Yale's friendship with 'La Amistad'

To Spanish students, it's friendship. For the rest of us, it's Steven Spielberg's upcoming movie, starring Matthew McConaughey and Anthony Hopkins and opening nationwide on Fri., Dec. 12, after a New Haven screening tonight at the Whitney Humanities Center. After one stands in front of the Amistad Memorial next to New Haven City Hall, however, the word amistad recalls a moment of incredible historical importance for Yale and New Haven, as well as the plight of 53 kidnapped "slaves" onboard the La Amistad vessel. With the aid of Yale professors, students, and alumni, the captives of the Amistad were passionately defended in court, instructed in English and Christianity, and provided with a means for telling their story in their own words. Yalies' imprint on the event would still be seen years later, in the fight for the independence of Sierra Leone.

The pitch

For 53 African natives, the trauma began long before reaching the ports of New Haven. In January of 1839, Spaniards kidnapped the Africans from the Mendi region near modern-day Sierra Leone. After a horrific journey to Havana, Cuba, where the importation of African slaves was illegal, the captives were fraudulently classified as native Cuban slaves and were purchased at an auction by Don José Ruiz and Don Pedro Montez. In order to transfer them to another part of the island, Ruiz and Montez loaded the Africans on the coasting cargo schooner La Amistad.

Three days into the journey, the Africans, led by 25 year-old Sengbe Pieh (known to the Spanish as Joseph Cinqué), freed themselves, mutinied, and seized control of the vessel. After killing two members of the crew and driving off the rest, the Africans ordered Ruiz and Montez to sail the Amistad back to their homeland. At night, however, the Spaniards secretly changed course, hoping to sail back to Cuba or the southern United States.

Sixty-three days after the Africans seized control of the Amistad, the ship arrived at Montauk Point, Long Island, where the African "cargo" was seized by a federal survey brig as salvage. On August 29, 1839, the Amistad was towed into New London, Conn. Then began a 19-month legal battle for the Africans' freedom.

Charging the Africans with murder and piracy, a New London judge ordered the case to be heard at the next session of the U.S. Circuit Court in Hartford. Cinqué and the other Mendis were sent as captives to the New Haven prison to be held until their case was settled. Meanwhile, the Amistad affair was becoming ammunition in the growing conflict between the abolitionist movement and pro-slavery factions.

Enter Yale

The first Yale man to jump to the aid of the Africans was the Reverend Joshua Leavitt, class of 1814. An ardent supporter of the abolitionist movement, Leavitt persuaded fellow Yalie Roger S. Baldwin, class of 1811, to serve as chief counsel for the captives in their U.S. Circuit Court trial.

In addition to supplying the Africans' legal defense, abolitionist Yalies joined groups that provided for the Africans' physical well-being and educational instruction. Aiding the "Amistad Committee," as the Africans' supporters came to be known, was Yale Divinity School Professor Josiah Willard Gibbs Sr., class of 1809. Because the language barrier prevented the Africans from receiving a fair trial, Gibbs scoured the local harbors for a translator so the captives could tell their own story. Gibbs ended up in New York, reciting pri-mary numbers in the Mendi dialect until a passerby recognized the language. The passerby was James Covey, an African sailor and fluent speaker of Mendi.

According to the January 1841 Supreme Court ruling, Covey affirmed that the captives were native Africans and thus had been illegally forced into the Spanish slave trade. In his deposition, Covey stated, "All
these Africans were from Africa. I could talk with them. They appeared glad, because they could speak the same language.... They all agree as to where they sailed from. I have no doubt they are Africans."

Gibbs also enlisted the aid of George Edward Day, class of 1833, and a group of Yale divinity students to teach the Africans English and Christianity. According to William Owens' Slave Mutiny, a dramatic acount of the Amistad affair, these Yale men helped the Africans establish a routine. They spent mornings studying English and Christianity and afternoons "play[ing] on the Village Green with spectators laughing and pitching coins."

Cut to the courtroom

The Amistad defendants put President Martin Van Buren in a difficult position. Spain wanted the President to hand the Africans over to Spanish authorities without trial. In doing so, Van Buren would be openly compromising the constitutional separation of executive and judicial powers. Van Buren also feared losing pro-slavery support in the upcoming 1840 election if the slaves were found to be free people. Hoping that the courts would return the Africans to Cuba, the President left the outcome to the legal system. To prevent a possible appeal from the Africans, he ordered Secretary of State John Forsyth to ready a ship to sail for Cuba immediately after the trial.

The Africans' defense centered around the fact that, according to the Anglo-Spanish Treaty of 1817, the importation of slaves from Africa was illegal under Spanish law and a crime punishable by death. Baldwin, acting as counsel for the captives, filed a claim stating that "[the captives] were natives of Africa, and were born free, and ever since had been, and still of right were and ought to be, free and not slaves; that they were never domiciled in the island of Cuba, or in the dominions of the Queen of Spain, nor subject to the laws thereof."

The murder and conspiracy charges against the Africans were dropped in the New London Circuit Court trial on the grounds that the United States had no jurisdiction in those incidents. During the subsequent District Court trial, the Africans described how they had been kidnapped, mistreated, and sold into slavery. The District Court judge ruled in favor of the Africans, declaring them legally free and mandating their transportation home. Dismayed by the decision, Van Buren ordered an immediate appeal to the Supreme Court.

In February of 1841, former President John Quincy Adams, though elderly and nearly blind, argued passionately in defense of the Africans' right to freedom, decrying Van Buren's illegal attempts to influence the judicial system. His defense was effective. In March 1841 the Supreme Court issued its final verdict: the Amistad Africans were free people and should be repatriated.

The final reel

The Amistad Committee spent the rest of 1841 educating the Africans and raising money for their return voyage. At the end of the year, the 35 survivors of the Amistad affair finally returned home. Aided by five American missionaries, the Committee established a mission colony in their homeland. With its encouragment of schooling and political reform, the colony started a groundswell which eventually led to the independence of Sierra Leone from Great Britain.

In the United States, the Amistad affair unified and advanced the abolitionist movement. Civil libertarians increasingly used the judicial system to press their case, inflaming political passions throughout the country and laying the groundwork for the abolition of slavery and eventually the modern civil rights movement.

The New Haven Amistad Memorial was constructed in 1992 at the exact location of the prison where the Africans were held captive during the trials. A three-sided statue depicting three of the Amistad Africans, the memorial's base tells the tale of Cinqué and his fellow Mendis.

Last year, a permanent exhibit documenting Yale's role in the Amistad affair was installed in Battell Chapel as part of the Connecticut Freedom Trail, which marks locations throughout the state that have played important roles in African-American history. An unobtrusive glass case in the vestibule of the chapel, the exhibit displays replicas of letters written during the trial and pictures of Cinqué and Gibbs.

No facts were harmed in the filming of this motion picture?

The most recent Amistad tribute is Spielberg's upcoming movie. While they were eager to include Yale in tonight's special screening, the movie's researchers did not directly consult Yale's resources nor its experts on the Amistad affair. In fact, according to Judith Schiff, chief research archivist at Yale's Manuscripts and Archives library, one of the historical consultants to the movie quit during early filming because he was "unhappy with historical distortions in the film."

Further complicating the search for truth within the motion picture is a lawsuit recently brought against the film by Barbara Chase-Riboud. Chase-Riboud claims that elements of her Amistad novel, Echo of Lions, were stolen and incorporated into the movie's screenplay--elements that are purely fictional, such as a wealthy abolitionist character played by Morgan Freeman.

Schiff's main concern is that people know of the historical facts of the Amistad affair. "Hopefully [the movie] won't be quite distorted," she said. "But if you're not informed, it's hard to know what is the truthful part and what is the fictional part."

Across the Green, at City Hall, on the same spot where 53 Africans were unjustly imprisoned 150 years ago, the Amistad Memorial stands, waiting to take Yalies a step closer towards learning that truth.

Cover photo by Liz Oliner.

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