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.

Charleston Maritime Center

Tour Freedom Schooner Amistad

Thursday, May 22 – Monday, May 26, 2008

Currently on an historic 14-month transatlantic voyage

retracing the infamous Atlantic slave trade triangle,

the Freedom Schooner Amistad,

a replica of the original ship, makes its first U.S. stop in Charleston.

General Tours: 10:00 am – 5:00 pm daily

$5 per person includes ship tour and exhibit

Private Tours: Friday & Saturday, May 23 & 24

$50 per person

includes tour, lecture, meet the Captain

To order tickets - 1.866.AMISTAD

A new production of a freshly revised version of composer Anthony Davis's epic work Amistad will headline the 2008 Spoleto Festival USA.  Directed by Sam Helfrich with costumes by Kaye Voyce and an imaginative set by Caleb Wertenbaker, this highly anticipated new production will inaugurate the reopening of Memminger Auditorium, an historic theater in downtown Charleston that has just undergone extensive rehabilitation. 

Composed by Anthony Davis with a libretto by Thulani Davis, Amistad first premiered at Chicago's Lyric Opera in 1997.  The piece had not been performed since the Chicago run until Spoleto Festival USA commissioned Davis to revise the opera to bring this important story alive in a theatrically and musically vital way that would work within Memminger Auditorium.

The city of Charleston itself offers a unique backdrop for Amistad with its long connection to the history of the slave trade.  2008 is a year of particular significance as it marks the bicentennial of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, providing a particular resonance to the Spoleto production.    

The festival also plans numerous related events including artist talks and roundtables at the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture; guided tours of the newly-renovated Old Slave Mart Museum followed by a walking tour of sites related to African-American history in Charleston and screenings of related films. In addition, the Freedom Schooner Amistad – a replica of the slave ship currently on an 18-month transatlantic voyage – will be docked at the Charleston Maritime Center from May 16 through the opening weekend of Spoleto Festival USA.

The city's annual maritime festival will cut a wake across the harbor this year — and bring in folks from across the Atlantic.

The schooner Amistad, a replica of the famous 19th century ship commandeered by enslaved Africans, will make its first U.S. landfall in nearly a year at Charleston Harbor Fest 2008.

The ship is on an 18-month transatlantic voyage to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom in 1807 and the United States the year after that.

Among other ports, the ship has been to Halifax, Nova Scotia; London and Liverpool, England; Lisbon, Portugal; and Freetown, Sierra Leone, in the last year. It will sail from Barbados to reach Charleston in time for the beginning of Harbor Fest on May 16.

"It's the first landing of our homecoming and it's the right place for studying a part of our history," says Gregory Belanger, CEO and President of AMISTAD America Inc., the nonprofit that owns and operates Amistad.

Belanger said Amistad's stop in Charleston is continuing a great voyage of linking places already historically intertwined. And that is a perfect theme for Harbor Fest, the new name for the maritime festival.

Brad Van Liew, executive director of the South Carolina Maritime Heritage Foundation, said this year the size and scope of the festival has been enlarged, adding venues at Patriots Point and starting partnerships with nearly everyone on the water.

"The idea is to make the whole Harbor Fest an annual event for everyone in the community to enjoy the harbor," Van Liew said. "We want to make it one of the staple events in the city of Charleston."

Aside from Amistad, the research vessel Corwith Cramer and the schooner, Virginia, a replica of the last pure sail pilot schooner, will join the Spirit of South Carolina for a smaller version of a tall ship program. Van Liew said the biennial collection of tall ships has been so popular at previous maritime festivals, the Foundation decided to have a tall ship presence every year.

This year's Harbor Fest will include the return of the wooden boat-building class and pirate camp. There will be additional activities at Patriots Point and the South Carolina Aquarium, and organizers are planning a water shuttle to move people across the harbor. Plans are in the works for an air show/demonstration over the harbor.

Amistad and the other tall ships will be available for tours, and then Amistad will stick around Charleston — taking day trips to some barrier islands — and be on hand for the opening of a Spoleto opera based on the story of the ship and the people on it.

May 10 – 19, 2008

Charleston was a major US city for the arrival of African slaves. Ports acted as an entry into slave labor as human cargo was auctioned off and then sold to slave owners.