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The 1840 Amistad Captives: West African Voices in a Connecticut Court
In 1839, fifty-three captives from the Mende region of West Africa were taken aboard the schooner Amistad off the coast of Cuba. Led by a man named Sengbe Pieh (known in American records as Joseph Cinqué), they rose up, killed the captain, and forced the surviving crew to sail east toward Africa. Instead, the ship was intercepted off Long Island, sparking a legal battle that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. This episode traces the Amistad story from the barracoons of Lomboko to the New Haven courtroom, focusing on the Mende captives' own testimony, the role of abolitionist Lewis Tappan…
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