People: The Cast of Characters
The Cast of Characters introduces the major players in the Amistad story, compiling encapsulized biographies along with document links to materials in the Library.
Cinque -- the African at the center of the
revolt, and subsequently a powerful and complex icon in American popular culture.
Other prominent Amistad Africans include:
Kale,
Kinna, and
Grabeau.
John Quincy Adams -- former president and cantakerous congressmen who helped
plead the Africans' case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Roger Sherman Baldwin --
defense attorney for the Amistad captives.
Lewis Tappan -- abolitionist who took up the Africans' cause and made them national symbols of the Atlantic slave trade.
Martin Van Buren -- president of the United
States when the Amistad Revolt broke.
Supreme Court of the United States -- biographies
of each member of the Supreme Court sitting in 1841.
Joseph Story -- Associate Justice,
U.S. Supreme Court who delivered the majority opinion freeing the Amistad
captives in March 1841.
Andrew Judson -- presiding Judge for the District
Court trial of the Amistad Case.
James W.C. Pennington -- African-American
abolitionist and minister who took up the Africans' cause and helped to engineer
their return to Africa.
King Siaka -- coastal African Ruler in
the early 1800s.
Pedro Blanco -- merchant who dominated
the slave trade in the Gallinas region.
And courtesy of the Electronic Oberlin Group at Oberlin College:
Sarah Margru Kinson:
"An Amistad Captive Comes to Oberlin".
Special note:
Theodore Joadson -- did not exist. He is a fictional character created for the DreamWorks movie, a character meant to represent the important role that the Amistad story played in African American abolitionism. As historian James Horton notes: "There is a big story to be told about black abolitionists and their role in this. They raised money, gave lectures and wrote newspaper articles in support of the Africans. Cinque became a hero among free blacks and a symbol of black manhood."
