27/11/2022
On this day in 1841, the 35 African survivors of the Amistad returned home to West Africa. In February 1839, Portuguese slave traders kidnapped a group of Africans from present-day Sierra Leone and carried them to Havana, Cuba (a center of the slave trade). This was illegal as many countries (including Britain, Spain, and the US) had signed treaties outlawing the transatlantic sale of enslaved people. In Cuba, two Spanish slave owners named Pedro Montes and Jose Ruiz purchased 53 of the captives and put them aboard the Cuban schooner “Amistad” to be sent to a Caribbean plantation. On July 2, 1839, the Africans (led by Congolese chief Sengbe Pieh, or Joseph Cinqué) revolted, seizing control of the ship and killing the captain and the cook. The rebels demanded that Montes and Ruiz bring them back to West Africa.
However, the two plantation owners actually sailed the ship North and the Amistad was seized near Long Island, NY by a U.S. ship in late August. The ship and captives were taken to New London, CT, where Montes and Ruiz were freed and the West Africans were imprisoned for murder. The murder charges were quickly dropped, but the officers of the US ship, Montes and Ruiz, and the Spanish government all argued that the captives were their property. A group of abolitionists in the North raised money for the legal defense of the Africans, who demanded to return home. The case made its way up to the Supreme Court, who heard the case in February 1841. After a long trial, on March 9, 1841, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Africans of the Amistad.
The photo above is a spread from the “New York Sun” in 1839. The paper describes Joseph Cinqué, leader of the Amistad mutiny, as a chief "who now lies in jail in arms at New Haven, Conn., awaiting his trial for daring for freedom." He is quoted as saying, “Brothers, we have done that which we proposed…I am resolved it is better to die than be a white man’s slave.”
Photo from
