Best Practice

Teaching resources and ideas for tackling the slave trade

Languages and humanities
The film 12 Years a Slave has thrust the horrors of slavery back into the headlines. Isobel Durrant looks at a range of projects and resources that can help teachers to tackle both historic and modern slavery in the classroom.

Steve McQueen’s film, 12 Years A Slave, has put the Transatlantic Slave Trade back in the spotlight.

At the same time, a number of high-profile contemporary news stories about people trafficking in the UK make it all too evident that despite slavery being abolished in the British Empire nearly 200 years ago, it is still a modern problem.

It is well-documented that McQueen was inspired to make his film by reading a first-hand account written by Solomon Northrup, a free African-American and prosperous New York businessman, who was drugged by traffickers and sold into slavery. McQueen’s wife found the book, which details the horrors of life as a slave on a Louisiana plantation. 

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