The Freedom Schooner Amistad will visit
Norwich for the first time during our Norwich Freedom Bell casting event. Navigation of the narrow, winding channel of the
Thames River is tricky. She will travel upriver with high tide, then wait for low tide to pass under the Mohegan Pequot
Bridge. Amistad will dock at Howard T. Brown Park, and be open for visitors from 11 am to 8 pm on Friday, June 15th,
and from 11 am to 6 pm on Saturday, June 16th. She will sail downriver on Sunday, June 17th. Tours of the ship are
free.
The Amistad incident in 1839, when 53 kidnapped Africans being transported to a Cuban plantation revolted, was a
critical event in the history of the Antislavery movement. It tested International law banning the slave trade, established
the right of the Africans to resist enslavement, and rallied both black and white Americans to support the cause of the
captives, free Mende people from what is now Sierra Leone on the West Coast of Africa. John Quincy Adams, former President
of the United States, pled their case successfully before the United States Supreme Court. The surviving Africans were repatriated
to their homeland.
