This worksheet focuses on Cinque, the leader of the 1839 Amistad revolt, and draws on a variety of documentary resources to examine how he was perceived by the American public on both sides of the debate over slavery.

You are first to review the facts of the Amistad revolt, including the legal proceedings that ended in the Supreme Court decision that the Amistad captives were free Africans, not slaves. Then, using newspaper reports of the times, examine how Cinque and his companions were described by reporters, tracing the shifts in public opinion that occurred on both sides as the case developed. Next look at visual representations of Cinque from those times, and note how these images reflect the views of those who made them as much as the physical reality of the man. Then, attempt to lift away these layers of partisan perception by examining transcripts of Cinque's testimony and letters written by his companions, to see if you can arrive at an unmediated view of this individual whom many now recognize as a hero. Finally, critically view the Spielberg version of Amistad to gain an understanding of how a film version influences public opinion. To conclude the lesson, you will produce your own portait of Cinque, in a biographical profile or an editorial.

Goals:
(1) To learn about the Amistad revolt and its significance in the debate over slavery;
(2) To trace shifts in public perception of the Amistad captives and their leader as reflected in contemporary newspaper reports and illustrations;
(3) To examine court transcripts and letters for direct evidence about the Amistad captives and their leader;
(4) To reflect on the process by which historians arrive at an understanding about past individuals and events;
(5) To gain experience in working with newspaper reports, illustrations, official documents, and other primary materials as resources;
(6) To compare a film narrative with historical documentation

Skills: Historical comprehension, historical interpretation, historical research, critical analysis of historical texts and images, critical comparison of film narrative with historical texts, production of a biographical profile, primary document analysis, Internet skills.

Suggested Grade Level: 11 - 12.

This lesson plan draws extensively on primary documents that reflect a sprectrum of 19th century attitudes toward Africans and African Americans ranging from heartfelt admiration through patronising prejudice to harsh bigotry.

 

Many of you may know about the Amistad revolt from the Steven Spielberg film, Amistad (1997). If you have seen the film, summarize the story and then draw on resources linked to this worksheet to provide a fully accurate account of what happened. A link back to this worksheet has been provided on each main resource page.

Here are two trailers (in Quicktime format) to show what the distributors focused on when marketing the film. The first one ends with the argument of John Quincy Adams in court, and the second one starts with that same argument and develops from there.

• A detailed narrative of the Amistad case, which traces events back to the Amistad captives' life in Africa and includes contextual information about the slave trade, is available from Exploring Amistad , along with a timeline of events surrounding the revolt and trial.
• More background on the Amistad revolt is also available from theNational Portrait Gallery page.
• Discuss how your knowledge about the Amistad revolt, whether gained from the film or elsewhere, may differ from the facts supplied by the historical record. In this lesson you will discover that the facts about this case, and the man at its center, have been in dispute from the very start.

The resources available should give you a good idea of the conflicting reports about Cinque, the leader of the Amistad revolt, that appeared in various newspapers at the time. The following are news reports that include a description of Cinque during the period when he first came to public attention:

• New York Journal of Commerce, 30 August 1839: brief sympathetic description of Cinque in custody aboard the brig Washington, with comment on positive traits discerned in him "by physiognomy and phrenology."
• Charleston Courier, 5 September 1839: extended report on the U. S. Navy's capture of the Amistad, with sympathetic descriptions of Cinque and transcripts of two speeches he is supposed to have made to his companions.
• New York Morning Herald, 9 September 1839: report on "The Case of the Captured Negroes" with demeaning descriptions of Cinque and his companions.
• New York Journal of Commerce, 10 September 1839: letter from Lewis Tappan, a leading abolitionist and organizer of the Amistad Committee, who reports on an interview with Cinque conducted through a qualified interpreter.
• New York Morning Herald, 18 September 1839: letter accusing the abolitionists of misleading the public to view Cinque as a hero.
• Charleston Courier, 24 September 1839: brief account of Circuit Court proceedings, with a sympathetic description of Cinque's appearance at the trial.
• New York Morning Herald, 4 October 1839: extended report on "The Captured Africans of the Amistad," which ridicules their abolitionist supporters and comments unsympathetically on Cinque's character and behavior.
• Colored American, 5 October 1839: response to critical reports in other journals on the Amistad captives and their leader, who is compared to Patrick Henry.
• Colored American, 19 October 1839: extended essay on Cinque, describing him as "the African hero."

Divide into groups. Each group should read and assess two or more contemporary newspaper accounts of Cinque and his companions.

• Determine the point of view represented in each article -- anti-slavery, anti-abolitionist, neutral, etc.
• Mark in each article specific words and passages that reveal the writer passing judgment on Cinque and thereby prejudicing the reader's view of him, for better or worse.
• Note also the use of characterizations and comparisons in each article that serve to categorize Cinque, whether as "the son of a chief" or as "the ringleader" of the revolt.
• Each group should report its conclusions, and then work together as a class to describe the shifts of public opinion toward Cinque recorded in these press reports. Refer to the Amistad Timeline to gauge how legal developments may have influenced public opinion. What different roles is Cinque made to play by those who reported on the Amistad case? How can historians choose among these versions of Cinque to gain an understanding of him as he really was?

  Turn next to images of Cinque to geta selection of the many drawings made of him during the height of the Amistad controversy. Included here are:

• Cinque Addressing his Compatriots (1839): a lithograph published soon after the Navy's capture of the Amistad, as a souvenir of the event.
• Portrait of Joseph Cinque (c. 1839): a color lithograph showing the "leader of the gang" posed with his machete.
• The Captured Africans of the Amistad (1839): a newspaper cartoon showing Cinque and his companions diverting themselves in prison.
• Phrenological Developments of Joseph Cinquez (1840): illustration taken from an article applying the then-accepted science of phrenology to the task of assessing Cinque's character.
• Profile of Cinque (1840): illustration from the same pamphlet which accompanies a "biographical sketch" of Cinque and is said to be based on casts made of his face while he was imprisoned.
• Joseph Cinquez, the brave Congolese Chief (1839): a lithograph portrait made shortly after Cinque's capture and while he was awaiting trial.

Each group should now examine a selection of contrasting images. First decide which images correspond to the points of view you identified in their your study of newspaper reports. Are there additional points of view reflected in any of the images?

• Analyze each image to determine how the artist has conveyed a particular point of view. Also consider the postures in which Cinque is portrayed (e.g., arm raised in oration, holding a staff, standing with arm akimbo, etc.); the clothing he wears (e.g., a breechcloth, a toga-like robe, a scarlet shirt open at the neck, etc.); the expression on his face (e.g., eyes seemingly closed in sleep, gazing openly at the viewer, looking off to one side, etc.); the settings in which he is placed (e.g., a pastoral landscape, a ship's deck, a jailyard, etc.).
• Pay attention also to the different media used for these images: What kind of person appears in an oil portrait? What kind of person appears in a newspaper cartoon? What kind of person is presented as a scientific specimen?
• Consider as well the captions and texts that accompany several of these images. How do they comment on the picture? Are the writer's words always consistent with the artist's point of view?
• Each group should now offer a "reading" of two contrasting images of Cinque in a class presentation, explaining the point of view each offers on his actions as leader of the Amistad revolt. Then discuss as a group whether the same man appears in all these images. Compare, for example, the round-faced Cinque in the pamphlet profile with the long-faced Cinque who addresses his compatriots, or the youthful Cinque in the Jocelyn portrait with the older-seeming "brave Congolese Chief." How is it possible to tell from the evidence what Cinque actually looked like? To what extent do all these images show us instead what the American public at the time saw in him?

Turn finally to what should be the most unbiased evidence upon which to base a modern assessment of Cinque's character and historic significance: transcripts of court testimony and copies of personal letters.

• Deposition by Cinque (7 October 1839): Cinque describes events leading up to the revolt.
• Testimony of Cinque (8 January 1840): Cinque describes his capture in Africa, his treatment by slave-traders, and the Amistad's voyage to the time of his arrest.
• Letter from Cinque to the Amistad Committee (5 October 1841): Cinque appeals for assistance to make the voyage back home.
• The first part of the argument of John Quincy Adams before the Supreme Court of the United States.

  Work with these documents in your class groups. Compare these first-person accounts of Cinque and his companions to those found in newspapers at the time.

• Are there factual discrepancies between Cinque's description of what happened and the journalists' reports? What differences in emphasis are there between his version of events and theirs? What differences in point of view? In the newspapers, the Amistad revolt appears sometimes as a savage uprising, sometimes as a noble crusade. How does Cinque characterize their actions? What is the point of his story in his own eyes? What role does he see for himself, and how does that role compare to the roles assigned to him by his American admirers and detractors?
• In their letters, Kale and Kinna respond directly to some of the characterizations that had been made about the Amistad captives. How do they see themselves? Pay attention to the "put yourself in our place" arguments used in both letters. How do Kale and Kinna ask to be perceived by this shift of perspective? What other arguments do they advance to correct misperceptions about their people? How do these arguments affect the views one might have formed based on newspaper reports about the Amistad captives and their culture?
• Cinque's letter, like those of his companions, reflects in its language the influence of his abolitionist supporters, who sought to convert the Amistad captives to Christianity. To what extent did the abolitionists affect the captives' perceptions of their own experience by this teaching? Mark in these letters the words and phrases that seem to derive from the captives' course of Bible studies. In what respects might one say that this language represents a "veneer of Christianity"? In what respects might one say that the abolitionists enriched the Amistad captives' perspective on their own condition by sharing with them one of the core texts of Western culture? Compare this religious vocabulary with the competing vocabularies proposed by newspaper writers who similarly sought to make meaning out of the Amistad affair.

  Now you should view the film and then consider the following:

• What documented events did Spielberg choose to include and/or exclude from his film? Consider why he mas done so.
• The majority of people base their knowledge of the Amistad revolt on the film version. Discuss how this might be misleading.
• Which episodes in the film are particularly memorable? Are they based on documented evidence?
• Can one accuse the director of distorting the truth? Is this justifiable?
• Read the reviews of the film and then write your own reviews in which you attempt to balance both negative and positive aspects of the film.
• For an insightful discussion on the cinematography in Amistad, read what Janusz Kaminsky says about his work as director of photography on the film. The techniques described here should give you a good idea of what is involved when shooting a film. The pages have been taken from the American Cinematographer.
• For those of you who might be interested, here are a number of goofs spotted by eagle-eyed members of the cinema-going public.

Reflect, in a class discussion, on the difficulties of recovering historic "truth" from documentary materials that offer several versions of the truth to choose from. To what extent is it the historian's responsibility to reduce such conflicting points of view to a single set of facts? Explore this issue firsthand by producing a report on Cinque based on your research, answering the question "Who was he?" in a biographical profile or editorial.

Exploring Amistad offers a wide range of information for helping you learn more about this episode in American history. Documents from theNational Archives and Records Administration have also been included here as part of the resource material.