Fight For Freedom

Locked in a crowded Connecticut jail cell in the winter of 1841, 11-year-old Kali was a world away from Mendeland (present-day Sierra Leone).

- Mary Ann Limauro

He missed the wide blue sky and tall palm trees of his village. He missed running and playing with his friends. He wished he could be back home with them, fishing in the river. He thought sadly about his family. So much time had passed since he had seen them.

Along with his 32 cellmates, Kali had been kidnapped in Africa and snatched away from his family by slave traders. The acknowledged leader of the Africans was Sengbe Pieh (also referred to as Joseph Cinqué). Pieh was a strong, powerfully built man in his mid-twenties.

He also was kind, gentle, and concerned for his fellow captives. Almost all the men were married. They all shared the pain and heartache of being separated from loved ones. Strangers in a strange land, they had been fighting for their freedom for nearly two years. 

Two Years Earlier

In the spring of 1839, two Spanish slave traders purchased a group of Africans at an illegal slave market in Havana, Cuba. The slave traders planned to bring the people to a sugar cane plantation. They loaded the Africans onto a ship, the Amistad, for the trip. 

Several days into the journey, the Africans revolted. Led by Pieh, they freed themselves from the shackles that constrained them. They killed the ship's captain and the cook. They then order that the Amistad sail back to Africa. But the sailor steering the ship secretly turned the ship north instead of east across the Atlantic Ocean. After two months, the schooner was sighted off the coast of New York. It was seized by a U.S. merchant marine ship. The Amistad and all aboard were taken into U.S. custody. The Africans were charged with murder and mutiny and jailed in Connecticut. The murder charges eventually were dropped, but the fate of the Africans remained in question.

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