America, Africa, and Amistad: Free to Serve

On this day in 1841, the Supreme Court rules on the mutiny staged by African slaves aboard the Amistad. The had been illegally forced into slavery, and so, are free under American law.

John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States (1825-1829) was part of the Africans’ defense team. He argued that they “were entitled to all the kindness and good offices due from a humane and Christian nation.” Read more about that, HERE.

It was not until November 1841, that the thirty-five Amistad survivors sailed back to Africa, accompanied by several missionaries. Abolitionists had cared for them in the interim.

Sarah and Sierra

Margru, one of those survivors, was just a child when she taken aboard the ship as a slave. When she returned to Sierra Leone she served as an evangelical missionary, with the name Sarah Margru Kinson. Then, in 1846, Sarah became the only Amistad captive to return to the United States where she studied at Ohio’s Oberlin College. In fact, she was the first female international student in America. Finally, in 1849, she returned to the mission she helped to establish in Sierra Leone, this time, as a teacher.