American Bar Association
1997 Silver Gavel Award Winners: Film and Video

1997 WINNERS | NEWSPAPERS | BOOKS | TELEVISION | RADIO | FILMS & VIDEOS

The Amistad Revolt: "All We Want Is Make Us Free" Karyl K. Evans, Producer/Director New Haven, CT

This 33-minute documentary, originally produced for high school students, is the dramatic story of the 1839 Amistad incident. The story began on the Amistad, a Spanish ship bound for Cuba, when 53 captive Africans, led by Sengbe Pieh, revolted, captured the vessel, and demanded that its crew return them to their Mendi homeland. Instead, the Spaniards secretly sailed up the North American coast, where a U.S. ship captured the Amistad and took the Africans prisoner. The Africans were transported to New Haven, Connecticut, where they were tried on charges of mutiny and murder. Ultimately, the incident led--16 years before Dred Scott--to the U.S. Supreme Court's first civil rights case, U.S. v. The Schooner Amistad, which resulted in the freedom of the captive Mendi and their eventual return to their homeland. Commissioned by the Amistad Committee, the video was written by Jeremy Brecher. The documentary explores issues of criminal law, human rights, international law, intercultural communication, and the growth of the abolitionist movement in antebellum America. Narrated by award-winning stage actress Vinnie Burrows, it uses 165 visuals to bring the Amistad incident alive. These include Talladega College murals painted in 1939 by noted artist Hale Woodruff and contemporaneous sketches and hand-colored maps of the Mendi from Yale University's rare book collection.

Availability: through the Amistad Committee, Inc. at 203/387-0370; video $39.95 (includes teacher's guide).

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COMMITTEE COMMENTARY

The Amistad Revolt:"All We Want Is Make Us Free" is a well-produced, compelling documentary about the first civil rights case decided by the United States Supreme Court. It covers many areas of law very well, placing the case in historical context. Its special value is in recalling to consciousness a neglected but absorbing story of the American experience.

E X C E R P T   F R O M   T H E   A M I S T A D   R E V O L T: "A L L   W  E
W A N T   I S   M A K E   U S   F R E E"

NARRATOR: But the United States government appealed the decision to the Supreme Court. The abolitionists persuaded a former president of the United States, John Quincy Adams, to help argue their case before the Supreme Court. Kali, 11 years old and a star student, wrote to him in English.

KALI: I want to write a letter to you because you love Mendi people and you talk to the great court. We want you to ask the court what we have done wrong.... We want you to tell court that Mendi people no want to go back to Havana, we no want to be killed. All we want is make us free.

NARRATOR: Before the Supreme Court, John Quincy Adams, known as "Old Man Eloquent," condemned the role played by United States government officials as "an immense array of power" exerted "on the side of injustice."

ADAMS: Have the officers of the U.S. Navy a right to seize men by force, to fire at them, to overpower them, to disarm them, to put them on board of a vessel and carry them by force and against their will to another State, without warrant or form of law?

NARRATOR: The Supreme Court ruled that the Africans were entitled to their liberty like any other freeborn human beings and should be free to go wherever they wished. The Court said they had exercised an "ultimate right."

SUPREME COURT: The ultimate right of all human beings in extreme cases to resist oppression, and to apply force against ruinous injustice.

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