The film Amistad is an account of a fact-base story of the 1839 revolt by kidnapped Africans against their captors. The incident touched off no less than three court cases in the U.S., with former President John Quincy Adams finally winning the Africans their freedom in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1841. The Amistad revolt and the ensuing legal cases touched off a maelstrom of controversy. According to Arthur Abraham (2003) the event helped pave the path to Civil War in the U.S., ôBy the time the Amistad Case came to an end, it had so embittered feelings between the anti-slavery North and the slave-holding South that it must be counted as one of the events leading to the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1860ö (9). The events portrayed in the film Amistad are a fairly accurate account of the controversy in U.S. society during the era with respect to race relations.
The film Amistad readily demonstrates the strained race relations in U.S. society during the 19th century. The film depicts the African revolt and the subsequent trials after they were taken prisoner on U.S. soil. The film offers a variety of perspectives, including those of John Quincy Adams, the former president who would try a sitting president in the person of Martin Van Buren, and Cinque, Joadson and Baldwin. Cinque was actually a man named Sengbe Pieh, a Mende native who became known in the U.S. as Joseph Cinque (Abraham 2003, 1).
SpielbergÆs Amistad focuses on the destruction of Africa families via the perspective of Cinque and his kidnapping. It also demonstrates the complex issue of law that eventually frees the Africans. By the time the Amistad revolt occurred, international slave trade had already been outlawed. For those who were already slaves before the law, they remained the property of their masters. For those like Cinque, who were forced into slavery after the law, were not considered the property of another. The film begins wi...