Professor details Amistad Mutiny, portrayal of slavery in the media

On Wednesday, Feb. 26, Lisa Merrill, professor of rhetoric and performance studies at Hofstra University, delivered a lecture on the Amistad Mutiny, an 1839 slave revolt, and the ways media depicted it at that time.

On July 2, 1839, 53 Africans aboard the Amistad ship killed a captain and cook who threatened to eat them and also attempted to have the navigator, whose life they had spared, return them to Africa.

Illegally enslaved by Portuguese enslavers off the coast of Sierra Leone, a British colony at the time, the slaves on the ship were later sold to Cuba. From there, they were brought to Montauk, New York and later to Connecticut. In 1827, New York abolished slavery, but not Connecticut, and on Aug. 30, 1839, they were enslaved in New Haven.

Prior to their trial, the jailing of the enslaved Africans was something of a media spectacle. According to Merrill, as they awaited their trial, white observers watched and even paid to see them, with an admission cost of 12 and a half cents.

Merrill explained how enslaved Africans were perceived as objects of entertainment for the public. The Bowery Theatre in New York was producing a play the same week as the captive Africans awaited their trial, called “The Long Black Schooner.”  

The play spread news of the rebellion and acted partly to sensationalize the events, as it was written as a melodrama and became very popular. In addition, blackface was commonly worn at the time by white actors to represent actual black people.

“I think it’s important to have conversations about African enslavement, because we as an American society are given one perspective on enslavement and it’s one that denies the trauma and agency of black peoples in America,” said Anna Kizito, junior English and political science major and Center for Civic Engagement fellow.

“Few tales of escape from enslavement were more widely reported or represented visually than that of the Amistad mutiny,” Merrill said, adding that it is a historical example of the savagery inflicted upon enslaved Africans.

She then spoke about the creation of one of the more intact pieces of visual rhetoric from the mutiny: the portrait of Sengbe Pieh, also known as Cinqué or Joseph Cinqué. He was a Mende of Sierra Leone, though the press at the time referred to him as Congolese. Sengbe gave testimony during the trial.

Black abolitionist Robert Purvis commissioned a portrait of Sengbe, which was done by Nathaniel Jocelyn, another abolitionist.

The portrait portrays Sengbe with a staff and a white toga, evoking a kind of biblical allegory or antiquity, which suggested both an attempt to build empathy between the mutineers and those that wished to enslave them, as well as reflect the Christianization of those African colonies at the time.

The Philadelphia Artist Society refused to display the painting, proposing that it might hurt sales of other members’ works or spark riots against abolitionism. Jocelyn, outraged, resigned his membership. “The idea is that this painting would be a standing antislavery lecture to slaveholders and their apologists,” Merrill said. 

According to Merrill, the painting also helped to inspire other abolitionists at the time.

Purvis allowed Madison Washington, who was escaping to Canada, to stay in his home, where he saw the painting. Purvis then explained the context of the painting and while Washington made it to Canada, he returned to save his wife in the south, where he was captured again, but led a mutiny to overtake another ship, the Creole. The painting also produced mezzotints, one of which was owned by Frederick Douglass, inspiring and influencing him as well as many others at the time and even today.

In another instance of racialized media representation, New Haven abolitionists showed concern for the fact that the captives were only partially dressed while imprisoned, the issue being that at this time, it was winter in Connecticut. The editor of the local press replied to the abolitionists by claiming that the Africans were “preferring in private their native costumes,” and that those abolitionists were patronizing them.

“Representations of the mutiny were recorded not only in the press, but in the lens of performance, each wrought with historical paradoxes that reflect the subjection of black bodies in the past as well as the future,” Merrill said.

On March 9, 1841, the Supreme Court ruled the Amistad mutiny survivors free, that they were illegally taken and “entitled to all kindness and offices due to a humane and Christian nation.” With the help of the Antislavery Society, the mutineers would secure enough funds to return to Sierra Leone.

“I thought Dr. Merrill gave a very insightful view into what happened to the survivors,” said Veronica Lippencott, associate director of the Center for “Race,” Culture, and Social Justice and professor of global studies and geography. “I think it’s important to think of what happened to the survivors in a modern context, because these issues are still significant today.”

“I think discussions like these make a significant difference in the way that we interact with people and history, and help us to move towards a more progressive future,” said Sarah Stauffer, first year global studies and public policy major.