Sunday, May 09, 2004
Freedom Schooner
Am back from dinner with my in-laws at California Tortilla (moms eat free on Mother's Day!), ice cream sundaes and seeing Amistad (the schooner, a replica of the one whose story was told in the movie):
For those who have not seen the movie, the Amistad was sailing around Cuba to deliver captives as slaves for a plantation when the captives rebelled, took over the ship and sailed it to New England, where they were imprisoned and eventually won their freedom via the United States Supreme Court when former president John Quincy Adams argued their case (then-president Martin Van Buren, afraid of losing Southern votes, had asked the high court to hear the case after a Connecticut court declared that the captives should be free men). Eventually they returned to their homes in Mendi (present-day Sierra Leone), Africa.
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