This week we're talking about Steven Spielberg's Amistad! Join us for a discussion of John Quincey Adams, Lomboko, Poro, and more!

Sources:

Poro:

Lydia Polgreen, "A Master Plan Drawn in Blood," New York Times, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/weekinreview/a-master-plan-drawn-in-blood.html

Caroline Bledsoe, "The Political Uses of Sande Ideology and Symbolism," American Ethnologist 11, 3 (1984)

Richard M. Fulton, "The Political Structures and Functions of Poro in Kpelle Society," American Anthropologist 74, 5 (1972)

Kenneth Little, "The Political Function of the Poro, Part II," Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 36, 1 (1966)

Sasha Newell, "Brands as Masks: Public Secrecy and the Counterfeit in the Cote d'Ivoire," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 19, 1 (2013)

Christine Whyte, "Freedom But Nothing Else: The Legacies of Slavery and Abolition in Post-Slavery Sierra Leone, 1928-1956," The International Journal of African Historical Studies 48, 2 (2015)

James Covey:

Steve Thornton, "A Different Look at the Amistad Trial: The Teenager Who Helped Save the Mende Captives," available at https://connecticuthistory.org/a-different-look-at-the-amistad-trial-the-teenager-who-helped-save-the-mende-captives/

Letter from James Covey to Lewis Tappan, available at https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane%3A54180/datastream/PDF/view

Letter from James Covey to Lewis Tappan, December 14th 1840, available at https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane%3A54176/datastream/PDF/view

Richard Anderson, "The Diaspora of Sierra Leone's Liberated Africans: Enlistment, Forced Migration, and "Liberation" at Freetown, 1808-1863," African Economic History 41 (2013)

Charles Alan Dinsmore, "Interesting Sketches of the Amistad Captives," Yale University Library Gazette 9, 3 (1935)

Film Background:

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/amistad

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/amistad-1997

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1997/12/14/amistad-through-a-different-lens/aaf8318e-93ab-44f9-93ce-2a6d92e08191/

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1997-11-30-1997334068-story.html

John Quincey Adams:

Oral Arguments for the Supreme Court: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/amistad_002.asp

Louisa Catherine Adams, A Traveled First Lady: Writings of Louisa Catherine Adams eds. Margaret A. Hogan and C. James Taylor (Harvard University Press, 2014)

Joseph Wheelan, Mr. Adam's Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams's Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life in Congress (PublicAffairs, 2009).

Lomboko:

Marcus Rediker, The Amistad Rebellion: an Atlantic Oddyssey of Slavery and Freedom (New York: Penguin, 2012)

Daniel Domingues da Silva, David Eltis, Philip Misevich, and Olatunji Ojo, "The Diaspora of Africans Liberated from Slave Ships in the Nineteenth Century," The Journal of African History 55:3 (November 2014): 347-369. https://doi-org.ezproxy2.williams.edu/10.1017/S0021853714000371

Donald Dale Jackson, "Mutiny on the Amistad: in 1839, African freemen seized as slaves, struck a daring blow for freedom," Smithsonian 28:9 (December 1997). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A20078601/AONE?u=mlin_w_willcoll&sid=AONE&xid=995b0aac

https://archive.org/details/amistad0000gray/page/6/mode/2up?q=Lomboko