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Cinque From Amistad

Cinque was the leader of the Mendians in the movie Amistad.   The Mendians were all black slaves aboard a Portuguese ship in the late 1830s.   The Mendians all wanted to become free, so Cinque came up with a plan to kill the slave traders onboard.   They ended up breaking free of their chains and did so, which in the process many of the slaves were killed by the traders, but not Cinque.   He managed to make it out alive, along with killing the captain.   He jumped off the ship and into the ocean, where an American ship found him swimming.   They took Cinque onboard and to land.   Cinque, along with the remaining slaves, were all taken to the United States to trial for murder.   On January 7, 1840, the Mendians trial began in the District Court in Hartford, Connecticut.   To their luck, they were represented by Lewis Tappan and a British commissioner stationed in Havana to suppress illegal slave trade.   It turned out that the Medians were indeed taken illegally to become slaves, and with all of the evidence they presented to the judge, he let them go as free men.   The judge ordered them to be transported back to Africa, their home land.   Cinque is considered to be an icon in history.   Americans were fascinated with him.   They soaked up images and accounts of what he looked like, what he sounded like, how he carried himself, what he said and did. In the eyes of Americans, Cinque became a towering symbol of freedom.   If he could be freed, so could everyone else who was enslaved.