Schooner Amistad to Visit
Nov 10th, 2002
08/21/02By RHODA A. PICKETT
Staff Reporter
Replica of Famous 19th Century Ship to Take Part in Tricentennial
The Freedom Schooner Amistad is coming to Mobile in November as part of the celebration culminating the City's Tricentennial, officials announced Tuesday.
The ship will be docked at Cooper Riverside Park from Nov. 10-17. Public tours will be available at a cost of $5 for adults, $3 for children and free for school groups.
The ship is a replica of the Spanish vessel, La Amistad, the 19th century coastal cargo ship that was at the center of the first civil rights case argued in the United States court system. The story of the Amistad Incident of 1839 was the subject of Steven Spielberg's 1997 film "Amistad."
Mobile Mayor Mike Dow called the Amistad's upcoming arrival "a very special and historical event."
"The high point of the Tricentennial was the tall ships," Dow said during a news conference at the Arthur R. Outlaw Mobile Convention Center. "Tall ships founded our community. The Amistad is more about the culture of our community, about freedom that we cherish and desire."
The story of the Amistad is the tale of 53 Africans kidnapped and carried to Cuba as slaves in 1839. The captives were being transported to another part of the island aboard the cargo schooner La Amistad when a 25-year-old Mende rice farmer named Senge Pieh -- who became known as Cinque -- led a mutiny and took over the ship.
The surviving shipmates were ordered to sail back to Africa, but as the schooner made its way up the eastern seaboard, it was captured by a U.S. Navy ship. The Africans were jailed in New Haven, Conn., on murder charges.
The case took on historic proportions when former President John Quincy Adams argued successfully on behalf of the captives before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Ironically, said Ann Bedsole, who heads Mobile's Tricentennial organization, the ship that spurred the nation's first civil rights case will visit the town where another schooner, the country's last ship to carry captured Africans, the Clotilda, was built and from where it sailed in 1860.
"There are a lot of differences and a lot of similarities," Bedsole said, adding that the Amistad will offer "a sobering lesson in freedom and human rights."
Mobile County Commissioner Sam Jones and county attorney Merceria Ludgood serve as co-chairs of the Amistad Mobile Host Committee, which has worked to bring the ship here. The seven-day stay will cost the committee $37,500 which is being paid by public funds and private donations, Ludgood said. The committee's total budget is around $60,000. The remainder of the funds will be used to pay for the cost of docking: providing security, insurance, fuel, transportation for the crew and other expenses, such as printing.
The legacy of the Amistad story is one of democracy, Ludgood said. "Everyone that loves democracy can embrace this story."
The visit by the Amistad may have other implications as well. When asked why a replica of the Clotilda was not built for the Tricentennial celebration, Ludgood said the committee hopes the Amistad's visit will spark a similar effort in Mobile.
"I don't think that was something for the Tricentennial committee to do, to build a replica of the Clotilda, but this is something our community to see what it might be able to do," she said. "I want to see our community do it."
The Amistad project cost $3.1 million, which includes construction costs, exhibits, educational program development and an endowment for the vessel's long-term maintenance. The ship was constructed with a $2.5 million grant awarded in July 1994 by the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development. The homeport of the freedom schooner is Long Wharf Pier in New Haven, Conn.