"Black Mutiny" is the historical retelling of one of our nation's most dramatic national crises. It is one among many historical sources used in the development of the new motion picture "Amistad." Written as a novel in 1953 by William A. Owens, this is one historian's view of the Amistad mutiny. Based on U.S. government documents, court records, official and personal correspondence, diaries, and newspaper accounts, it tells the true story of 53 illegally enslaved Africans who revolted against their captors. After the Amistad was intercepted and seized by the United States Navy, the imprisoned Africans were forced to stand trial for mutiny and murder in a case that reached the Supreme Court. With its impassioned plea for freedom for all people, "Black Mutiny" brilliantly recreates a critical moment in America's racial history more than twenty years before the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation. It is a rousing and unforgettable story of oppression, justice, and the precious cost of human dignity.

This volume presents the first full-scale treatment of the only instance in history where African blacks, seized by slave dealers, won their freedom and returned home. Jones describes how, in 1839, Joseph Cinqué led a revolt on the Spanish slave ship, the Amistad, in the Caribbean. The seizure of the ship by an American naval vessel near Montauk, Long Island, the arrest of the Africans in Connecticut, and the Spanish protest against the violation of their property rights created an international controversy. The Amistad affair united Lewis Tappan and other abolitionists who put the "law of nature" on trial in the United States by their refusal to accept a legal system that claimed to dispense justice while permitting artificial distinctions based on race or color. The mutiny resulted in a trial before the U.S. Supreme Court that pitted former President John Quincy Adams against the federal government. Jones vividly recaptures this compelling drama--the most famous slavery case before Dred Scott--that climaxed in the court's ruling to free the captives and allow them to return to Africa.

Salado Creek, Texas, 1918: Thirteen black soldiers stood at attention in front of gallows erected specifically for their hanging. They had been convicted of participating in one of America’s most infamous black uprisings, the Camp Logan Mutiny, otherwise known as the 1917 Houston Riots. The revolt and ensuing riots were carried out by men of the 3rd Battalion of the all-black 24th U.S. Infantry Regiment—the famed Buffalo Soldiers—after members of the Houston Police Department violently menaced them and citizens of the local black community. It all took place over one single bloody night. In the wake of the uprising, scores lay dead, including bystanders, police, and soldiers. This incident remains one of Texas’ most complicated and misrepresented historical events. It shook race relations in Houston and created conditions that sparked a nationwide surge of racial activism. In the aftermath of the carnage, what was considered the “trial of the century” ensued. Even for its time, its profundity and racial significance rivals that of the O.J. Simpson trial eight decades later. The courts-martial resulted in the hanging of over a dozen black soldiers, eliciting memories of slave rebellions. But was justice served? New evidence from declassified historical archives indicates that the courts-martial were rushed in an attempt to placate an angered white population as well as military brass. Mutiny of Rage sheds new light on a suppressed chapter in U.S. history. It also sets the legal record straight on what really happened, all while situating events in the larger context of race relations in America, from Nat Turner to George Floyd.

Describes the fifty black sailors who refused to work in unsafe and unfair conditions after an explosion in Port Chicago killed 320 servicemen, and how the incident influenced civil rights.

Named one of the Best Books of 2021 by The Boston Globe and Lit Hub Longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry From the critically acclaimed author of Thief in the Interior who writes with "a lucid, unmitigated humanity" (Boston Review), a startling new collection about revolt and renewal Mutiny: a rebellion, a subversion, an onslaught. In poems that rebuke classical mythos and western canonical figures, and embrace Afro-Diasporanfolk and spiritual imagery, Phillip B. Williams conjures the hell of being erased, exploited, and ill-imagined and then, through a force and generosity of vision, propels himself into life, selfhood, and a path forward. Intimate, bold, and sonically mesmerizing, Mutiny addresses loneliness, desire, doubt, memory, and the borderline between beauty and tragedy. With a ferocity that belies the tenderness and vulnerability at the heart of this remarkable collection, Williams honors the transformative power of anger, and the clarity that comes from allowing that anger to burn clean.

For several years, the armies of Napoleon III deployed some 450 Muslim Sudanese slave soldiers in Veracruz, the port of Mexico City. As in the other case of Western hemisphere military slavery (the West India Regiments, a British unit in existence 1795-1815), the Sudanese were imported from Africa in the hopes that they would better survive the tropical diseases that so terribly afflicted European soldiers. In both cases, the Africans did indeed fulfill these expectations. The mixture of cultures embodied by this event has piqued the interest of several historians, so it is by no means unknown. Hill and Hogg provide a particularly thorough account of this exotic interlude, explaining its background, looking in detail at the battle record in Mexico, and figuring out who exactly made up the battalion. Much in their account is odd and interesting, for example, the Sudanese superiority to Austrian troops and their festive nine-day spree in Paris on the emperor's tab. The authors also assess the episode's longer-term impact on the Sudan, showing that the veterans of Mexico, having learnt much from their extended exposure to French military practices, rose quickly in the ranks, then taught these methods to others.