Artists Paintings of Amistad Mutiny Tell of African Triumph Over Slavery

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The scene is a packed Connecticut courtroom in 1840. A trial is underway for the African slaves who seized the slave ship Amistad and killed and beheaded its captain. At center stage stands their leader, Cinque.
But in the background of the painting a man watching from the gallery seems out of place. He rests his face on his right hand, and he wears what looks like a 20th-century shirt in this 19th-century scene.
He is the African American artist, Hale Woodruff, who painted the mural and tiny self portrait in 1939, a century after the Amistad uprising, but at a time when racial oppression in the United States was still harsh.
Now, 175 years after the revolt and amid modern racial tensions, the National Museum of African American History and Culture has Woodruff’s dramatic trial mural on display at the National Museum of American History.