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(The article was published by New Haven Register - June 18th, 2007 )
Mock trial puts spotlight on Amistad’s role
The importance of the history of the Amistad Incident was underscored lately as newspapers' headlines (Connecticut Post, Shelton Weekly) declared that Connecticut students “revised” the famous verdict in a mock trial exercise: the students voted to send the La Amistad captives back to Cuba and a life of slavery. This is not, as one headline suggested, a “revision” but a “reversal” of the actual decision reached by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1841.
It is ironic that such a “verdict” could be reached by young people in Connecticut, the home of the famous civil rights victory. But it was a freely debated exercise, which can occasionally produce an unexpected outcome. Nonetheless, the irony is particularly noteworthy when you consider that the mock trial was held just as the State’s official flagship and tall ship ambassador – the Freedom Schooner Amistad – was sailing home to
Connecticut after a year-long transatlantic voyage commemorating the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade.
The Amistad Incident was a singularly important human rights trial, a trial that galvanized the American Abolition movement and resulted in the freeing of 39 captives by a pro-slavery Supreme Court. In fact, the Court ruled in defiance of a sitting U.S. President Martin Van Buren desperate to hold on to Southern states for his own re-election. The court rejected Spain’s formal demands that the “cargo” be returned to Cuba, and the Court ignored the outcry of Southern states that demanded the rights of slaveholders be defended. In short, the U.S. Supreme Court – among whose justices a majority (5/4) were themselves slaveholders – chose to set the captives free.
So how do young people today reach an opposite decision? Now that is a question worth consideration. The student verdict does, however, raise another interesting question: What would have happened had the U.S. Supreme Court ruled as the students had done? In other words, What would have happened had the Court sent the captives back to Cuba and a life of slavery?
First, of course, the 39 remaining survivors of the Amistad (14 of the original 53 had died between 1839-1841) would have lived short, brutish lives most likely on a Cuban sugar plantation; their story lost like millions before them.
Specifically, it would have meant that the little girl aboard La Amistad, Margru, would not have gained her freedom and go on to attend Oberlin College before returning to Sierra Leone to teach and lead her people well into her 80s. It would have meant that the little boy, Kali, who learned English in a New Haven jail and wrote his famous letter appealing to former president John Quincy Adams to defend them, would have been lost to slavery. And, for that matter, President Adams would have gone down in defeat, having lost the most important civil rights case yet presented to the high court.
Surely today’s Freedom Schooner Amistad, a full-size replica of the original La Amistad, would never have been built at Mystic Seaport Museum; nor would there stand today a 15-foot-tall statute commemorating the Amistad Incident in front of New Haven City Hall.
Equally, Sengbe Pieh – the leader of the rebellion on board the La Amistad -- would not be the image on the currency of Sierra Leone today, for he would have died anonymously and forgotten. And, the proud descendents of Sengbe Pieh who stood with the new President of Sierra Leone in December to formally welcome Connecticut’s Amistad to a war-torn dock in Freetown would not have been there.
Beyond the personal lives of those not returned home to Africa, the broader course of history would surely have been different.
The struggling American Abolition movement would likely have collapsed back into infighting and disillusionment after so clear a failure to find justice in the law. And the American Missionary Association that sprang from the Amistad victory would have been stillborn, resulting in the loss of missionary work throughout West Africa that has literally saved millions. At least half a dozen historic black colleges that owe the stirring of formation at least in part to the Amistad Incident, particularly Talladega College, would not exist. And, as the highly acclaimed historian David Brion Davis -- the founding director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale -- noted in the opening chapter of his new book Inhuman Bondage:
“[I]f the American courts had reached a different decision, one can well imagine England imposing a naval blockade on Cuba and even a war exploding between Britain and the United States and perhaps Spain. The Amistad case involved American politics, the judiciary, and foreign relations at the highest levels. It also epitomized slavery’s deepest contradictions, both legal and philosophical.” (NYT book review)
Over the past year, Connecticut’s Amistad has sailed the infamous Slave Trade triangle in reverse – from its departure from New Haven last June to Canada, England, Portugal, West Africa, and the Caribbean. Students and crew have sailed as an official representative of Connecticut and the United States throughout the numerous international events commemorating the 200th anniversary of the 1807 British Act that made the Atlantic Slave Trade illegal.
(It is, of course, the 1807 Act [and a later treaty with Spain] that provided the legal foundation for the argument to set the original captives free.)
In short, had the U.S. Supreme Court of 1841 refused to free the captives, our world would be profoundly different place. In this way, the student verdict serves to remind us of the very importance of this landmark case.
Just a few months ago, thousands of Freetown residents -- mostly young people – pressed against the chain-linked fencing that stretches along Freetown’s waterfront to welcome Connecticut’s Amistad. They call the Amistad “Sengbe’s boat”. It is for them a symbol of hope and freedom that today they cling to with determination and pride as they work to rebuild their country after a brutal civil war. Had the Court ruled the other way, we here in Connecticut would not have so important a State symbol; nor would the United States flag fly atop the mast of a schooner that stands as an internationally recognized icon of hope and freedom in a world still replete with exploitation, strife and suffering. Perhaps the student verdict has jolted our collective conscience just a bit – and can serve as a reminder of how important it is to truly understand our own history.
Gregory R. Belanger
CEO & President
Amistad America, Inc.
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