The Amistad will be greeted with music and multicultural festivities at the city’s long wharf, including a Saturday evening concert on the green featuring classical music by African-American composers, followed by singer Melba Moore.

There will be a pre-concert picnic at the New Haven People’s Center, 37 Howe St., from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. An interfaith service on Sunday, a Coast Guard band concert and a theater production complete the weekend.

In 1839, 53 Africans kidnapped from Mende country, now Sierra Leone, and shackled aboard the slave ship Tecora, were purchased in Cuba by two Spaniards who set out to transport them on the cargo schooner, La Amistad.

Sengbe Pieh, known as Cinque, led a revolt. After 63 days lost at sea, La Amistad was seized near Long Island, N.Y. and towed to Connecticut's New London harbor. The African captives were held in a jail in New Haven on murder charges.

A prolonged court battle took on historic proportions as Black and white abolitionists, academics and residents supported the Africans' freedom. Former President John Quincy Adams argued the case before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1841 the 35 surviving Africans won their freedom. After an extensive speaking tour to raise funds, they were finally able to return home.

The Amistad promises to carry far and wide the lessons of the freedom struggle waged by Pieh and his comrades.

W ithout exaggera-

tion, many thousands of people have already been a part of the spontaneous movement that has emerged as the Amistad story has come to light. The overwhelming response by young and old of all races and nationalities exemplifies a strong anti-racist sentiment in our country today.

Gloria Johnson, national president of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), told the World she is honored to be speaking at the Homeport Festival this weekend because "the struggle for freedom continues today."

Johnson said, "We draw strength from those freedom fighters on the Amistad, one of the most powerful stories in American history."

A decade ago, City of New Haven Peace Commission Chairman Al Marder suggested a statue to honor Pieh and the Mende men, women and children who were captured, revolted and eventually won their freedom in 1841. Soon, the Amistad Committee was born.

Educators, unions and religious and commmunity leaders responded immediately. Storeowners placed jars on their counters and children donated pennies in their classrooms to finance the project.

On Sept. 26, 1992, a statue designed by sculptor Ed Hamilton was erected in front of New Haven City Hall, the spot where the Africans were held prisoner. A delegation from Freetown, Sierra Leone attended the unveiling, the first of many occasions, which developed into a "sister city" relationship.

The New Haven Colony Historical Society developed classroom curriculua, which school boards and teachers in and beyond Connecticut have used. In 1995, the Amistad Committee produced a prize-winning documentary, The Amistad Revolt: All We Want Is Make Us Free.

In response to new information about the extent of support for Pieh and his comrades, the state legislature established an African American Freedom Trail. The trail includes Amistad sites, sites on the Underground Railroad, and other places of significance in the history of the African American freedom struggle.

In 1996, Amistad America was formed for the purpose of recreating the Amistad as a freedom schooner and teaching vessel, a long-time dream of Warren Q. Marr II, former editor of the NAACP’s Crisis magazine and known as the "godfather of the Amistad."

The state legislature allocated $2.5 million. Mystic Seaport shipyard became home to many apprentices, volunteers and students who took part in the two-year building project.

The story had now captured national attention. In 1998 Stephen Spielberg released his acclaimed version of the story, the film "Amistad."

"While there are many dramatic examples in the history of the struggle against slavery and for justice and equality by slaves and Blacks, this was the first national movement of Black and white while slavery existed in our country, which stimulated the abolitionist movement," Marder told the World.

"Unfortunately the promise of this struggle, while it ended in victory, was not fulfilled and the issue finally resulted in the tragic Civil War. This is the lesson for our times."

The freedom schooner’s first voyage was on July 4 in New York’s OpSail 2000 of the tall ships. Among those aboard the freedom schooner was Samuel Hingha Pieh, a great-grandson of the man who led the Amistad revolt.

"This is a joyous moment for us all," Pieh said. "This shows what good people are capable of when they work together to achieve their dreams. Friendship is universal."

CLUW’s Johnson, who participated in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, thinks of the Amistad as "a ship of heroes and freedom fighters."

Since 1839 there have been many other passengers, Johnson said, like Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks and John Sweeney and Linda Chavez-Thompson of the American labor movement fighting for the rights of immigrant workers, and CLUW, which is still fighting for the rights of women in the workplace, for simple things like equal pay."

While this weekend’s Homeport Festival has many corporate sponsors, its largest donor is the Connecticut AFL-CIO. Among the festival booths, will be one sponsored by the city of New Haven Peace Commission, carrying forward the message of equality with voter registration cards and petitions to end child poverty in the nation’s wealthiest state.

When the freedom schooner Amistad was launched at Mystic Seaport boatyard on March 25, thousands of people from as far away as California and Georgia came to be a part of the ceremonies. Members of the Black Congressional Caucus arrived from Washington, D.C. and descendants of Sengbe Pieh arrived from the South and from Sierra Leone to greet this floating museum whose mission is to teach the lessons of Black and white unity and the contributions Africans and African Americans have made to U.S. history.

The culmination of this emotional day came with remarks by the Amistad’s Master, William Pinkney. The first Black man to sail around the world solo, Pinkney expressed his commitment to fulfill the mission of the Amistad "to see to it that she lives and thrives to tell her story for countless years to come."

He pledged his efforts to that goal and urged others to "join me in making Amistad the material symbol of an eternal truth: We all have the God given right to be free of captivity, be it physical, emotional, or economic."

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Good afternoon! When I was told that my assignment was to give the closing remarks, a chill came over me. As many of you know I love to speak, but this is the most important group of words that I have ever had to put together.

It is at times like these I call on my heroes to allow me to give to you the lessons I have learned from them. On this occasion there are two: My favorite writer Langston Hughes and my role model sailor, Captain Hugh Mulzac. I’m sure that many of you are familiar with the work of Langston Hughes, but I suspect that few of you know about Captain Hugh Mulzac.

Captain Mulzac was a Merchant Marine captain who got his papers in the early part of the 20th century around 1914 or so. But he could not get a command because he was Black.

During the early part of the Second World War, transports called Victory Ships were quickly built and set to deliver materials to the war efforts in Europe. They traveled across the North Atlantic without escort through the infamous submarine "Wolf Packs." The highest death toll of the war was in the Merchant Marine.

President Franklin Roosevelt decreed that Hugh Mulzac should have a command and the Booker T. Washington was launched. The crew of the Booker T. was integrated and that in his time was a great stride. He made more than 20 Atlantic crossings and never lost a man or a ship.

Langston Hughes, writer and poet, had spent time as a merchant seaman sailing to West Africa and Europe on several occasions. I feel his tribute to Captain Mulzac is fitting for this occasion.

I count it a blessing to sail Amistad and an honor to follow in the steps of this great sailor. In the poem to Mulzac, Langston Hughes expressed the messages of the struggle for human rights in the context of the war, the theme of cooperation and hope for the future in the charge to the crew.

The message of Amistad flows through his well-chosen words. I cannot put myself in the league with Captain Mulzac but pledge myself to uphold the principles and deliver the message of Amistad as he delivered his needed cargo.

Langston Hughes wrote:

Dangerous

Are the western waters now

And all the waters of the world.

Somehow,

Again mankind has lost its course,

Been driven of its way,

Down paths of death and darkness

Gone astray –

But there are those who still hold out

A chart and compass

For a better way –

And there are those who fight

To guard the harbor entrance

To a brighter day.

There are those, too, who for so long

Could not call their house, their house.

Nor their land, their land –

Formerly the beaten and the poor

Who did not own

The things they made, nor their own lives –

But stood, individual and alone,

Without power –

They have found their hour.

The clock is moving forward here –

But backward in the lands where fascist fear

Has taken hold,

And tyranny again is bold.

Yes, dangerous are the wide world’s waters still,

Menaced by the will

Of those who would keep, or once more make

Slaves of men.

We Negroes have been slaves before.

We will not be again.

Alone, I know no one is free.

But we have joined hands –

Black workers with white workers

I, with Your! You, with me!

Together we have launched a ship

That sails these dangerous seas

But more than ship,

Our symbol of new liberties.

We’ve put a captain on that ship’s bridge there,

A man spare, swarthy, strong, foursquare

But more than these,

He, too, a symbol of new liberties.

There is a crew of many races, too,

Many bloods – yet all of one blood still:

The blood of brotherhood,

Of courage, of good will,

And deep determination geared to kill

The evil forces that would destroy

Our charts, our compass and bell-buoy

That guide us toward the harbor of the

New World

We will to make –

The world where every ugly past mistake

Of hate and greed and race

Will have no place.

In union, you White Man

And I, Black Man,

Can be free.

More than ship then,

Captain Mulzac,

Is the Booker T.

And more than captain

You who guide it on its way,

Your ship is mankind’s deepest dream

Daring the sea

Your ship is flagship

Of a newer day.

Let the wind rise then!

Let the great waves beat!

Your ship is Victory,

And not defeat.

Let the great waves rise

And the winds blow free!

Your ship is

Freedom,

Brotherhood,

Democracy!