The Africans' Letters
Some of the most powerful documents in the Library are the letters
written by the Amistad Africans themselves. In the New Haven jail, sympathetic abolitionists
had schooled the captives in reading and writing, allowing them to make appeals on
their own behalf. Amid a sea of white documents, white arguments, white voices, these
letters stand out.
They were probably written with the guidance of the abolitionists, and certainly
reflected the abolitionist agenda. And of course, they are not written in the Africans'
original language. Still, they demand to be heard, demand to speak, demand to add
the Africans' voices to the debate that swirled around them.
As with other manuscript sources, we are including both images and transcriptions
of the documents. Be sure in this case to look at the images: in the handwriting,
in the signatures, they might be as close as one can get to the figures at the center
of this story.
Both Kale and Kinna, for example, wrote to John Quincy Adams as he prepared to make their case before the U.S. Supreme Court:
see Kale to Adams, January 4, 1841;
and Kinna to Adams, January 4, 1841.
Cinque also left letters for the historical record. For example,
he made a very public address that appeared in the African Repository in December 1841, appealing
for assistance in getting back to Sierra Leone.
