Amistad Captives Win Freedom — Black Legal Resistance Succeeds

Sengbe Pieh (Joseph Cinque) led 53 Mende captives in seizing the slave ship Amistad. After capture by the US Navy, the case became a landmark legal battle. John Quincy Adams argued for the captives before the Supreme Court, which ruled in March 1841 that they were free persons who had been illegally kidnapped. The case energized the abolitionist movement and demonstrated that Black legal resistance could prevail in American courts.