It led to a historically significant United States Supreme Court case, in which the Amistad captives were ruled to be acting in self-defense, thereby granting them the right to mutiny.

The memorial sits in front of the New Haven City Hall on Church Street, the location where the Amistad slaves were jailed during their trial.

On July 2, 1839, a revolt was led by Sengbe Pieh (also known as Joseph Cinqué) in which the captives overran the ship, threatening death, and ordered the surviving crew to chart a course back to their native Sierra Leone.

[2] In 1992, Khalid Lum, a New Haven writer and activist said about the memorial, "many people who are familiar with the Amistad revolt feel it’s not only a matter of commemorating a historical event.

"[3] The Amistad Committee specifically desired that an African-American artist should design and build the memorial, so it contacted predominantly black schools to find a sculptor.

[4] Ed Hamilton, the sculptor of the Amistad Memorial, is an African-American artist, and was born in 1947 in Cincinnati, Ohio, currently residing near Louisville, KY.

[6] Hamilton designed a plaster model of the Amistad Memorial, which now resides at the African-American Historical Society in New Haven, Connecticut.

He then made the armature for the clay sculpture which was cast in bronze in Louisville, Kentucky and set atop a triangular base of granite.

Clifton H. Johnson, in his lecture "The Legacy of La Amistad" said, "Sculptor Ed Hamilton says in his autobiography that he viewed the rain as symbolic of the tears of all Africans who did not make the final journey home.

Laura Macaluso, in her book, "Art of the Amistad and the Portrait of Cinque" claims that this fourth side could represent slaves drowning along the Middle Passage.