Amistad (film)

Amistad is a 1997 American historical drama film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the true story of the 1839 mutiny aboard the slave ship La Amistad, during which Mende tribesmen abducted for the slave trade managed to gain control of their captors ship off the coast of Cuba, and the international legal battle that followed their capture by a U.S. revenue cutter. The case was ultimately resolved by the United States Supreme Court in 1841.

Amistad is the name of a slave ship traveling from Cuba to the United States in 1839. It is carrying a cargo of Africans captured in Sierra Leone, and held at the Lomboko slave fortress, who have been sold into slavery in Cuba, taken on board, and chained in the cargo hold of the ship. As the ship is crossing from Cuba to the United States, Cinqu, a leader of the Africans, leads a mutiny and takes over the ship. The mutineers spare the lives of two Spanish navigators to help them sail the ship back to Africa. Instead, the navigators play out the Africans and sail north to the east coast of the United States, where the ship is stopped by the American navy and the 53 living Africans imprisoned as runaway slaves. In an unfamiliar country and not speaking a single word of English, it seems like they are doomed to die for killing their captors. A lawyer named Roger Sherman Baldwin, hired by the abolitionist Tappan and his black associate Joadson a fictional character decides to take their case.At first arguing that the Africans had been captured in Africa to be sold in the Americas illegally, Baldwin proves through documents found hidden on the ship that they were free citizens of another country and not slaves at all. But in light of this evidence, the judge presiding over the case is replaced by a younger one who is believed to be impressionable and easily influenced. Tappan and his team decide to change their tactics and call Cinqu himself as a witness. ........

Source: Wikipedia