Inheriting the trade

Charleston again will confront its history as a slave-trading city in a slave-owning state beginning May 22 with the premiere of a newly revised version of Anthony Davis' opera "Amistad" at Spoleto Festival USA.

Charleston and South Carolina are home to descendents of slaves and descendents of slave owners who had "slaves in the family," as Charlestonian Edward Ball titled his family history.

Freedom Schooner Amistad, a reproduction of the 19th-century slave ship, will arrive in the Lowcountry on May 15.

In advance of this year's 200th anniversary of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, 10 relatives decided to document their New England family's legacy of shame with a project that could have been called "slavers in the family."

All are descendents of the DeWolf family of Rhode Island. From 1769 to 1820, the DeWolf men trafficked in humans, sailing their ships from Bristol, R.I., a slaver center, to West Africa, where they traded rum for African men, women and children.

The DeWolfs owned plantations in Cuba where they worked slaves to grow sugar and molasses, and they owned rum distilleries in Bristol.

The DeWolfs also sold slaves at auction in port at Havana and Charleston. The family owned 47 ships that took Africans across the Middle Passage.

Katrina Browne, seventh-generation descendent of the family's first slave trader, Mark Anthony DeWolf, has made a documentary film, "Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North," that premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival and will be aired on PBS the week of June 24. (See tracesofthetrade.org.)

Her cameras and crew followed the 10 descendents, including Charleston-reared Dain Perry who is married to the descendent of a slave, as they retraced the Triangle Trade in Bristol, at slave forts on the Ghana coast and at the ruins of the Cuba plantation.

Cousin Thomas Norman DeWolf wrote a companion book to the film titled "Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History." (See Inheritingthetrade.com.)

"We want to get into the subject of racism and dig deep," Perry told a classroom at Wooster School in Danbury, Conn., which he attended. "We don't know how to talk about race. If we can deepen the national conversation on race, we can begin the healing. There is a lot of healing to be done."

Half a dozen states have passed resolutions making a statement of regret or apology for the slave trade.

Freedom Schooner Amistad, a reproduction of the 19th-century slave ship Amistad, will arrive in Charleston for Harbor Fest and Spoleto Festival USA later this month.

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 Center. 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.

MORALE ABOARD THE Connecticut schooner Amistad was flagging in late February, by the time the ship arrived at the islands of Cape Verde, new ports of call on the 14,000-mile Atlantic Freedom Tour over historic slave routes.

There were some typical long-voyage crew tensions, exacerbated by the cultural stew on Amistad, professional sailors, American college students and some people the ship has literally picked up along the way, including a few new hands from Sierra Leone.

To make things worse, they were running out of money, and no one in the crew had been paid for a while.

And then, as some aboard now tell it, things changed with a single stroke, the addition of one new crew member, bounding into everyone's hearts.

“We brought this tiny little ball of salsa aboard, and she has brought us all together,” said Capt. Eliza Garfield. “And eaten all our shoes.”

She is Fogo, a Cape Verdean stray dog, a sickly, flea-bitten puppy when Garfield and Ben Clarkson of Old Lyme, the ship's engineer, encountered her on the beach. It appeared her mother was rejecting her as she tried to nurse.

“She grabbed our hearts,” Garfield said. “Ben and I looked at each other, and he said, 'what about a puppy?' ”

Fogo, named for a small volcanic island in Cape Verde, is about three months old, they think, and has acquired her sea legs. She sleeps in the ship's after cabin, sometimes bunk hopping. Dani Settle, the cook, fed her oatmeal and milk when she first arrived on board, but she's working now from a supply of puppy chow donated by a film crew that visited the ship.

While Amistad was making an Atlantic passage last month, Fogo acquired the habit of pouncing on flying fish as they landed on deck. They tried to limit her to eating one of these a day. She can now navigate her own way up on deck from the aft cabin but hasn't yet mastered the ladder to go down into the main cabin.

After the ocean crossing, the ship arrived in Barbados and is expected back in the United States, in Charleston, by mid-May. They are due home by the end of June.

Fogo will eventually live with Clarkson in Old Lyme. Clarkson's son, Toby, a history major at the University of South Carolina, took a semester off and has joined his father on Amistad. The two of them had a burial at sea on the trip for Shane, the last family dog, whose ashes they took with them.

Fogo has continued to boost morale along the way.

“She's been a great joy for everyone,” Ben Clarkson said this week in a phone interview from Barbados.

Still, even a bigger morale boost might be more donations to Amistad America, which people can make by visiting the Web site, amistadamerica.org, to ensure the crew's paychecks keep coming.

Fogo is more or less ship trained, to go on deck, not down below. Some of the time that means following her with a bucket of sea water, which is actually good for the wood. And some of the time it means following with paper towel.

Toby Clarkson alluded to this in a part of a poem he wrote at sea, approaching Barbados:

A great welcome is planned

For the hardy stad clan

We'll embrace every word

Fogo dropped another ...

This is the opinion of David Collins

Reprint of the original article from The Nation News published on: 4/18/08.

IN THE SILENCE of the cramped, dark space below deck, faintly illuminated by the Barbadian afternoon sunlight filtering down the steep, narrow stairway, visitors huddled in the hold of the Amistad.

They were listening with rapt attention as Sierra Leonean crew member, John Kamara, proudly told the story of the brave endurance of his ancestors as they resisted the cruelty and indignity of enslavement.

Listening, one not only heard his African voice. In the back of the mind, the haunting screams of thousands of John's ancestors who perished in captivity on the trip across the Atlantic somehow seemed to be re-echoing from the surrounding thick partitions built with African woods such as ikoro, kola nut and white oak.

Modern model

A tour of the recreated, modern model of the 1839 Spanish schooner La Amistad, is an experience that evokes disturbing thoughts of the horrors of slavery, though the story of the original ship is one of defiance and determination, demonstrating the indomitable human spirit in its quest for freedom.

As related on the tour of the ship by Canadian student Nina Cox, 53 West Africans were captured in Mende (now Sierra Leone) and later bought by two Spaniards who headed for Cuba with their human goods. On arrival in Cuba, the 49 men and four children were placed on La Amistad, an intra-coastal cargo ship sailing up and down the coast of Cuba with cargoes of sugar, cotton and beeswax.

Three days into a five-day sail to Puerto Principe to be sold to a plantation, hero of La Amistad, Seng-be Pieh, sensing their fate, took the bold action to free his fellow slaves bound below in the main cargo hold. Armed with the machetes they found on board, they revolted, taking over the ship, killing the captain and the cook. The deckhands escaped on a small boat.

The Africans, mainly farmers at the time of their capture, spent 63 days at sea trying to navigate their way back to Africa, with the aid of two Spaniards they held captive, but were spotted by a United States naval ship somewhere off the coast of Long Island, New York, and taken to Connecticut.

Landmark battle

Theirs was a landmark court battle in the United States, in which the right of Africans to self-determination was successfully argued. They won and were eventually able to return to Africa as free people.

Captain, Dr. Eliza Garfield, said the Amistad story was being used to ensure mistakes of the past were never repeated, as well as to address the questions of human rights, injustice and human trafficking in today's world.

During this Atlantic Freedom Tour, on which the ship has embarked as part of celebrations to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the international slave trade, Garfield observed that hundreds of Barbadians and others had visited the ship, posing thoughtful and meaningful questions.

She said Barbados had been especially chosen as the only Caribbean country for a visit, because of its deep involvement in the slave trade.

"Clearly the colonial power of Britain probably had its most devastating institutionalisation in slavery here on Barbados." Notwithstanding this, she was impressed with Barbados' ability to achieve self-rule "shortly after the banning of enslavement".

Amistad left the United States last June 21, travelled around the English ports of London, Bristol and Liverpool, on to Portugal, through the Canary Islands to Cape Verde, eventually retracing the Atlantic slave route across the Middle Passage to Barbados, from where it will sail on Sunday to Charleston, South Carolina, eventually returning to Connecticut in June.

Significant role

On board, the five Americans, two Canadians, one Briton, one Bermudian, one Cape Verdean and five Sierra Leoneans, consisting of students and crew, are convinced they are playing a significant role in Amistad's mission to keep the message of hope and freedom alive for the future.

As Kamara said: "This is no fun thing. This is a call."

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.

[Webmaster's Note:  This story, written by Mariama Kandah, first appeared in the Concord Times on December 11, 2007.  Two corrections to the article:  The crew aboard the Freedom Schooner currently numbers 15, not 50.  Also, Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell is not in Freetown; the author may have confused her with Althea Norcott, who is in Sierra Leone as a representative of New Haven Sister Cities.]

The historic Amistad boat Sunday returned to Sierra Leone in a new form - a re-creation of the original 19th century coastal trading ship.

"I am delighted to see our long-gone history return to my home today," said the only Sierra Leonean to be part of the 50-person crew.

John Kamara, a boat engineer who lived at Whiteman's Bay in Murray Town before traveling to the United States, left the shores of Sierra Leone six years ago to join AMISTAD America, a not-for-profit U.S. charity.

Kamara said Sierra Leoneans donated the wood for the construction of the boat, which set sail in New Haven, Connecticut in June.

The original Amistad is famous because of a 1839 slave revolt in which a 25-year-old Mende farmer, Sengbe Pieh, took control of the ship after being captured in Pujehun. The Spanish crew was killed, but the escaped slaves were eventually captured and tried in the United States, where they made history because U.S.

President John Quincy Adams argued on their behalf.

Thirty-five were eventually returned to Africa.

The re-created ship will sail a distance of 14,000 miles over 16 months in order to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British empire. Sierra Leone was its first African port of call.

Kamara said his heart is bleeding for his country because after hundreds of years it has still not developed. "I am crying for my country. We need to help our people, we are all heroes," he said, adding that the ship is in the country to discuss development with the government and people of Sierra Leone. He said he couldn't continue staying abroad while his people are suffering.

The U.S. Ambassador to Sierra Leone, June Carter Perry, said the Amistad incident is still relevant in today's world, where human rights violations continue to occur.

"Human rights remain under threat in many places of the world," she said. "People still toil away at menial jobs for less than the living wage, and men, women and children are still forcefully trafficked for exploitative purposes all over the world." At another ceremony yesterday, Carter Perry surprised representatives from New Haven, which is Freetown's 'twin' city in the U.S., with a daring proposal to bring engineers from New Haven to Freetown to re-build roads.

The visiting Connecticut governor agreed to look into the idea.

Mohamed Bangura, a Sierra Leonean who was also gracing Sunday's Amistad, said the arrival of the boat made him think about the strangeness of the 500-year Atlantic slave trade.

He said it also reminded him of the importance of the Sierra Leone in international Human rights history.

"I also get a recap of the unfortunate Africans who suffered the brunt of slavery," he said, noting that the arrival of the boat suggested the beginning of Sierra Leone championing the cause of Human rights. "I am happy because it creates an opportunity wherein a practical picture is given about the Amistad schooner."

[Webmaster's note:  This story, written by Umaru Fofana, was first reported by the BBC on December 11, 2007.  Click here to read the full article.]

There was chaos at Freetown's port in Sierra Leone when a replica of the Amistad slave ship opened to the public.

"I want to know much about its history," one man shouted in Krio as a crew member appealed for patience and calm as hundreds of people struggled to gain access.

The replica of the 19th Century trading ship has been retracing a 14,000-mile slave trade route to mark the 200th anniversary since Britain abolished the slave trade within its empire.

It sailed into Freetown - founded as a settlement for freed slaves - over the weekend.

"We have to have some way for you to get on the boat safely. What we're doing now is building a platform so you can come up and come down on the boat," the crew member shouted to the crowds, which included children on a school outing.

The history of ship is deep-rooted in Sierra Leone's history, as in 1839 some 200 Sierra Leoneans were taken to Cuba as slaves.

Some of them were sold to Spanish slavers who loaded them on to the Amistad.

Led by Sengbeh Pieh, the slaves revolted on the ship, killing many of the crew.

They however ended up in the United States where they were imprisoned.

Their case was taken up by several abolitionists, led by former US President John Quincy Adams, which ultimately led to their freedom.

"I came to look at the Amistad revolt because I want to know more about it because I read it in school and I think I saw the film [by Steven Spielberg] two or three years ago, so I wanted to see the ship where the revolt took place," said Mbalu, who was waiting to go on board.

"I would like them to show me the place where Sengbeh Pieh was sitting or maybe lying down - yes that's the particular place I've come to see," she said.

The children were allowed on board first, and then the expectant crowds.

Access problems

But after her visit Mbalu said she was disappointed not to have been allowed access to the cabin where the slaves were kept.

"The access is very steep you have to descend a ladder," explained William Minter, chairman of the Amistad America Board of Trustees.

"For large numbers of people of all different ages, there's only one way in and one way out so it's hard to move traffic through," he said.

When Sengbeh Pieh eventually returned to Sierra Leone in 1842, he was a hero, and his face adorns one of the country's banknotes.

FREETOWN, Dec 9 (Reuters) - A replica of a 19th century slave ship, which became a symbol of the anti-slavery movement after kidnapped Africans rose up on board against their captors, arrived on Sunday in Sierra Leone.

Cheering Sierra Leoneans lined the docks to see the 129-foot (39-metre) schooner, topped with three billowing sails and the Sierra Leonean, U.S. and Canadian flags, make its first stop in Africa since it set sail in June from New Haven, Connecticut.

The Amistad's voyage commemorates Britain's abolition of the transatlantic slave trade 200 years ago this year.

The ship has already stopped in Britain and Portugal on a voyage expected to last 14 months, retracing the routes of the slave trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas.

"Our people were torn from their culture to become slaves. It's the first time a schooner has come in instead of going out," said Mohamed Bangura, a British-based Sierra Leonean on the dock in the capital Freetown.

The original La Amistad, was seized at sea by 53 kidnapped Africans led by Sengbe Pieh, who became a national hero, who rose up against their captors.

They eventually won a long court case in the United States, which ruled that free men, if captured, must be returned to their homelands. The 35 who survived returned to Africa in 1841.

John Kamara, the only Sierra Leonean to make the journey on board the replica craft, heard the story of the Amistad from his grandmother as a small boy.

"This means a lot to me and my people. I'm so proud," said Kamara, 34, wearing a bandana in the green, white and blue of Sierra Leone's flag.

"WE ARE ALL HEROES"

The former British colony's hilly ocean-side capital is named after freed slaves who resettled there in 1787, but it has suffered a brutal 1991-2002 civil war and elections this year revealed deep frustrations over grinding poverty. Many assembled at the wharf grumbled that African American descendants of slaves are better off than Sierra Leoneans.

Bystanders hoped the ship's voyage could symbolise a happier future for the country, which elected President Ernest Bai Koroma to power in September on a ticket to deliver development and clamp down on widespread corruption.

The ship is due to sail on Dec. 18 for Senegal and Cape Verde, before crossing the Atlantic again for the West Indies.

The voyage retraces the triangular Atlantic trade which shipped European goods to Africa to pay for slaves, who were taken to plantations and mines of the Caribbean and South America to produce commodities for export back to Europe.

(Editing by Alistair Thomson)

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved. 

[Webmaster's note:  This story, was first reported by the Reuters News on December 9, 2007.  Click here to read the full article.]

[Webmaster's Note - this article, written by David Collins, appeared  in the December 8th edition of the New London Day, and can be read in its entirety here.  We appreciate your patience as a busy delegation and tired crew meet and celebrate with their hosts in Freetown. Updates will be forthcoming as technology allows, but your best wishes and messages left as comments are greatly appreciated.]

THE SCHOONER AMISTAD was launched in Mystic seven years ago and hails from New Haven, the ship's official homeport.

But most everyone associated with the recreation of La Amistad, the ship commandeered by African captives in 1839 and discovered adrift off the coast of Connecticut, agrees that Sierra Leone, where the Africans were captured to begin with, is Amistad's spiritual place.

And on Friday the modern Amistad — like the captives of La Amistad, who were eventually exonerated by an American court and freed — made it home.

The schooner arrived in the port city of Freetown in Sierra Leone just after 8 a.m., the latest stop in a daunting, 14-month, 14,000-mile voyage along historic slave routes. Christened the Atlantic Freedom Tour, it began unofficially at the end of a winter overhaul at Mystic Seaport, where the ship was built.

The schooner, aided by surprisingly strong trade winds, actually arrived two days ahead of schedule. A rousing welcoming celebration Sunday is expected to draw thousands of people from around the country.

“It is awesome, totally, totally awesome,” Eliza Garfield, the ship's captain, said in a scratchy cell phone interview Friday night as the ship's crew enjoyed its first meal ashore. She said they've already been welcomed by cheering crowds and big smiles wherever they go.

“We've really had this feeling (in recent days) of coming home,” Garfield said. “I really felt today like she was bringing not just the spirit of their ancestors but something else to the living and breathing people of Sierra Leone. I feel like we've only begun to scratch the surface.”

Garfield said that, as the Amistad picked its way through some shallow waters off the African coast early Friday, the crew was greeted by the strange sight of fishing trawlers with no navigation lights but fires burning on deck. After dawn, they were awed by the sight of the majestic mountains of Sierra Leone.

In the harbor they were met by a tug carrying William Pinkney, the first captain of the Amistad who has returned to the command of the ship for parts of this voyage, as well as Quentin Snediker, the shipyard director at Mystic Seaport who was in charge of building the schooner.

“It was an incredibly exciting moment for me personally,” said Pinkney, who was the first African-American to sail solo around the world. “Joining me was Quentin Snediker, who built the boat in Mystic. We both knew, the moment the Amistad touched the water back in 2000, we knew in our hearts and minds that someday this could happen.”

Pinkney and Snediker are part of a group of about 30 officials and supporters of Amistad America, the nonprofit association that owns the 129-foot schooner, on hand to greet the crew. They were to be joined this weekend by even more Connecticut delegates, many from New Haven, which is a sister city to Freetown.

“This is a very historic event,” said Alfred Marder, head of the Amistad Committee, the organization that helped formulate the idea to build a teaching ship to tell the story of the Amistad. Marder left Friday afternoon with a delegation of 16 others going to Sierra Leone.

“What this is doing is bringing the story to the homeland of Sengbe Pieh (the captive leader known as Cinque) and the other captives,” Marder said. “The (people of Sierra Leone) have been most generous in their hospitality and have organized a very exciting welcome. The Amistad story has great meaning for them, and Sengbe Pieh is a national hero.”

Sierra Leone held a successful election in August and has a new government after 11 years of civil strife. Pinkney said that makes the visit of the Amistad especially poignant.

“It's incredible, the timing that has brought us here now,” he said.

Amistad left Halifax, Nova Scotia, in July. It had a very successful Atlantic crossing, with one stop in the Azores when the engineer broke a toe, and arrived in Falmouth, England, in early August. The ship had a long layover in Lisbon, Portugal, before taking up the leg toward Africa.

From Sierra Leone the schooner will make its way to Senegal, Cape Verde and the Caribbean before returning to Connecticut by summer.

On this last leg of the trip, the crew made good time with the strong trades, caught tuna that they cooked and ate, watched pilot whales frolic around the ship, and occasionally stopped for swim calls to escape the brutal heat.

On board, in addition to the professional crew, are students who are earning college credits and for whom daily classes are part of the shipboard routine. In the days leading up to the arrival in Sierra Leone, everyone on the ship read aloud biographies of the Amistad captives, some of whom had been taken into slavery to settle family debts or to placate a tribal king or leader.

“After such a beautiful day,” Garfield wrote in a blog transmitted from the ship by satellite phone earlier this week, “filled with the tastes, touches, sights, sounds and smells of this amazing patch of water eight and a half degrees above the equator and just 14 degrees west of so many other places, we will have to fire up Amistad's engines and begin our final last leg 'home.'

“Amistad will be bowing her head to the east, to the ancestors she has known only in the abstract, until now.”

Mike Moreland, the second mate, was also anticipating the arrival in his blog from sea.

“The rumor board has been whispering of big parties with local musicians and politicians, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people and a week of open ship in the sweltering African heat with enough people to sink the ship at the dock,” he wrote. “It may not be easy, but then again, nothing worth doing usually is.”

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