The Long Shadow Of Slavery

The film takes some literary license: Adams never entertained Cinque in his home; his actual argument to the Supreme Court was highly legalistic, not a bald appeal to conscience. Even so, ""Amistad'' stays more true to the facts than most big-budget historical dramas. And it manages to simultaneously echo modern-day frustrations over the justice system and put a positive spin on the use of legal technicalities to advance larger causes. Spielberg wants it clear that ""this story is about American history not just African history . . . The courtroom was really the heart of it.'' When Cinque stands in court and shouts over and over, ""Give us free! Give us free!'' the struggle of the African for justice in America reverberates across the generations and out into the theater audience.

""Amistad,'' the movie, has its own courthouse troubles. Barbara Chase-Riboud, author of a novel based on the case called ""Echo of Lions,'' has filed a $10 million lawsuit charging that DreamWorks SKG plagiarized her work. She claims ""Amistad'' borrowed from her the idea of creating the character of a fictional abolitionist editor, played by Morgan Freeman.

DreamWorks' best argument may be that the Amistad case was not some obscure episode but one of the most-publicized legal cases of the entire pre-Civil War period, with several black abolitionists like the Freeman composite character involved. In the years since, the story has been obscure for most Americans but familiar to many blacks. Recall that the revolutionary who kidnapped heiress Patricia Hearst in the 1970s assumed the nom de guerre ""Cinque.''

The film is part of a whole new round of slavery projects, including a Lyric Opera version of ""Amistad'' that opened in Chicago last week. Unlike the film, this is a black-conceived and -managed project by Anthony Davis with libretto by Thulani Davis and directed by George C. Wolfe. An A&E documentary debuts Dec. 16. Oprah Winfrey is finishing ""Beloved,'' based on Toni Morrison's novel about a former slave and scheduled for release next year. Director Chris Columbus (""Home Alone'') is bringing the story of abolitionist John Brown to the screen, and Danny Glover is developing a story about an 18th-century slave insurrection in Haiti.

While a ""slavery memorial'' is conspicuously absent from the Mall in Washington, D.C., museums devoted to the struggles against slavery and other accomplishments of African-Americans are popping up. Detroit has a magnificent Museum of African American History and Cincinnati is preparing a $70 million museum devoted to the underground railroad, the network of black and white abolitionists who helped slaves escape to the North.

There's a lot of catching up to do. Beyond the classroom, where instruction on slavery is improving, even those interested in history have often been shielded from its harsher truths. As recently as 1994, the journalist David Shipler visited Mt. Vernon and found that the tour of George Washington's mansion offered no mention that the ""father of his country'' had held slaves there. No one even noted that Washington, unlike Jefferson, freed his slaves on his death.