Freedom

Jun 21, 2003

When I should have been finishing my gene therapy article tonight, I instead got sucked into Steven Spielberg’s excellent historical drama Amistad. I can’t tell you how many times my eyes filled with tears – at the monologues about freedom, the depiction of horrors of slavery, and Cinque and John Quincy Adams calling upon their ancestors to validate their moment in time. Of course I thought about Frank the Beachcomber when Adams stood before the bust of his father the great John Adams and asked that his ancestor be present. See the Library of Congress page here for a few pages of Adams’s brief that he delivered to the Supreme Court in 1841.

Anton Zuiker ☄