Amistad: Retold

In 1839, fifty-three West African captives led a revolt on La Amistad, the schooner that was trafficking them from Havana’s slave markets to Cuba’s sugar cane plantations after being kidnapped from their homelands as part of the Atlantic slave trade. For generations, their rebellion has signified resistance to enslavement and collective action to determine their own lives. The impact of the uprising was felt globally. In the United States, the revolt galvanized the abolitionist movement to awaken the nation to the horrors and injustice of slavery as a human rights crisis. The events and subsequent trials led to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case United States v. The Amistad.

New Haven became a major site in the events that followed the revolt. Although the U.S. Navy eventually seized the schooner off the coast of Long Island, the West African captives were brought to Connecticut and incarcerated for nearly nineteen months in New Haven. There the captives worked closely with anti-slavery activists who formed the Amistad Committee and connected with networks of engaged citizens to organize and fundraise for their legal defense.

The legacies of the Amistad remain timely from the importance of translators to accurately document testimonies within the criminal justice system to the necessity of interracial organizing for racial justice, to the power of the arts to raise awareness and shape collective memory.

This map charts the harrowing journey endured by the West African captives from their kidnapping in Sierra Leone, their time incarcerated and on trial in the United States, to their return to Freetown, Sierra Leone. Examining the revolt spatially places this story of resistance in the larger context of the international crisis and continued illegal activity of the Atlantic slave trade, and the growing abolitionist movement. This map also identifies significant sites in New Haven, and throughout Connecticut.

In the years that slavery was abolished across the Atlantic, slavery expanded in the U.S. as new territories were annexed in the West. By the time the Amistad captives were brought to the United States, a growing anti-slavery movement had emerged in the 1830s. Abolitionist organizations often consisting of Blacks and whites, women and men, called for an immediate end to slavery through mass action and appeals to moral conscience. The Vigilance Committee confronted enslavers and provided protection to Black Americans escaping slavery or vulnerable to kidnapping. This period also witnessed Nat Turner's Rebellion and the formation of the Underground Railroad, which provided refuge to self-emancipated people fleeing bondage.

The political climate in New Haven, and the state of Connecticut, is essential to understanding the Amistad trials. The Beinecke Library's film, What Could Have Been, confronts the history of how Black New Haven leaders helped lead the charge to create the nation's first Black college in 1831, only to be rejected by white property owners of the city.

Produced by Beinecke Library, the short documentary film was directed by Tubyez Cropper and written by Michael Morand and Cropper.

This digitized 1828 document highlights the significance of the colonization movement in association with anti-slavery efforts. It's important to understand that not all abolitionist efforts were anti-racist, and the colonization movement is evidence.

Described as a "patriotic enterprise and Christian benevolence," the colonization movement asserted that newly freed Black Americans would not be able to coexist with white Americans. According to this primary source document, “The simple object of the American Colonization Society is to plant Colonies of free Blacks from the United States upon the coast of Africa.” The members of the Connecticut Colonization Society believed that in the United States, the Black man is degraded and no matter what he will do, he will remain in a lower station. In their view, the U.S. was a white nation and upheld the racial caste system despite talk of emancipation and legislation.

Click on the images to enlarge and examine the document. What words stand out to you? How does the Colonization Society describe people of African descent? What does this document reveal about different aspects of the anti-slavery efforts in Connecticut?

While the Amistad captives won their freedom in the trials and returned to their homelands, they lived with the trauma of the slave trade, imprisonment, and drawn-out legal proceedings. Anti-slavery activists in the U.S. strengthened their movement over time, projecting a bolder image of abolition in the arts and media.

As we confront the legacies of slavery and systemic racism, the Amistad revolt continues to signify a powerful act of resistance to racial injustice and has been reimagined by artists and creators of popular culture in the U.S. and Sierra Leone.

Eighteen-year-old New Haven artist William H. Townsend drew twenty-two portraits of the Amistad prisoners, most likely when he visited them in the New Haven jail while they arrived and awaited their trial in 1839. The names of the Amistad rebels were included by the artist on the collars of the shirts. The original sketches can be found at the  Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University .

William H. Townsend, Sketches of the Amistad Captives, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

114 Whitney Avenue, New Haven, Connecticut

The New Haven Museum is a site on the Connecticut Freedom Trail. For more information about the Connecticut Freedom Trail and other Amistad sites across the state, visit:  https://ctfreedomtrail.org/directory-category/amistad/ 

Who were the people who led the Amistad Revolt and what is the historical significance of their revolt and the subsequent trials in the U.S. courts? This program provides a tour of the Amistad: Retold exhibition, focusing on the resistance to enslavement, abolition, the judicial system and legacies of the trials, and representation of Amistad in the arts. The program includes inquiry-based discussions around original historical and contemporary works of art and primary sources, emphasizing themes such as justice, freedom, and liberation.

Students will experience the Amistad: Retold exhibition and view the iconic 1840 portrait of Sengbe Pieh by New Haven artist and abolitionist Nathaniel Jocelyn, Hale Woodruff’s 1939 mural studies, and a serigraph of Jacob Lawrence’s “Revolt on the Amistad” (1989).

Students will experience the Amistad: Retold exhibition and then participate in a short walking tour of several significant sites in the Amistad story near the New Haven Green. Students will use an interactive map and discuss the importance of the Amistad in our local, national, and global history.

Contact  education@newhavenmuseum.org  to schedule a field trip to New Haven Museum.

Connecticut Teachers:  CLICK HERE  for digital exhibition guide, Social Studies Standards and classroom resource tools for students to engage with digital mapping software in their projects.

We are grateful for Marcus Rediker's illuminating scholarship that centers the stories of the people who led the Amistad Rebellion and documented their ongoing resistance and agency. The many sources that informed the exhibition are listed in the hyperlink below.