Amistad History

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Amistad (1997) is a historical film directed by Steven Spielberg and is based on a well-known 1839 uprising of African tribesmen. Director Steve Spielberg successfully presented the David Franzoni's book Munity on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law and Diplomacy (1987) on the screen by making this epic historical movie. The story is about how a group of African slaves suffered through the painstaking experience of being enslaved by Spanish slave owners and eventually set free under the help of a couple of American anti-slavery abolitionists.
The Spanish Slave ship La Amistad carries abducted African slaves from Sierra Leone and bring them to Cuba for international slave trade. Cinque, the leader of the …show more content…

The African slaves keep the captain alive and force him to navigate them back to Africa. However, the captain tricks the slaves and sail to United States instead. La Amistad is found by American military vessel. Amistad is soon confiscated and the slaves are imprisoned while the court determines whether the slaves will be freed. Spain, Great Britain and US have prohibited international slave trade but the Spanish slave owner claims the slaves were born in Cuba and are legal slaves. Abolitionist Theodore Joadson, activist Lewis Tappan, and an attorney specializing in property law, Roger Sherman Baldwin decided to help Cinque and the rest of the slaves retrieve their freedom and go back home. However, when they communicate about how to solve this case, neither side can understand each other because of language barriers. Fortunately, they eventually find a black sailor James Covey from the navy as the translator who speaks both English and the African language. Thus Cinque is

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