“Make Us Free”

The 1839 Amistad Revolt centered on Sengbe Pieh, also known as Joseph Cinque, one of the millions of Africans kidnapped from their homes and transported in bondage to the Americas. Sold into slavery in Cuba, he and forty-eight other men, and four children were bound aboard the schooner La Amistad. During a storm, Sengbe Pieh freed himself and his fellows, and the Africans seized the ship, but their efforts to have it steered homeward were thwarted. After futile weeks at sea, they were captured off Long Island by the U.S.S. Washington and jailed on this site awaiting trial for piracy and murder. To aid their struggle for freedom, the Amistad Committee formed, including ministers Simeon Jocelyn, Joshua Leavitt, and James Pennington, merchant Lewis Tappan, professor Josiah Gibbs, and lawyer Roger Baldwin. The Africans were tried twice before their ultimate triumph before the United States Supreme Court, where former President John Quincy Adams defended them, and Sengbe Pieh and his fellows were declared Free Persons. Seeking to return home, they undertook speaking tours to raise funds for their voyage and to advance the anti-slavery cause, and in 1841, after a sojourn that profoundly influenced the abolitionist movement, they set sail free at last.

New Haven, Connecticut · United States