United States v. Schooner Amistad, 40 U.S. 518 (1841), was a United States Supreme Court case resulting from the rebellion of Africans on board the Spanish schooner La Amistad in 1839. It was an unusual freedom suit that involved international diplomacy as well as United States law. The historian Samuel Eliot Morison described it in 1969 as the most important court case involving slavery before being eclipsed by that of Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857.
Djimon Gaston Hounsou is a Beninese actor. He began his career appearing in music videos and made his film debut in Without You I'm Nothing (1990). He then earned widespread recognition for his role as Cinqué in the Steven Spielberg film Amistad (1997), which earned him a Golden Globe nomination. For his performances in In America (2002) and Blood Diamond (2006), Hounsou was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
John Forsyth Sr. was a 19th-century American politician from Georgia. He represented the state in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and also served as the 33rd Governor of Georgia. As a supporter of the policies of President Andrew Jackson, Forsyth was appointed the 13th United States Secretary of State by Jackson in 1834, and continued in that role until 1841 during the presidency of Martin Van Buren. He also served as US Minister to Spain during the presidency of James Monroe.
Josiah Willard Gibbs Sr. was an American linguist and theologian, who served as professor of sacred literature at Yale University. He is remembered mainly for his involvement with the Amistad case and as the father of theoretical physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs.
Chiwetel Umeadi Ejiofor is a British actor, screenwriter, and film director. The recipient of various accolades, including a British Academy Film Award and a Laurence Olivier Award in addition to nominations for an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards and five Golden Globe Awards. In 2008, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts. He was elevated to Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2015 Birthday Honours.
Sengbe Pieh, also known as Joseph Cinqué or Cinquez and sometimes referred to mononymously as Cinqué, was a West African man of the Mende people who led a revolt of many Africans on the Spanish slave ship La Amistad in July 1839. After the ship was taken into custody by the US Revenue-Marine, Cinqué and his fellow Africans were eventually tried for mutiny and killing officers on the ship, in a case known as United States v. The Amistad. This reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where Cinqué and his fellow Africans were found to have rightfully defended themselves from being enslaved through the illegal Atlantic slave trade and were released. The US government did not provide any aid to the acquitted Mende People. The United Missionary Society, a black group founded by James W.C. Pennington, helped raise money for the return of thirty-five of the survivors to Sierra Leone in 1842.
Tecora was a Portuguese slave ship of the early 19th century. The brig was built especially for the slave trade although the transport across the Atlantic of human beings as slaves had already been outlawed by several nations in international treaties in the first decade of the 19th century. She was fast and maneuverable in order to evade British patrols that attempted to stop such illegal slave ships off the coast of Africa.
Blood Diamond is a 2006 American political war thriller film directed and co-produced by Edward Zwick and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly, and Djimon Hounsou. The title refers to blood diamonds, which are diamonds mined in war zones and sold to finance conflicts, and thereby profit warlords and diamond companies around the world.
La Amistad was a 19th-century two-masted schooner owned by a Spaniard living in Cuba. It became renowned in July 1839 for a slave revolt by Mende captives who had been captured and sold to European slave traders and illegally transported by a Portuguese ship from West Africa to Cuba, in violation of European treaties against the Atlantic slave trade. Spanish plantation owners Don José Ruiz and Don Pedro Montes bought 53 captives in Havana, Cuba, including four children, and were transporting them on the ship to their plantations near Puerto Príncipe. The revolt began after the schooner's cook jokingly told the slaves that they were to be "killed, salted, and cooked." Sengbe Pieh unshackled himself and the others on the third day and started the revolt. They took control of the ship, killing the captain and the cook. Two Africans were also killed in the melee.
The 2nd Golden Satellite Awards, given on February 22, 1998, honored the best in film and television of 1997.
Lomboko was a slave factory in what is today Sierra Leone, controlled by the infamous Spanish slave trader Pedro Blanco. It consisted of several large depots or barracoons for slaves brought from the interior, as well as several palatial buildings for Blanco to house his wives, concubines, and employees.
Pedro Blanco was a Spanish slave trader based in Gallinas on the coast of Sierra Leone between 1822 and 1838. Before entering the slave trade, Blanco ran a sugar mill in Cuba.
James Benjamin Covey was a sailor, remembered today chiefly for his role as interpreter during the legal proceedings in the United States federal courts that followed the 1839 revolt aboard the Spanish slave ship La Amistad. Covey, who spoke Mende and English, was instrumental for enabling the Mende passengers of the Amistad to communicate with the court and to defend themselves successfully against charges of mutiny and murder.
The Mendi Bible is a Bible presented to John Quincy Adams in 1841 by a group of freed Mendi captives who had mutinied on the schooner La Amistad.
Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy (1987) is a history of a notable slave mutiny of 1839 and its aftermath, written by professor Howard Jones.
The Amistad Memorial in New Haven, Connecticut, is a bronze sculpture created by Ed Hamilton to recognize the events of the 1839 Amistad Affair. The affair was a kidnapping of 53 Africans and their subsequent mutiny aboard La Amistad. It led to a historically significant United States Supreme Court case, in which the Amistad captives were ruled to be acting in self-defense, thereby granting them the right to mutiny.
Sarah Margru Kinson was a West African educator. As Margru or Mar'gru, she was one of the four children on La Amistad. As Sarah Kinson, she was educated at Oberlin College and returned to West Africa to be a missionary teacher. She is considered the first woman born in Africa to be educated in an American college.
