July 2, 2020 • 13 mins
A rebellion took place aboard the slave ship Amistad on this day in 1839. / On this day in 1925, Congolese politician, Pan-Africanist, and independence leader Patrice Lumumba was born.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, history enthusiasts, you get not one, but two events
in history today. Heads up that you also might hear
two different hosts, Me and Tracy V. Wilson. With that said,
on with the show, Welcome to this day in History class.
It's July two today. In eighteen thirty nine, the enslaved
(00:21):
people aboard the Amistade staged a rebellion. When this happened,
even though these were enslaved people aboard the Amistade, the
Transatlantic slave trade was largely abolished. It had been outlawed
in the United States and in Great Britain in eighteen
oh seven, and then several other European nations had also
banned it in the eighteen teens, but slavery itself was
(00:44):
still legal in a lot of the places that had
been importing enslaved labor from Africa and then the slave traders.
A lot of them were still working even though this
was illegal, and as one example, the port of Lumboco,
which was controlled by Pedro Blanco of Spain, was still
an active slave port. This was on the coast of
what's now Sierra Leone, and in early eighteen thirty nine,
(01:07):
more than five hundred Africans maybe even closer to six
hundred were transported from the interior of Sierra Leone and
were sent to Cuba aboard a slave ship called the
Ta Cora from the port of Lombo Coat. After this
ship arrived in Cuba, Jose Ruiz and Pedro Montes purchased
fifty three of the people who were aboard, including four children,
(01:30):
and their intent was for these people was to send
them by ship aboard the Amistade to other plantations that
they had. The treatment of these people aboard the Amistade
was just appalling. There was often not enough food or water.
Beatings were common. The cook tormented them constantly, basically threatening
them with the horrors that were awaiting them once they
(01:51):
got off the ship. Eventually, an enslaved man named singby
p A who is sometimes called by the Spanish name
Sink a letter rebellion before dawn on July two, while
they were still at sea, he got the other people
who were enslaved with him to figure out how to
release themselves from their shackles and the ship's hold. This
(02:12):
was kind of a feat. They were in the ship's hold.
There wasn't a below decks. Really, there was just the
upper deck and the cargo hold they were shackled down there.
They represented at least nine different ethnic groups from parts
of what's now Sierra Leone. They didn't necessarily all even
speak the same language very well, but they all worked
(02:32):
together in spite of all this to free themselves from
their shackles, then to kill the cook that had been
tormenting them in his sleep, and also to take on
the captain of the ship. The crew were not able
to grab their firearms because things happened so quickly. The
enslaved people armed themselves with cane knives that they had
(02:53):
found in the hold with them, and they were basically
able to take over the whole ship. A couple of
the crew abandoned ship and and made their way away
in a lifeboat, and they captured Ruiz and Montez, the
two men that had at least in theory purchased them.
And then they ran into a problem. They had taken
(03:14):
over the ship. They had succeeded in their rebellion. But
these are people who were mostly from the interior of
the country. They didn't live on the coast, they didn't
have experience with boats and ships. They didn't really know
how to navigate in this part of the world. They
were on the opposite side of the planet from where
they had been living, so they had to still rely
(03:36):
on the two men who had purchased them. What they
told them to do was to take them back to Africa,
so Ruiz and Montez at first acted like they were
doing this, but then they turned the ship to the
north too instead, hopefully in their minds, find somebody who
would help them. What wound up happening instead was that
(03:58):
they made their way all the way up the most
of North America, all the way to New York to
the southern tip of Long Island, and that is where
a US Navy vessel spotted them on August. Weeks after
that mutiny had happened. At this point, some of the
Africans aboard had died of exposure or thirst. The conditions
were still not good. They did not have a lot
(04:19):
of resources, but Ruiz and Montes were allowed to go,
and the surviving Africans were imprisoned and charged with murder
in the deaths of the captain and the cook. Those
murder charges were later dropped, but they still had to
face trial in Hartford, Connecticut. Because there were multiple different
entities all claiming to own these people. Eventually, a court
(04:42):
in Hartford found in favor of the Africans, saying that
they number one had the right to defend themselves and
number two that they had been brought to Cuba illegally
so that they were free. But the administration of President
Martin van Buren appealed that decision. It wound up being
former President John Quincy Adam who defended the Africans before
the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court upheld that lower courts
(05:05):
ruling this legal process had gone on for more than
a year and a half, and that was on top
of the weeks and weeks they had spent at sea
both before and after the mutiny. But this legal victory
didn't have any provisions for them to get home. There
was no repatriation built into it, and the Navy was
given salvage rights for the Honestade, so they couldn't even
(05:26):
just sell the ship to pay for their way back.
Abolitionists wound up raising money for them to get back home,
and the thirty five surviving Africans boarded a ship bound
back for Africa on November forty one. They had several
missionaries along with them. These missionaries. Once they all arrived
in Africa, began doing their missionary work, and their letters
(05:48):
back to the United States for years included little updates
about people who had been aboard the Honestade. They were
referred to as one of the Honestads and these letters.
According to the descendants of sing Bay p A, he
returned home to find that his wife and two of
his daughters were missing. It's possible that they were victims
of the same slave trade that he had been. After
(06:10):
a fruitless search for them, according to his family records,
he returned home to live near a surviving son and
later on his other descendants. Thanks to Eve's Jeff Cote
for her research work on today's episode and Tari Harrison,
who edits and produces all of these episodes, you can
learn more about the Amistad Rebellion in the Stuff You
(06:31):
Miss in History Class episode from April sleven, and you
can subscribe to This Day in History Class on Apple podcasts,
Google podcasts, and whatever else you get your podcasts. Tune
in tomorrow for an ancient discovery, at least one that
we think is ancient. Hi, there, Welcome to This Day
(06:56):
in History Class, where we sift through the artifacts of
history seven days a week. The day was July second, nineteen.
Patrice and Marie La Mumba was born in on A,
lu Kasai province in the Belgian Congo. La Mumba went
(07:18):
on to become the first Prime Minister of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo. He was assassinated in nineteen sixty one,
but he is remembered as a Pan Africanist leader and
freedom fighter. La Mumba was one of four sons born
to poor farmers when Congo was under Belgian rule. He
(07:39):
was a member of the Tetela ethnic group. As a child,
he began going to missionary schools, which spent little time
instructing black children in book study in more time preparing
them for manual labor. Regardless, teachers gave him books to read,
and after he finished primary school, he went on to
secondary school the oh He had always been eager in
(08:01):
his quest for knowledge. He left secondary school at age eighteen.
At this time, the Belgian Congo was at war and
La Mumba was stuck between Catholic and Protestant missionaries, who
both aligned with Belgian colonial authorities. He decided to find
employment elsewhere relocating to places like Kalima, Ubund and Kisangani,
(08:24):
then called Stanleyville. La Mumba became active in groups of
Abu Luay Africans who have been educated in westernized mission schools,
who gathered to debate issues and exchange knowledge. La Mumba
learned to fluently speak several languages, including Swahili, French and Lingala.
(08:44):
He started to write essays and poems, many of which
were anti colonialists, for Congolese journals. In nineteen forty seven,
he went to postal school and got a job as
a postal worker in Kinshasa, then called Leopoldville. He soon
became an accountant in the post office in Kisangani, and
in nineteen fifty one he married fifteen year old pauline
(09:07):
O Bangu. La Mumba helped organize a postal workers union,
founded a group of African intellectuals and liberal Europeans whose
goal was to improve race relations, continued writing for the
Congolese press and joined a local branch of a Belgian
liberal party. In nineteen fifty six, he was a part
of a delegation of Congolese people visiting Belgium to discuss
(09:31):
political reform, but when he returned to Congo, he was
arrested for embezzlement from the post office. Though he said
he was innocent and had borrowed the money, he ended
up serving about a year in prison. Once he was released,
he became the sales director of a brewery in Conshassa
and helped found the Congolese National Movement for m n
(09:52):
C in nineteen fifty eight. The m n C was
a political group that opposed Belgian control, called for Congo's
resources to benefit the Congolese first, and demanded independence. Ghana
had recently gained its independence from Britain, and in December
of nineteen fifty eight, La Mumba attended the first All
(10:13):
African People's Conference in across Ghana organized by Kuama and Kruma.
La Mumba became more radical as he recognized the oppression
of Belgian colonial rule, and his militant nationalism, drive for
progress and leadership made him a target for authorities. The
m n C split into two organizations in nineteen fifty nine,
(10:34):
as La Mumba took a radical stance against colonial rule,
with La Mumba side appropriately known as m n C.
La Mumba after riots broke out and people were killed
in Kisangani after he gave a speech at an m
NC conference, Lamumbo was arrested on the charge of inciting
anti colonial riots, but he was soon released from prison
(10:56):
to attend a round table conference in Brussels convened to
discussed the future of the Congo. Belgium granted the Congo
independence slated for June thirtieth, nineteen sixty. In the national
elections in May, the m n C came out ahead,
winning thirty three seats out of one thirty seven. La
(11:16):
Mumba became the Belgian Congo's first prime minister, with rival
Joseph Kasa Vubu as the president. On June thirtieth independence Day,
La Mumba surprised people with a speech that denounced Belgian domination,
emphasized the suffering of Congolese people under colonial rule, and
called for Congolese unification. This was just after the Belgian
(11:39):
king had given a speech supporting colonialism and telling Congo
to step into the future cautiously. After independence, the Congo
fell into disorder when La Mumba called in help from
the Soviet Union. Belgians and Americans accused him of being communist.
Army commander Joseph Mobutu arrested La Mumba and Kasavubu and
(12:00):
took power a c I. A scientist was sent to
poison him, but that never happened. Though La Mumba managed
to escape, he was recaptured and sent to Katanga, a
province that has succeeded from Congo in the wake of
independence and was under Belgian control. La Mumba was tortured
and then assassinated in Katanga on January sevent nineteen sixty one.
(12:25):
Many people today view him as a martyr for anti
imperialism and Pan Africanism. I'm Eve Jeffco and hopefully you
know a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
We love it if you left us a comment on Twitter,
Instagram or Facebook. At t d i h C podcast,
(12:47):
we'll see you here in the same place tomorrow. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, vis the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hey, history enthusiasts, you get not one, but two events
in history today. Heads up that you also might hear
two different hosts, Me and Tracy V. Wilson. With that said,
on with the show, Welcome to this day in History class.
It's July two today. In eighteen thirty nine, the enslaved
(00:21):
people aboard the Amistade staged a rebellion. When this happened,
even though these were enslaved people aboard the Amistade, the
Transatlantic slave trade was largely abolished. It had been outlawed
in the United States and in Great Britain in eighteen
oh seven, and then several other European nations had also
banned it in the eighteen teens, but slavery itself was
(00:44):
still legal in a lot of the places that had
been importing enslaved labor from Africa and then the slave traders.
A lot of them were still working even though this
was illegal, and as one example, the port of Lumboco,
which was controlled by Pedro Blanco of Spain, was still
an active slave port. This was on the coast of
what's now Sierra Leone, and in early eighteen thirty nine,
(01:07):
more than five hundred Africans maybe even closer to six
hundred were transported from the interior of Sierra Leone and
were sent to Cuba aboard a slave ship called the
Ta Cora from the port of Lombo Coat. After this
ship arrived in Cuba, Jose Ruiz and Pedro Montes purchased
fifty three of the people who were aboard, including four children,
(01:30):
and their intent was for these people was to send
them by ship aboard the Amistade to other plantations that
they had. The treatment of these people aboard the Amistade
was just appalling. There was often not enough food or water.
Beatings were common. The cook tormented them constantly, basically threatening
them with the horrors that were awaiting them once they
(01:51):
got off the ship. Eventually, an enslaved man named singby
p A who is sometimes called by the Spanish name
Sink a letter rebellion before dawn on July two, while
they were still at sea, he got the other people
who were enslaved with him to figure out how to
release themselves from their shackles and the ship's hold. This
(02:12):
was kind of a feat. They were in the ship's hold.
There wasn't a below decks. Really, there was just the
upper deck and the cargo hold they were shackled down there.
They represented at least nine different ethnic groups from parts
of what's now Sierra Leone. They didn't necessarily all even
speak the same language very well, but they all worked
(02:32):
together in spite of all this to free themselves from
their shackles, then to kill the cook that had been
tormenting them in his sleep, and also to take on
the captain of the ship. The crew were not able
to grab their firearms because things happened so quickly. The
enslaved people armed themselves with cane knives that they had
(02:53):
found in the hold with them, and they were basically
able to take over the whole ship. A couple of
the crew abandoned ship and and made their way away
in a lifeboat, and they captured Ruiz and Montez, the
two men that had at least in theory purchased them.
And then they ran into a problem. They had taken
(03:14):
over the ship. They had succeeded in their rebellion. But
these are people who were mostly from the interior of
the country. They didn't live on the coast, they didn't
have experience with boats and ships. They didn't really know
how to navigate in this part of the world. They
were on the opposite side of the planet from where
they had been living, so they had to still rely
(03:36):
on the two men who had purchased them. What they
told them to do was to take them back to Africa,
so Ruiz and Montez at first acted like they were
doing this, but then they turned the ship to the
north too instead, hopefully in their minds, find somebody who
would help them. What wound up happening instead was that
(03:58):
they made their way all the way up the most
of North America, all the way to New York to
the southern tip of Long Island, and that is where
a US Navy vessel spotted them on August. Weeks after
that mutiny had happened. At this point, some of the
Africans aboard had died of exposure or thirst. The conditions
were still not good. They did not have a lot
(04:19):
of resources, but Ruiz and Montes were allowed to go,
and the surviving Africans were imprisoned and charged with murder
in the deaths of the captain and the cook. Those
murder charges were later dropped, but they still had to
face trial in Hartford, Connecticut. Because there were multiple different
entities all claiming to own these people. Eventually, a court
(04:42):
in Hartford found in favor of the Africans, saying that
they number one had the right to defend themselves and
number two that they had been brought to Cuba illegally
so that they were free. But the administration of President
Martin van Buren appealed that decision. It wound up being
former President John Quincy Adam who defended the Africans before
the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court upheld that lower courts
(05:05):
ruling this legal process had gone on for more than
a year and a half, and that was on top
of the weeks and weeks they had spent at sea
both before and after the mutiny. But this legal victory
didn't have any provisions for them to get home. There
was no repatriation built into it, and the Navy was
given salvage rights for the Honestade, so they couldn't even
(05:26):
just sell the ship to pay for their way back.
Abolitionists wound up raising money for them to get back home,
and the thirty five surviving Africans boarded a ship bound
back for Africa on November forty one. They had several
missionaries along with them. These missionaries. Once they all arrived
in Africa, began doing their missionary work, and their letters
(05:48):
back to the United States for years included little updates
about people who had been aboard the Honestade. They were
referred to as one of the Honestads and these letters.
According to the descendants of sing Bay p A, he
returned home to find that his wife and two of
his daughters were missing. It's possible that they were victims
of the same slave trade that he had been. After
(06:10):
a fruitless search for them, according to his family records,
he returned home to live near a surviving son and
later on his other descendants. Thanks to Eve's Jeff Cote
for her research work on today's episode and Tari Harrison,
who edits and produces all of these episodes, you can
learn more about the Amistad Rebellion in the Stuff You
(06:31):
Miss in History Class episode from April sleven, and you
can subscribe to This Day in History Class on Apple podcasts,
Google podcasts, and whatever else you get your podcasts. Tune
in tomorrow for an ancient discovery, at least one that
we think is ancient. Hi, there, Welcome to This Day
(06:56):
in History Class, where we sift through the artifacts of
history seven days a week. The day was July second, nineteen.
Patrice and Marie La Mumba was born in on A,
lu Kasai province in the Belgian Congo. La Mumba went
(07:18):
on to become the first Prime Minister of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo. He was assassinated in nineteen sixty one,
but he is remembered as a Pan Africanist leader and
freedom fighter. La Mumba was one of four sons born
to poor farmers when Congo was under Belgian rule. He
(07:39):
was a member of the Tetela ethnic group. As a child,
he began going to missionary schools, which spent little time
instructing black children in book study in more time preparing
them for manual labor. Regardless, teachers gave him books to read,
and after he finished primary school, he went on to
secondary school the oh He had always been eager in
(08:01):
his quest for knowledge. He left secondary school at age eighteen.
At this time, the Belgian Congo was at war and
La Mumba was stuck between Catholic and Protestant missionaries, who
both aligned with Belgian colonial authorities. He decided to find
employment elsewhere relocating to places like Kalima, Ubund and Kisangani,
(08:24):
then called Stanleyville. La Mumba became active in groups of
Abu Luay Africans who have been educated in westernized mission schools,
who gathered to debate issues and exchange knowledge. La Mumba
learned to fluently speak several languages, including Swahili, French and Lingala.
(08:44):
He started to write essays and poems, many of which
were anti colonialists, for Congolese journals. In nineteen forty seven,
he went to postal school and got a job as
a postal worker in Kinshasa, then called Leopoldville. He soon
became an accountant in the post office in Kisangani, and
in nineteen fifty one he married fifteen year old pauline
(09:07):
O Bangu. La Mumba helped organize a postal workers union,
founded a group of African intellectuals and liberal Europeans whose
goal was to improve race relations, continued writing for the
Congolese press and joined a local branch of a Belgian
liberal party. In nineteen fifty six, he was a part
of a delegation of Congolese people visiting Belgium to discuss
(09:31):
political reform, but when he returned to Congo, he was
arrested for embezzlement from the post office. Though he said
he was innocent and had borrowed the money, he ended
up serving about a year in prison. Once he was released,
he became the sales director of a brewery in Conshassa
and helped found the Congolese National Movement for m n
(09:52):
C in nineteen fifty eight. The m n C was
a political group that opposed Belgian control, called for Congo's
resources to benefit the Congolese first, and demanded independence. Ghana
had recently gained its independence from Britain, and in December
of nineteen fifty eight, La Mumba attended the first All
(10:13):
African People's Conference in across Ghana organized by Kuama and Kruma.
La Mumba became more radical as he recognized the oppression
of Belgian colonial rule, and his militant nationalism, drive for
progress and leadership made him a target for authorities. The
m n C split into two organizations in nineteen fifty nine,
(10:34):
as La Mumba took a radical stance against colonial rule,
with La Mumba side appropriately known as m n C.
La Mumba after riots broke out and people were killed
in Kisangani after he gave a speech at an m
NC conference, Lamumbo was arrested on the charge of inciting
anti colonial riots, but he was soon released from prison
(10:56):
to attend a round table conference in Brussels convened to
discussed the future of the Congo. Belgium granted the Congo
independence slated for June thirtieth, nineteen sixty. In the national
elections in May, the m n C came out ahead,
winning thirty three seats out of one thirty seven. La
(11:16):
Mumba became the Belgian Congo's first prime minister, with rival
Joseph Kasa Vubu as the president. On June thirtieth independence Day,
La Mumba surprised people with a speech that denounced Belgian domination,
emphasized the suffering of Congolese people under colonial rule, and
called for Congolese unification. This was just after the Belgian
(11:39):
king had given a speech supporting colonialism and telling Congo
to step into the future cautiously. After independence, the Congo
fell into disorder when La Mumba called in help from
the Soviet Union. Belgians and Americans accused him of being communist.
Army commander Joseph Mobutu arrested La Mumba and Kasavubu and
(12:00):
took power a c I. A scientist was sent to
poison him, but that never happened. Though La Mumba managed
to escape, he was recaptured and sent to Katanga, a
province that has succeeded from Congo in the wake of
independence and was under Belgian control. La Mumba was tortured
and then assassinated in Katanga on January sevent nineteen sixty one.
(12:25):
Many people today view him as a martyr for anti
imperialism and Pan Africanism. I'm Eve Jeffco and hopefully you
know a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
We love it if you left us a comment on Twitter,
Instagram or Facebook. At t d i h C podcast,
(12:47):
we'll see you here in the same place tomorrow. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, vis the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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