By Marlene D. Merrill

Steven Spielberg's dramatic and historically controversial film Amistad has informed (and misinformed) many Americans about a famous chapter in African American history. But there is another story, virtually unknown, which deeply imbedded in the Amistad events and touched the small abolitionist town of Oberlin in northeast Ohio--and the Oberlin Collegiate Institute (later Oberlin College), located in its midst. The story is about a captive named "Margru," one of four children who were part of Amistad's slave cargo. In Margru's language her name meant "black snake," but in the United States she became "the child of many prayers," for she was the only Amistad captive to later return to America. Her story, though still being studied, reveals something of what it was like to be part of two very different worlds.