Amistad

"Amistad" is a Spanish noun meaning "friendship". It may refer to:

In arts, media, and entertainment

In biology

In enterprises

In law

In places

United States v. The Amistad

The Amistad, also known as United States v. Libellants and Claimants of the Schooner Amistad, 40 U.S. 518 (1841), was a United States Supreme Court case resulting from the rebellion of Africans on board the Spanish schooner La Amistad in 1839. It was an unusual freedom suit that involved international issues and parties, as well as United States law. The historian Samuel Eliot Morison in 1965 described it as the most important court case involving slavery before being eclipsed by that of Dred Scott.

The schooner was traveling along the coast of Cuba on its way to a port for re-sale of the slaves. The African captives, who had been kidnapped in Sierra Leone and illegally sold into slavery and shipped to Cuba, escaped their shackles and took over the ship. They killed the captain and the cook; two other crew members escaped in a lifeboat. The Africans directed the survivors to return them to Africa. The crew tricked them, sailing north at night. The Amistad was later apprehended near Long Island, New York, by the United States Revenue Cutter Service and taken into custody. The widely publicized court cases in the United States federal district and Supreme Court, which addressed international issues, helped the abolitionist movement.

HarperCollins

HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the world's largest publishing companies and is part of the "Big Five" English-language publishing companies, alongside Hachette, Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Corp. The company name is a combination of several publishing firm names: Harper & Row,an American publishing company acquired in 1987, whose own name was the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers (founded 1817) and Row, Peterson & Company; together with UK publishing company William Collins, Sons (founded 1819), acquired in 1990.

The worldwide CEO of HarperCollins is Brian Murray. HarperCollins has publishing groups in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and India. The company publishes many different imprints, both former independent publishing houses and new imprints.

History

Collins

Harper

Mergers and acquisitions

In 1989, Collins was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, and the publisher was combined with Harper & Row, which NewsCorp had acquired two years earlier. In addition to the simplified and merged name, the logo for HarperCollins was derived from the torch logo for Harper and Row, and the fountain logo for Collins, which were combined into a stylized set of flames atop waves.