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Advanced Amistad Study Questions
- Imagine that you are one of the captured Africans. You cannot speak the language of
your oppressors. You can only imagine what is happening to you and what fate has in store for you. Some of your perceptions would be correct; others would not.
- What would be going through your mind when you were imprisoned in the fortress?
- What would you think was the purpose of the ship's voyage? (Note: The cook, using sign language, told Cinque that all the prisoners were going to be eaten. Cinque later said he did not realize that the cook was joking.)
- Discuss the various ways that the prisoners, though they spoke neither English nor Spanish, might have communicated their needs to their captors.
- What thoughts would have gone through your mind as you helped seize control of the ship?
- Why would you think you had been imprisoned in the white man's jail, and what would you think was going to happen to you?
- Would you have attempted to learn the white man's language?
- How would you have reacted to the elements of the trial? Considering that you would not have been able to understand English but rely on an interpreter, would you have considered it likely that you could get a fair hearing? Since you had done nothing wrong, would you have had difficulty understanding why you were on trial? What would you have made of the fact that you were being held captive while two of the men who kept you imprisoned on the Amistad were free and attending the trial? Would you have had difficulty understanding the duties of the judge and the attorneys?
- How was it possible at the time of the trial to argue that slavery was legal but that
the Mende should be set free and returned to Africa?
- Spike Lee, the African-American director, said on ABC's Nightline: "I could not have
gone to the studios and got the film made with the budget that they had to make the
film."
- Do you think Lee's implication that only a top white director
could have been given the go-ahead by the studios is correct?
- Would the film have been different if it had been made by an African-American
director? Were compromises to the facts made in order to increase potential box office sales? Did such compromises in the film result in
faulty history or a typically Hollywood upbeat treatment of the subject?
- What was John Quincy Adams's attitude towards slavery when he defended the
victims of the Amistad before the United States Supreme Court? Had his views
towards slavery changed over the course of his life? If so, how?
- Eric Foner, a Columbia University history professor, says that the Amistad
case
revolved around the Atlantic slave trade--outlawed by international treaty long
before 1840--and had nothing to do with slavery in this country. In the study
guide, students are not told that in the 19th century it was perfectly possible to
condemn the importation of slaves from Africa while simultaneously defending
slavery and the flourishing internal slave trade in America.
The learning kit suggests that the Supreme Court was moved to a new recognition
of human rights by John Quincy Adams's impassioned plea on behalf of the
slaves. But a majority of the Amistad Justices were still on the Court in 1857
when it ruled in the Dred Scott decision that blacks had "no rights which a white
man is bound to respect."
- Considering that the abolitionists were able to use the case to recruit new
members to their movement, is Foner correct in saying that the case "had nothing
to do with slavery"?
- Should the film have made more of the point that, as Foner put it, "in the 19th
century it was perfectly possible to condemn the importation of slaves from
Africa while simultaneously defending slavery and the flourishing slave trade in
America?"
- Why do you think a rich African-American abolitionist was added to the story? What points do you think the screenwriter was making with this character?
- Considering that Adams and Cinque had never met, was Spielberg correct in
bringing the two together? What is achieved by their dialogue?
- The creation of the wealthy African-American abolitionist and the bringing together
of Adams and Cinque are two elements of the story that first appeared in Echo of
Lions. The author of that book insists that her work was plagiarized by the creators
of the film. Do you think the filmmakers are likely to have come up with either or
both of those ideas themselves without resorting to Echo of Lions?
- David Franzoni, the screenwriter of Amistad, wrote in the Los Angeles Times
(December 15, 1997), "By winning the Amistad case before the Supreme Court,
Adams helped America on a course to emancipation from which black America
would birth the civil rights movement and start on the long road to 'man is born
free and everywhere he is breaking his chains.'" Some historians have pointed out
that the Amistad case was not about slavery but about cargo and that it had nothing
to do with the civil war, civil rights, or the freeing of the slaves. Do you agree or
disagree with Franzoni's position?
- In a New York Times op-ed piece about the film, Paul C. Nagel, who wrote the recently published John Quincy Adams: A Public
Life, a Private Life, asserted that:
Adams did not denounce slavery until after his Presidency, impelled by a hatred
less of slavery than of the owner politicians, the Democrats, whom he blamed for
his failed Administration. Inadvertently, his rage made him seem a courageous
enemy of human bondage, which eventually he became.
Consequently, Adams's motives were complex when he rose before the Supreme
Court to defend the Amistad captives. For the audience to grasp even a little of
this heightens the drama and also teaches that events and personalities of history
are invariably intricate.
Is Nagel's characterization of Adams fair?
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