La Amistad in Popular Culture
On 2 September 1839, a play entitled The Long, Low Black Schooner, based on the revolt, opened in New York City and played to full houses. La Amistad was painted black at the time of the revolt.
A 1997 film, Amistad, directed by Steven Spielberg, dramatized the historical incidents. Major actors were Morgan Freeman, as a freed black man in New Haven; Anthony Hopkins, as John Quincy Adams; Matthew McConaughey, as an unorthodox, but influential lawyer; and Djimon Hounsou, as Cinque (Sengbe Peah).
In January 2011, Random House published Ardency, a collection of poems written over twenty years by American poet Kevin Young which "gathers here a chorus of voices that tells the story of the Africans who mutinied on board the slave ship Amistad".
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