Amistad

EVEN BEFORE Steven Spielberg there was Sengbe Pieh, and there were history books that told his story. The filmmaker, however, popularized the tale of the 1839 slave revolt led by Sengbe Pieh that gained control of the Amistad, a Spanish schooner, in an attempt to return to Africa. The ship, taken near Cuba, wandered up the U.S. coast before landing on Long Island. The men who seized the ship were jailed in New Haven, Conn. Their release was demanded by abolitionists; former President John Quincy Adams was among those who took up their cause.

A replica of La Amistad docked at the Inner Harbor yesterday as part of an 18-month voyage that retraced the history of the original ship and the slave trade on the Atlantic Ocean. Several speakers, including Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, extolled the historical importance of the original ship, while a large crowd of middle- and high-school students looked on from the dock. In 1839, the 53 slaves on the ship, which was transporting them between ports in Cuba, revolted and took control, and eventually guided the ship to New York, where it was captured by the U.S. Navy.

BLACK people who think that Steven Spielberg's latest movie ''Amistad'' is about black heroes taking their freedom by any means necessary are doomed to disappointment upon seeing the movie.While the film is loosely based on the true story of a group of Mende people from Sierra Leone, who in 1839 overpowered their Spanish captors aboard the slave ship La Amistad, it is largely a tale of white hero worship.The movie gives little time to the bloody slave mutiny led by Sengbe Pieh (called Joseph Cinque in the United States)

Ongoing REMEMBERING KING -- The Reginald F. Lewis Maryland Museum of African American History and Culture, 830 E. Pratt St., is showcasing From the Ashes of a Dream: Race and Revitalization Since MLK, a reflection on the 40th anniversary of the death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Through April 27. Free. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. 443-263-1800 or africanamericancul ture.org. AFRICAN ART -- The Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive, is showcasing its third installment of the Meditations on African Art series, which highlights the use of pattern in textiles, carved ivories, painted shields and body adornment.

The Senator was the highest-grossing theater in the country showing "Amistad" last weekend. More than 3,500 filmgoers attended the art deco landmark to see Steven Spielberg's account of a 19th-century slave ship uprising and subsequent court fights.Coming in second was the Sony Lincoln Square theater in Manhattan, regularly one of the top-grossing theaters in the country.Tom Kiefaber, who owns the Senator, attributed part of the theater's success to the Xaala Mainama African Arts Ensemble, a drumming troupe that has been performing before some screenings on weekends.

For Howard Jones, it was an overnight success story that took a decade to happen.When Oxford University Press published his book "Mutiny on the Amistad" in 1987, it bought a few ads in academic journals but did little else to promote it. The book sold modestly, mostly at colleges and law schools, and earned Jones a few invitations to small academic conferences.Today, Oxford is flying Jones around the country on a tight schedule of appearances at bookstores, universities, historical societies, TV studios, even the Macy's department store in Manhattan.

PEOPLE who have seen producer Steven Spielberg's gripping film "Amistad," about an infamous slave-ship mutiny, know that the U.S. Supreme Court released the African captives in 1841 even though they had been charged with murder.Many people also know that the Supreme Court in 1857 denied freedom to Dred Scott, although he had lived for four years in areas of the United States where slavery was prohibited.Some wonder how the Supreme Court, acting under the same Constitution, could produce such apparently contradictory decisions.

Yesterday, the movie "Amistad" spread to three more theaters, upping the total number of show times in the area to a less-than-whopping 12. By comparison, the new James Bond movie opened in 12 theaters with 86 show times.This has caused some distress among those wanting to see "Amistad." State Del. John Leopold, a Republican from the 31st District in Anne Arundel County, was so concerned that the new Steven Spielberg movie was playing only at the Senator Theatre in Baltimore that he had his legislative assistant, Catherine Dorsey, call several movie distributors in hopes they could explain why this excellent film wasn't in more theaters.

MUCH PRAISE has been heaped on "Amistad," Debbie Allen and Steven Spielberg's new film based on the true story of a revolt by African captives aboard a 19th-century slave ship.But though the subject was compelling -- and the conditions aboard the slave ship chillingly rendered -- I felt oddly let down by the experience.Perhaps it was the prerelease hype, which suggested that "Amistad" would do for slavery what Spielberg's earlier film, "Schindler's List," had done for the Holocaust.Yet if one knew nothing else of American history, one might easily conclude that the events recounted in "Amistad" were merely the result of an unfortunate misunderstanding regarding immigration law.Aha!

WASHINGTON -- Recently Hollywood has been an object of much derision, much of it merited, particularly when dishonest and propagandistic movies have been made about American history. The name Oliver Stone comes to mind.Now comes Steven Spielberg's ''Amistad,'' a redemptive movie, in two senses. It redeems Hollywood's reputation as a place where movies can be made for grown-ups. And ''Amistad'' celebrates America's capacity for rising from sin to something akin to nobility.A truthful filmFor the third time in eight years Hollywood has produced a nuanced, truthful film about America's racial history.

Whenever an issue about race or race relations seizes the news, Ray Winbush is on the media's short list. Over the past few months, the Morgan State University professor has appeared on Oprah Winfrey's show to discuss race with the cast of the film Crash. He's discussed whether African-Americans should receive reparations from the American government for the crimes of slavery. He's talked about DNA testing to trace genetic heritage and about the challenges faced by black athletes such as NBA player Carmelo Anthony who try to "play to corporate America" while also "keeping it real."

Aboard the Amistad at Baltimore's Inner Harbor yesterday, the sounds of freedom were loud and clear. "When I say Amistad, you say freedom," crew member Mukanku Mpoyi told the ship's visitors. "When I ask you, `Are you free?' You say, `Yes.'" "Amistad." "Freedom!" "Are you free?" "Yes!" Docked at the pier near the Baltimore Visitor Center, the reproduction cargo schooner tells the story of 49 men and four children who were captured as slaves but revolted against their captors in 1839 and eventually gained their freedom.

Shooter by Walter Dean Myers. Amistad / HarperTempest. 224 pages. $15.99. (Ages 12 and up) In Shooter, Walter Dean Myers bypasses the pop psychology to get to the root of a Columbine-style rampage. His medium is fictional, his method factual: He has created a dossier of documents that provide a convincing back story, a paper trail to a tragedy. A psychologist's interview introduces us, after the fact, to Cameron Porter, an intelligent, affluent African-American 17-year-old who gives every outward appearance of being well-adjusted.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - To succeed as a student at Amistad Academy is to learn that it is easier to stay out of trouble. Don't do your homework and you'll be staying for three extra hours on Friday afternoon. Lose control and shout out an obscenity in front of classmates, you'll stand before the whole school to apologize. Put your head down on the desk or forget to follow the teacher with your eyes, the whole lesson will stop while the class waits for you to start paying attention. With its near obsession with getting the small details right and enforcing consequences for poor behavior, Amistad has found a formula to mold its undisciplined and low-achieving fifth-grade students into eighth-graders who study hard and beat the odds.

FORT WORTH, Texas - On a routine patrol through Big Bend National Park on the Texas-Mexico border, law officer Cary Brown pulled over a speeding pickup truck and found an antsy driver with a two-way radio - and more than $2 million worth of marijuana. Narcotics interdiction is a major part of Brown's job, but the 26-year law-enforcement veteran doesn't work for the U.S. Border Patrol or any other agency typically connected with such a mission. Brown is a National Park Service ranger, and it has been a long time since he and the 40 other park rangers have been able to focus on illegal camping and other such violations as they patrol about 300 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border.

The new version of The Four Feathers would make better sense if battle feathers adorned the head of Djimon Hounsou's African Muslim warrior, who helps the nominal white hero, played by Heath Ledger, regain his self-respect during the British army's mid-1880s crusade against the Islamic fanatic known as the Mahdi. Ledger's character resigns his commission before his regiment is posted to the Sudan; he feels more certain about his impending marriage to his beautiful fiancee (Kate Hudson)

WITH THE country charging into its first war of the 21st century, some of us descended last week into the 19th century. The re-created cargo schooner Amistad docked at a city pier, its story of primitive barbarism unimaginable to modern sensibilities. Humanity's much different now. When we conduct barbarism today, we do it on the grand, sophisticated scale. The original Amistad carried human beings who were considered property. New York's World Trade Center housed human beings who were considered meaningless.

MAKE NO MISTAKE about it: Steven Spielberg and Debbie Allen are filmmakers, not historians. But the publicity surrounding their new movie "Amistad" has re-awakened the kind of interest in America's past that few works of non-fiction ever achieve.Judging by newspaper and magazine articles, as well as radio and television talk shows, the film was a hit even before it opened yesterday. And a too-little-known episode of U.S. and world history is becoming increasingly familar to a broader audience.

WITH THE country charging into its first war of the 21st century, some of us descended last week into the 19th century. The re-created cargo schooner Amistad docked at a city pier, its story of primitive barbarism unimaginable to modern sensibilities. Humanity's much different now. When we conduct barbarism today, we do it on the grand, sophisticated scale. The original Amistad carried human beings who were considered property. New York's World Trade Center housed human beings who were considered meaningless.

MAKE BALTIMORE'S school curriculum Afrocentric, some folks said in light of the recent revelation about the performance of city students on functional math and reading tests, and our youngsters will fare much better. Yesirree, just make the subjects black enough and black students, simply by virtue of being black, will snuggle right up to them. Their interest will be piqued, and they will settle down and study as they've never done before. The proposal assumes, as such things do, certain facts not in evidence and poses questions that have gone unanswered.