12 yrs

In the film 12 Years a Slave the institution of slavery affected all other five social institutions: the family, economy, religion, education, and the legal/justice system in many ways. In this film, what we learn in this film is different from what we were told as children. I was taught that Africans were brought to the United States of America and sold to individuals of all races. I cannot recall that some Africans were free in the Northern States and kidnapped then sold into slavery to Slave owners in the Southern states. This film is a true story of Solomon Northup in the 1840’s.
Families were separated during the time were being sold to slave owners. Northrup was married and had two children when he was kidnapped. It was the owner’s decision to buy whomever they wanted and how many slaves they wanted. If a woman had children, the buyer could choose to buy her children or not. In the film, we see a woman get sold but not her children. Also, some owners raped the slave women and produced offspring. This affected the slave’s spouse and children because there was nothing that they could do to protect her from continuously being raped and/or having children. This also strained the slave owner’s marriage because eventually the wife would figure it out; the favoritism that he might show towards a female slave, seeing the light skinned baby the slave recently had, and the colored eyes of this new born baby. In the film Edwin Epps and his wife Mistress Epps have marital problems because she’s jealous of the attention he’s giving Patsey, their slave. Patsey gets physically abused by Mrs. Epps and raped by Mr. Epps.
The economy was also affected because the slaves earned very little wages, not enough to buy their own freedom or their families. The slave owners prospered because they would pay a onetime fee for a human being and have them live in their property in small shacks and they worked their fields all day. They owned enough slaves and hired Caucasians to