This ongoing exhibition explores the revolt by a group of Africans on the ship Amistad in 1839, their arrival in New London, the legal trials to determine their freedom, their life in Connecticut, and the local citizens who helped them. This exhibit is Connecticut’s most comprehensive exhibition on the Amistad incident.

Visitors of all ages will enjoy this interactive and multi-media exhibition. Five galleries feature recreated settings, special sound and light effects, historic artifacts, and hands-on devices.

Museum visitors will be introduced to eleven extraordinary people involved with this struggle for freedom.

• Cinque, the brave leader of the Mende captives, and Grabeau, his friend and supporter;
• Attorney Roger Sherman Baldwin of New Haven and former U.S. President John Quincy Adams, the African’s legal defenders;
• Reverend James Pennington, a Hartford minister and abolitionist;
• British sailor James Covey, enslaved as a child and freed by the British navy, and Yale professor Josiah Gibbs, both of whom served as interpreters for the Africans and helped improve their legal defense;
• John Warner Barber, illustrator and author of the only book on the incident at the time;
• Kali, Kinna, and Margru, three children onboard the Amistad who later became interpreters to their fellow Africans, worked with anti-slavery supporters, and helped raise funds for the return trip to Africa.

A variety of primary sources were consulted for the exhibition: artifacts, newspaper accounts, diary entries, official documents, private letters, notes for legal arguments, reports, pamphlets, maps, illustrations, broadsides, almanacs, and 16 reels of microfilmed source materials which served as the basis of Howard Jones’ book, Mutiny on the Amistad. Excerpts from these sources are presented in a format called “Words of the Time” and appear throughout the exhibition. Designed to provide an additional layer of information, “Words of the Time” expresses the contradictory views of people at the time.

The exhibition is funded with a lead grant from the Connecticut Humanities Council, Cultural Heritage Development Fund. Bruce Fraser, Executive Director of the CHC, commented "The Amistad exhibition is precisely the sort of activity our Cultural Heritage Development Fund is intended to promote. The exhibition will attract tourists to Greater Hartford as well as the state of Connecticut." Funding was also received from the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving and the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation.