You can click on the painting to enlarge it. It was painted in 1839.It shows "Cinqué", a married rice farmer who had three children. Cinqué was from Sierra Leone, in West Africa. His real name was actually Sengbe Pieh. He was born in 1813, and died in around 1879. But he entered the pages of history in 1839, when he rebelled against the entire European and American institution of slavery.
It started when he was kidnapped from Africa, and sold into slavery, in 1839.
He led a rebellion on the slave ship (called the "Amistad") carrying him and 54 other Africans into slavery, on June 30 , 1839.
The rebellion killed the captain of that slave ship, and the cook of the ship. Two Africans, who had been enslaved, also died. The Africans took prisoner Ruiz and Montez, the two European merchants who had made the purchase, and demanded that they direct the ship back to Sierra Leone, but instead they directed the ship towards the United States.
After about two months, the Amistad reached United States waters near Long Island, New York. Members of the USS Washington came aboard, the Africans were charged with mutiny and murder, and they were taken to New Haven, Connecticut to await trial.
The two Europeans claimed that the Africans were already slaves in Cuba at the time of their purchase and were therefore legal property. Translators from Mende to English were found, allowing the Africans to tell their story to the court. Cinqué served as the group's informal representative.
In March 1840, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Africans mutinied to regain their freedom after being kidnapped and sold illegally. Former U.S. President John Quincy Adams served as the Africans' defense counsel. They were ordered to be permitted to return to Africa, against the protests of U.S. President Martin Van Buren.
Cinqué and the other Africans reached their homeland in 1842.
What Cinqué accomplished:
The “Amistad incident” created a major issue that the divided abolitionist movement could unite around. It focused public attention on what slavery really was.
The legal decision in the "Amistad" case did not challenge slavery itself. But for the first time the United States Supreme Court asserted that people of color had the same rights as anybody else and that the courts must enforce them.
It would be many years, however, before the United States would actually begin to respect the rights of people of color. In fact, sixteen years after the Amistad decision, the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case declared that Black people had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” The Dred Scott Court said: “They are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.”
Only after the U.S. Civil War did the United States even pretend to implement the racial equality that the "Amistad" case had seemed to promise. Judge Constance Baker Motley has called the Supreme Court's Amistad decision "the first legal milestone in the long, difficult struggle in the courts by persons of color for equal justice under law."
What happened to Africa all this time:
As soon as European invaders had gotten a foothold on Africa’s coast, massive destruction was done to African society, to the intricate fabric of African justice, civil administration, religion, medicine, agriculture, communal landholding, family bonds, economy, currency, and trade.
The Europeans had encouraged frequent raids and wars, to obtain big profits from slave trading. Wars became endemic. Through these wars, African chiefs obtained slaves to sell to Europeans.
Thus Europe devastated many African civilizations, waged many wars, gave wealth and power to chiefs who helped them enslave Africans, and killed millions of Africans over the centuries. The slavery period gave way to outright European ownership of practically every African country, until the 1960’s African freedom movement.
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