home | overview | credits | legal
"Exploring Amistad" is the result of an idea originally conceived in 1995 by Guy Hermann, Fred Dalzell and Susan Funk at Mystic Seaport. In the spring of 1997, funding for this site was secured in the form of a "Teaching with Technology" grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional funds have been provided by the George A. and Grace L.Long Foundation, the Connecticut Humanities Council and other private donors.
This project has been a true team effort, garnering technical, intellectual, and creative support from many people. At Mystic Seaport Sally McGee, Doug Handy, Quentin Snediker, Tricia Wood, Mary Lou Stoner, Calvin Lane, and Arleen Andersen have each made major contributions to this site. Dozens of other museum staff and interns have also been involved, advising the project staff, doing research, scanning images, transcribing texts, updating databases, and proofreading. Scholars and teachers from around the country have contributed as well. To see some of the pages these people find most compelling on the site, please visit the Staff Picks page.
Reggie Woolery, a recent graduate of New York University's Interactive Telecommunications
Program, was the creative force behind the original design of "Exploring AMISTAD".
Reggie also opened the doors to NYU's Better Living
through Radio whose facility provided a RealAudio broadcast of our live launch
on December 12, 1997.
Images
The launch of this web site and its continued evolution are cooperative ventures.
Images pertaining to the Amistad are few but rich, and the institutions
that have granted permission for the use of their pieces in "Exploring AMISTAD"
are opening up the Amistad story in new ways. The words in the "Exploring
AMISTAD" library are powerful, but the imagery transports you instantly to the
heart of the people, and the places where this fantastic story took place.
Images on this site, which truly bring the story to life, are used with the generous
permission of:
- United Church of Christ and Talladega College
Details from the murals located at Talladega College, Talladega, Alabama:
“Mutiny”, “Trial”, and “Return”, by Hale Woodruff, 1939
Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Historical Collection,
Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania:
“Slave Trade”, by Blockson, from the Middle Passage envelope, #16, Sec 11
The Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford Connecticut
Martin Van Buren, D. W. Kellogg, lithograph, 1838-1841
Exerpts from "A History of the Amistad Captives", John Warner Barber, 1840
Rev. J.W. Pennington, Connecticut Magazine, , Autumn 1905, Vol 9, p.827
"A Vocabulary of the African Captives," The New England Review, Sept.21,1839
The Harvard Theatre Collection, The Houghton Library, Cambridge, Mass
Playbill folder from the Bowery Theatre, “New Nautical Drama, Illustrative of the Piracy Mutiny & Murder which took place on board the Long Low Black Schooner Lately captured by the U.S. Brig Washington”, 1839
Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts
John Quincy Adams, journal entries November 1840 - November 1841
Kale (Mende African) letter to John Quincy Adams, January 1841
Kinna (Mende African) letter to John Quincy Adams. January 1841
Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, Connecticut
Roger Sherman Baldwin, oil painting by Nathaniel Jocelyn, c.1840
New Haven Colony Historical Society, New Haven, Connecticut
Exerpts from their copy of "The History of the Amistad Captives", John Warner Barber, 1840.
New-York Historical Society, New York, New York
John Quincy Adams, Portrait, Marchant, 1843
The Stanley-Whitman House, Farmington, Connecticut
Cinque, colored lithograph
home | overview | credits | legal
