Photo courtesy of Charles Riddle, III.
The statue, "Hope Out of the Darkness," by Wesley Wooford.
On January 4, 1853, twelve years after he was kidnapped and trafficked from Washington, D.C. to Louisiana, Solomon Northup walked out of the Avoyelles Parish Courthouse a free man. And on January 4, 2026, his story will be memorialized in the very same plaza, as a statue is raised in his honor.
“God, this is just an amazing thing that occurred here,” said Charles Riddle III, District Attorney of Avoyelles Parish and member of the Solomon Northup Commemorative Committee. “It’s freedom, enacted on our courthouse lawn.”
Northup was born in 1807, free. His father had been freed from enslavement, and his mother was a free person of color. Living in New York, he grew up to be a professional violinist, an educated man who lived his early adult years in Saratoga Springs with his wife and three children.
In 1841, under the guise of offering Northup a musical opportunity, two white men convinced him to leave his home. They drugged him and chained him, selling him to a slave trader for $250. He was whisked away on the slave ship, the Brig Orleans, and sold at one of the South’s biggest markets for the enslaved at a price of $1,000. He would be forced to work on sugar and cotton plantations in Central Louisiana for twelve years before his family found him, after local carpenter Samuel Bass intervened.
“It’s an example of the justice system working." —Charles Riddle, III
Through legal maneuvers by a northern attorney called Henry Northup (a grand nephew of the man who enslaved Solomon Northup’s father)—who traveled to Louisiana to fight Northup’s case—with help from New York governor William Hunt and Marksville, Louisiana attorney John P. Waddill, Northup was determined a free citizen of New York who could not legally be held against his will as a slave.
“It’s an example of the justice system working,” said Riddle, who is the author of The Life and Diary of John P. Waddill: The Lawyer Who Freed Solomon Northup, 1813–1855. “I just kind of looked up to [Waddill], for standing up for what’s right in a pro-slavery parish.”
The remarkable story became part of the rallying cry of abolitionists at the time, and resulted in Northup’s bestselling memoir, Twelve Years a Slave—which remains a powerful firsthand account of what it was to be enslaved in the United States. The book was later adapted into the Oscar-winning 2013 feature film by John Ridley and Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave.
Last year, The Solomon Northup Committee for Commemorative Works commissioned Emmy and Oscar-winning sculptor Wesley Wooford to create the world’s first statue of Northup—of whom there exists only one woodcut portrait, published in his memoir. Combining that image with the physical features of Northup’s descendants, Wooford created the work, Hope Out of Darkness—which depicts the man physically rising into a state of freedom.
The statue is interactive, taking the viewer on a journey through Northup’s life using symbols and varying perspectives depending on what angle you are viewing the work from. In his right hand, Northup holds a twelve-link chain, the last link burst open. In his left, he raises what appears from afar to be a torch, but upon closer inspection is revealed to be papers—papers of freedom, the papers in which he would someday tell his story.
Throughout 2025, the sculpture traveled across the country on a limited engagement tour, taking up residence at Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana; Haverstraw African American Memorial Park in Haverstraw, New York; Saratoga Spa State Park in Northup’s former hometown in New York; the Alexandria Museum of Art in Central Louisiana; and the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston, Massachusetts.
Now, it will be permanently installed in Marksville, Louisiana, right in front of the Avoyelles Parish Courthouse. The plaza in which it will rise features quotes from Twelve Years a Slave, telling the story through Northup’s own words.
The public is invited to witness the official raising of the statue on January 4 at 2 pm at the courthouse. Learn more at snccw.com.
