Freedom Schooner Amistad,  will arrive in Charleston for Harbor Fest and Spoleto Festival USA on May 15th.  Charleston will be the first US port called by the ship since her departure from New England in June 2007.   Since than the Amistad visited many ports during her Atlantic Freedom Tour, allowing many communities to interpret the Tour's motto : "Confronting The Past - Transforming  The Future".

Amistad's vist together with the premiere of a newly revised version of Anthony Davis' opera "Amistad" at Spoleto Festival USA will give another chance  for Lowcountry and Charleston to confront its history as a slave-trading city in a slave-owning state.

Here are more events related to Amistad, the ship, and "Amistad," the Spoleto opera:

• - Amistad (the ship) will be anchored off Sullivan's Island during an afternoon remembrance ceremony there May 15. It'll then be escorted to Charleston Maritime Center by three tall ships, including Spirit of South Carolina, and will be open for tours May 16-18, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tickets are $5-$15.

• - Amistad (the ship) will be at dock for the Spoleto opera premiere and remain here until May 27.

• -- "Amistad" (the opera) composer Anthony Davis and director Sam Helfrich will talk with College of Charleston music professor Trevor Weston on May 22. 5:30 p.m. Recital Hall, College of Charleston. Free.

• - May 25, Martha Teichner will interview Davis and "Amistad" librettist Thulani Davis. 5 p.m. Recital Hall, College of Charleston. Free.

• -- May 26, Anthony Davis and Thulani Davis along with author Josephine Humphreys and historian Bernard Powers will talk about creating works of art based on historic events. Noon, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, 125 Bull St. Free.

• - May 31, attorney Robert Rosen will lead a roundtable discussion of the Amistad (the ship) court case. 3 p.m. Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, 125 Bull St.. Free.

• - Gibbes Museum of Art will mount "Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art."

• - Tours of the Old Slave Mart Museum and walking tours will be led by historian Harlan Greene at 10 a.m. May 24, May 31, June 2 and June 7. $10. Call 579-3100.

• - Charleston County Public Library's Main Library will show a series of films related to Amistad (the ship) on the big screen. Free.

WatchWebcast: [ Archived Video - REAL PLAYER required - English: 3 hours and 23 minutes]of 28 March student videoconference on the Transatlantic Slave Trade that took place in the UN Headquarters in New York.  Large group of students from Connecticut, New York and Maine gathered in Dag Hammerskjold auditorium and spent over 3 hours interacting live with students from Sierra Leone, Canada, Norway, United Kingdom and St.Lucia as well as with the crew of the Amistad.
Learn more about the causes and consequences,of the transatlantic slave trade. 

Captain Bill Pinkney moderating the international video conference out of UN Headquarters in NYC.

In observance of the first annual worldwide commemoration of the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, a joint exhibition will be launched in the North-East Gallery of the Visitors’ Lobby on Wednesday, 26 March at 6 p.m.

The exhibit will be formally opened by Kiyo Akasaka, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information.  Statements will also be made by Howard Dodson, Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and Greg Belanger, President of Amistad America.

The two-part exhibit consists of:

The Middle Passage:  White Ships/Black Cargo -- An exhibit of 52 narrative drawings from the book by Tom Feelings.  These drawings are mixed media works of tempera, pen and tissue detailing the horror of the importation of Africans from the old world of freedom to a strange new world of slavery.  Also included in the exhibit are three sculptures by the same artist.

Amistad:  The Story -- This exhibit features a scale model of the Freedom Schooner Amistad and describes the historic Amistad Incident of 1839. In June 2007, a full-scale replica of the schooner Amistad embarked on an epic voyage visiting the ports of call of the Atlantic slave trade in a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, when Britain and the other slave-trading Powers ( followed by the United States ) signed an international treaty banning the trade. Photos of this contemporary voyage will also be on display.

These exhibits are presented as part of a week-long series of events to increase awareness of and to educate present and future generations about the causes, consequences, lessons, and legacy of the 400-year slave trade. The exhibits are organized by the United Nations Department of Public Information, in cooperation with AMISTAD America, the McKissick Museum of the University of South Carolina, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

For more information on related events, please visit http://www.un.org/events/slaveryremembrance

This weekend CNN Inside Africa's host, Isha Sesay, presents Amistad's Atlantic Freedom Tour mission of teaching the values of freedom and justice aboard Amistad to the millions of viewers around the world.