No one ever thinks about what it actually takes to become free. There is one man that would do anything to become free and he was Joseph Cinque. Cinque would risk his life to help others and himself become free. He was a heroic, African slave leader that led a rebellion to become freed from slavery.
             Joseph Cinque was born in 1811 by a Mende headman in the village of Mani, which is in modern Sierra Leone. He grew up as a rice farmer and trader. Cinque was enslaved for debt and sold to Pedro Blanco, who was a Spanish slaver. He was sold on Lomboko Island at the mouth of the Gallinas River on April of 1839. Joseph was then carried to Havana, where he was resold with fifty-one others.
             While Cinque was in his 20's, four black strangers captured him as he walked along a path. His wife and three children were unaware of what happened to him and thought animals may have eaten him. Joseph later thought that the four black strangers may have been from a rival tribe or perhaps debt collectors. After being forced to walk for days to reach the coast, he boarded the Portuguese slave ship Tecora along with hundreds of other prisoners. Unsanitary conditions and lack of food caused many to die during the two-month voyage to Cuba.
             Because it was illegal to import slaves into Cuba, the captives were smuggled in during the night. Slavery itself was still legal there, so efforts were made to pass off the new arrivals as Cuban-born slaves. This enslavement was illegal and violated numerous treaties. The Spaniards who bought Cinque and the other fifty-one Africans planned to sell them and the other captives to plantation owners. They were boarded upon the Amistad. Cinque convinced his fellow prisoners that they had nothing to lose by trying to get free. Cinque freed himself from his shackles by using a nail he had hiding and led a rebellion with the other Africans. The captives killed all of the crew except for the navigator of the ship with th...