People: The Cast of Characters

The Cast of Characters introduces the major players in the Amistad story, compiling encapsulized biographies along with document links to materials in the Library.

Cinque:

the African at the center of the revolt, and subsequently a powerful and complex icon in American popular culture.

Other prominent Amistad Africans include:

Kale,

Kinna, and

Grabeau.

John Quincy Adams:

former president and cantakerous congressmen who helped plead the Africans' case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Roger Sherman Baldwin :

defense attorney for the Amistad captives.

Lewis Tappan:

abolitionist who took up the Africans' cause and made them national symbols of the Atlantic slave trade.

Martin Van Buren:

 president of the United States when the Amistad Revolt broke.

Supreme Court of the United States:

 biographies of each member of the Supreme Court sitting in 1841.

Joseph Story :

Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court who delivered the majority opinion freeing the Amistad captives in March 1841.

Andrew Judson:

 presiding Judge for the District Court trial of the Amistad Case.

James W.C. Pennington :

African-American abolitionist and minister who took up the Africans' cause and helped to engineer their return to Africa.

King Siaka:

 coastal African Ruler in the early 1800s.

Pedro Blanco :

 merchant who dominated the slave trade in the Gallinas region.

And courtesy of the Electronic Oberlin Group at Oberlin College:
 

Sarah Margru Kinson:

 "An Amistad Captive Comes to Oberlin".

Special note:

Theodore Joadson # did not exist. He is a fictional character created for the DreamWorks movie, a character meant to represent the important role that the Amistad story played in African American abolitionism. As historian James Horton notes: "There is a big story to be told about black abolitionists and their role in this. They raised money, gave lectures and wrote newspaper articles in support of the Africans. Cinque became a hero among free blacks and a symbol of black manhood."