From Apply Now,
Your Guide to Race Relations.
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Steven Spielberg made an award-winning movie about La Amistad in 1997 and cast it with top talent including Anthony Hopkins, Matthew McConaughey, Nigel Hawthorne, and Morgan Freeman. Although the name might ring a bell for many people, those who never saw the movie may be unfamiliar with the history behind "La Amistad."

A.

In brief, the story involves the illegal kidnapping of 53 human beings from West Africa. After being kidnapped, they were sold into the transatlantic slave trade. Shackled aboard the Portuguese slave vessel Tecora, they were then transported to Havana, Cuba, where they were fraudulently classified as native, Cuban-born slaves.

Illegally purchased by Spaniards, they were then transferred to the now infamous schooner, La Amistad. They were to be transported to another part of the island, but three days into the journey, a 25-year-old rice farmer named Sengbe Pieh, known as “Cinque” by his Spanish captors, led a revolt.

After 63 days, La Amistad and her African “cargo” were seized by the United States Naval Cutter USS Washington near Montauk Point, Long Island, New York. The ship was then towed to Connecticut’s New London harbor.

The Africans were held in a New Haven jail on charges of mutiny and murder. But the case acquired a high profile when President John Quincy Adams argued before the United States Supreme Court on behalf of the captives.

What followed was a historical U.S. Supreme Court ruling in which, despite the practices and attitudes of the day, survivors won their freedom: in 1841 the 35 surviving Africans were returned to Africa.