Education: Telling the Amistad story

The Amistad Story for Children and Youth

Let’s travel back in time to the year 1839, to a small village in Mendeland (now known as Sierra Leone), West Africa. We meet Kagne and Margu, two African girls under the age of ten, who were sold to slaveholders because their fathers could not pay off money they owed. Teme, another young girl, was kidnapped by a gang of men who broke into her mother’s house one night. Kali, a young boy, was kidnapped on a village street.

These four young people were very scared as they were crowded into a prison-like building. The were chained together and loaded onto a slave ship, the Tecora, to sail from West Africa to Havana, Cuba. After arriving in Cuba, the four children were purchased by a Spanish man and, along with 49 adult Africans, were loaded onto La Amistad, to travel to a plantation on another part of the island of Cuba. Imagine how terrified these young children must have been. They were hungry and tired and they had not seen their parents in many days. Now they were in a strange land where they did not speak the language of their captors.

One of the Africans used sign language to ask the cook what would happen to them. The cook signaled that they would be killed and eaten! Terrified, one of the African men, Sengbe (*), convinced others they should take over the ship. The men found a nail and forced open the padlocks on their chains. They also found knives onboard and used these weapons to capture the crew. The Africans did not know how to steer the ship, so they depended upon the crew to get them back to Africa. The crew tricked them and kept sailing along the coast of the United States. After two months, a United States Navy ship sighted La Amistad and captured it, thinking it was a pirate ship. The Navy ship towed La Amistad to New London, Connecticut. Slavery was still legal in the United States.

Once in Connecticut, the Africans were thrown in jail, because they had killed some of the crew members and some people wanted them tried for murder. Because the Africans could not speak English or Spanish, their side of the story was not heard until a translator was found. Others known as abolitionists defended the Africans. The abolitionists believed that all people should be free. Slave trade from Africa to the United States was against the law, so the abolitionists felt the Africans should be allowed to return home. One very famous abolitionist, John Quincy Adams, who had been President, argued before the Supreme Court that the Africans should be freed.

The Supreme Court ruled that the Africans were entitled to their freedom. The freed African survivors, now only 38 people, were taken to Farmington, Connecticut to live. Friends of the Mende people helped to raise money for the freed Africans to return home. One of these friends was James Pennington, himself an escaped slave, and, at the time, the pastor of the First Colored Congregational Church in Hartford, Connecticut.

Other friends of the Africans formed a group known as the American Missionary Association (AMA). The AMA was the first organization to be integrated with whites and blacks working side by side. This missionary society was responsible for building schools and churches for the freed blacks. Many of these Congregational churches still exist as members of the United Church of Christ.

(*) Sengbe is the Mende name, which is being used to respect the heritage of the Amistad captives. Some references list the name as Cinque, or Joseph (the name given to him by the Spaniards who brought him to Havana).

Written by Carl McDonald, Associate for Youth and Christian Education Ministries, United Church of Christ, Massachusetts Conference, May 2003.