Above: Rashid Johnson. The New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club (Thurgood), 2008. Lambda print, Ed. 2/5, 69 x 55 1/2 in. Courtesy of Rubell Family Collection. Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Art school at Rutgers was just 45 minutes away from New York City by train, and it was the 1980s with a cast of artists showing at museums and galleries and populating art magazines that still consisted mostly of white men, with...

On July 2, 1839, Sengbe Pieh, better known as Joseph Cinqué, and some 50 or more fellow Africans killed the captain and three of the crew of the Spanish schooner La Amistad. The plan was to turn the vessel around and go back to Africa, from where they had been kidnapped and enslaved. They entrusted the Spanish navigator, Don Pedro Montez, whose life they spared, with steering the ship. He steered it along the North American coast off Montauk...