70116  

Solomon Northup was a free African American man born in New York who was kidnapped in 1841 and sold into slavery in the South. A skilled violinist and farmer, he lived as a free man in Saratoga Springs before being lured to Washington, D.C., under false pretenses—only to be drugged, abducted, and sold into slavery in Louisiana. Northup endured 12 years of brutal enslavement on various plantations before he was able to secretly send word of his identity to friends in New York. In 1853, with the help of lawyer **Samuel Bass** and with the intervention of the New York state government, he was rescued and regained his freedom. That same year, he published his powerful memoir, "Twelve Years a Slave", which became a bestseller and a critical document in the abolitionist movement. His story remains one of the most detailed and personal firsthand accounts of American slavery. This grouping of people represents the 41 people found on the Brig Orleans manifest with Solomon Northup  in April of 1841.  The Brig Orleans was a domestic slave trading vessel. The domestic slave trade in the United States refers to the legal and internal buying, selling, and forced relocation of enslaved people within the country's borders, primarily after the international slave trade was banned in 1808. Slavery Trails is a musically interactive site-specific augmented reality (AR) installation series based on slave ships and enslaved people, placed on historical sites throughout the United States. Slavery Trails is an effort by artist Marcus Brown to create a decentralized memorial to slavery in the United States.

The interactive augmented reality AR exhibition  opened January 4, 2023.

The same day Solomon Northup gained his freedom on January 4, 1853.

Read 12 Years A Slave  By Solomon Northup           Buy Book Here