Popular Media
The Amistad story was not only a legal case and a political issue: it was also a media sensation. The Africans touched raw nerves in Antebellum America. They became the stuff of high culture and popular culture -- of poetry and penny papers.
For context, consult the Amistad Story: Africans in America page.
Some examples of popular and miscellaneous media materials in the library include:
To see the entire collection of popular media documents:a pamphlet published by John Barber in 1840 compiling newspaper accounts, engravings, interviews and court records (crime and trial pamphlets being a common form of lowbrow reading in this period) ...
a poem celebrating Cinque as a symbol of freedom, written by James Monroe Whitfield, an African-American poet ...
the playbill for a minstrel show melodrama showing in the Bowery Theater in New York City ...
a journal article undertaking a phrenological analysis of Cinque's skull -- purporting to discover his character by tracing the contours of his skull (phrenology was a psuedoscience then in vogue) ...
