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The 1839 L'Amistad Rebellion: Africans in a Connecticut Court
In 1839, 53 Africans held captive on the schooner La Amistad rose up, killed the captain and cook, and seized the ship. Their leader, Sengbe Pieh, known as Joseph Cinqué, was a Mende rice farmer from Sierra Leone. The revolt sparked a legal battle that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where former president John Quincy Adams argued for the captives' freedom. This episode follows the Amistad story from the Middle Passage to the courtroom, exploring the abolitionist network that supported the Africans, the complex legal questions of property vs. personhood, and the eventual return of the…
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