Sarah Margu: Child of the Amistad
Prosser Library
Bloomfield
March 7, 2026
Watching performers change into their roles is always a pleasure to behold.
It’s one of the reasons I enjoy going to historical reenactments so much. I get a glimpse of the performer and their surroundings – in this case, historian and performer Tammy Denease at Prosser Library in Bloomfield – before they transform into a larger-than-life version of themselves that channels a new personality.
Denease took on the life of Sarah Margu, one of six children who were stolen away from Sierra Leone by enslavers and brought to the New World, where they entered history once they were transferred to a schooner in Cuba named La Amistad.
For those who are unaware, the Africans held on the Amistad eventually overcame and killed the ship’s crew, and attempted to navigate the ship back home, telling the last surviving crew members to “take us back towards the sun.” The crew tricked them; the ship made landfall in New York before a famous trial was held in Hartford that determined that the Africans were free.
The performance went far beyond Margu’s involvement with the Amistad , diving into the child’s life before she was kidnapped. Margu was sent to work for another family by her father to work off debts. The family sold her to enslavers to receive their money more quickly. In the presentation, Margu describes the horrors of the Middle Passage in vivid detail, but this is not another narrative of enslavement that centers on cruelty and pain.
In fact, most of the 45-minute presentation talked about Margu’s life after she was freed by the courts. Margu lived in the United States for several more years before she finally returned to her home nation, working in a missionary school. Margu traveled between Sierra Leone and the United States multiple times, becoming the first African woman to graduate from an American college by attending Oberlin College. Margu took the name Sarah during her time in the U.S. Eventually she became the mistress of the mission back home, met a husband there and had a child before fading into the mists of time.
Denease was wonderful as Margu. She took on the accent and mannerisms of a West African woman effortlessly, and told an at times difficult story with joy and reverence for the perseverance of her muse.
She runs her own company, Hidden Women, which uses historical theater to present the stories of historical women who have been left out of the traditional narratives of American history. Born in Mississippi, Denease says that she came from a family of long-lived storytellers. Her great grandmother lived to be 125, and her grandmother to 107. She learned everything she knows about storytelling and performing from them.
Denease has been performing as Sarah Margu for over 20 years now. The character is informed by Denease’s own deep research. She spent hours inside of libraries examining primary source documents. She has conducted interviews with elders from Sierra Leone to learn more about the culture and moment in history she inhabited.
“My main motivation was that [the film] Amistad only portrayed the story as a legal case, were these people property or were they free,” she said. “I wanted to tell the human side of the story. These were human beings that were snatched away from their families.”
She certainly succeeded, both in bringing Sarah Margu to life and reminded us that she was more than just a name in a history book.
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Jamil is taking the rest of the weekend off. See you next week!
