The Black Schooner: Rebellion on the Amistad

by Victoria James

The Black Schooner: Rebellion on the Amistad, by David Lester and Marcus Rediker with an Afterword by Paul Buhle, is a striking graphic retelling of a significant moment of collective resistance in the history of the transatlantic slave trade. Adapted from Rediker’s historical study The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom, this graphic novel brings the 1839 uprising into vivid focus, restoring the fifty‑three enslaved African people onboard La Amistad to the center of their own narrative. By situating the graphic novel within a “history-from-below” (p. 117, Afterword) framework, the authors successfully challenge the archival and narrative structures that have often centered white voices and state power in accounts of the abolitionist movement. In doing so, the text imaginatively recenters the political consciousness and collective strategies to the Africans who freed themselves.

Rediker’s foreword, “Why We Need Stories of Successful Resistance,” identifies the forms of historical omission that shape existing accounts of the Amistad uprising. As he writes, “the very people who risked their lives in striking out for freedom were marginalized, their voices silenced, their own understandings of what they had done largely omitted from the story. The vivid, dynamic, and dramatic history of the Amistad struggle had been whitewashed” (p. vi). The authors and illustrator work together to uncover this history.

The graphic novel unfolds in three parts: “War,” “Trials,” and “Freedom.” It begins with the uprising of the fifty-three enslaved Mende people of Sierra Leone just off the coast of Cuba, follows their imprisonment and the court cases in the United States, and ends with their return to Freetown, Sierra Leone. Lester’s stark black‑and‑white artwork carries the emotional weight of the narrative. His visual language captures both the terror of captivity and the determination of those who fought to survive.

 The Black Schooner, page 9, middle panel

Part one, “War,” reconstructs the seizure of La Amistad through a framework attentive to the political economy of the Atlantic world and the coercive infrastructures that sustained the illegal slave trade in the late 1830s. The narrative traces the captives’ passage through unrelenting violence, “our legs were chained together … we were rarely fed … the dogs snarled at us” (30) where they were confined in suffocating quarters, beaten at random, and haunted by sickness, hunger, and the cries of children. These scenes document the conditions that they endured in the period leading up to the revolt and carry the narrative into their subsequent imprisonment.

Part two, “Trials,” examines legal proceedings in the United States as sites where imperial governance, racial capitalism, and abolitionist organizing intersected. The panels trace the production of testimony, the circulation of documents, and the interpretive labour required to translate the captives’ statements into a juridical framework structured by property claims, diplomatic pressure, and the racial logics of the U.S. state. This section underscores how the legal system functioned as an instrument of racial governance while, at times, simultaneously becoming a site of disruption through resistance.

The Black Schooner, page 83, panels 1 – 2.

The third and final part, “Freedom,” follows the survivors’ return to Sierra Leone after the Supreme Court (United States v. The Amistad (1841)) confirmed the illegality of their kidnapping and transport. “Freedom” situates this journey within the broader structures of displacement, warfare, and missionary intervention that shaped the region. The narrative resists framing the return as resolution; instead, it foregrounds the ongoing effects of imperial violence, forced migration, and the destabilizing forces of the Atlantic slave trade. Their return is presented as a movement through layered forms of dispossession rather than a restoration of pre‑captivity life: “We children could not go home; our families were lost” (108).

Across all three parts, The Black Schooner centers their own voices and exposes the structural forces (racial capitalism, colonial governance, and transnational commerce) that shaped their experiences. The graphic form amplifies these commitments by rendering visible the embodied dimensions of captivity, resistance, and return, and by creating a representational space in which the captives’ own interpretive frameworks take precedence over state-produced narratives. The work aligns with contemporary scholarship in Black studies, Atlantic history, and abolitionist historiography that examines how enslaved people challenged the legitimacy of the systems that sought to contain them.

Although The Black Schooner is primarily a work of history, it resonates strongly with the concerns of graphic medicine. The narrative foregrounds the embodied realities of enslavement—trauma, survival, endurance—and the long-term consequences of violence on individuals and communities. By centering the perspectives of the Africans themselves, the book invites readers to consider the psychological, emotional, and communal dimensions of resistance. It also highlights the ways trauma is carried, witnessed, and transformed through storytelling. The graphic medium plays a crucial role in this process. Lester’s art conveys emotion and memory in ways that complement and extend the historical record. The visual form allows readers to engage with the material not only intellectually but affectively, creating space for empathy, reflection, and ethical engagement. In this sense, the book aligns with key principles of graphic medicine: it uses visual narrative to illuminate experiences of suffering and resilience, and it offers a mode of storytelling that honours the complexity of lived experience.

The Black Schooner is an important contribution to both public history and the growing body of graphic narratives that engage with themes of trauma, justice, and collective resistance. By centering the voices of the Amistad rebels and presenting their story through a medium that invites emotional and ethical engagement, the book offers readers a powerful and necessary account of the struggle against slavery. It stands as a reminder of the importance of telling histories from the perspective of those directly involved and of the role that comics can play in making those histories visible, accessible, and resonant. Words alone do not do this work justice.

The Black Schooner, page 84, last panel.

Editor’s note: Other works by the same authors reviewed on this website, include Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay and Under the Banner of King Death – Pirates of the Atlantic.

Victoria James (she/her) is a medical librarian at Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Medicine, where she supports learners and clinical faculty with teaching, learning, and research. She is interested in the role of collections in health sciences education, including the library’s Graphic Medicine materials to support narrative and reflective approaches to care. Her practice is grounded in a commitment to social justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility (EDIA), Truth and Reconciliation, and information equity in health libraries.