PAPA ROBBIE

Bunny Wailer (Neville O’Riley Livingston), born April 10, 1947, and died March 2, 2021, was a Jamaican singer-songwriter, percussionist, and founding member of The Wailers, along with Bob Marley and Peter Tosh.
A pivotal figure in reggae, he was known as the group’s “spiritual ambassador” and a champion of the roots reggae style.

Join us this weekend on the Roots Musik Karamu as we celebrate his musical and cultural legacy.
Tune in online!

On this day February 24 in 1841, John Quincy Adams began arguing his first case in front of the Supreme Court in 32 years, in defense of the captives aboard the Amistad.

He agreed to defend the prisoners, pro bono, as the case gave him the two things he craved most: a righteously indignant cause, and a chance to infuriate the South.

The Supreme Court Adams stood before was stacked against him. Not only were a majority of the justices slaveowners, but a whopping 5 out of the 9 had been nominated by Adams’s rival and successor Andrew Jackson. Not a single justice there had been nominated by Adams when he was president. (In fact, Adams’s only Supreme Court appointee died two years into his term—Adams nominated a replacement but the Senate delayed acting on it for the final 6 months of Adams’s term, allowing Jackson to chose someone else.)

Even with the odds stacked against him, JQA’s closing argument didn’t just go over well—it killed. Literally. One justice actually died of a heart attack the night after Adams spoke, delaying the second day of his argument for a week. Another justice called JQA’s speech “extraordinary for its power, its bitter sarcasm, and its dealing with topics far beyond the record and points of discussion.”

The Court decided 7 to 1 in favor of the captives. They won their freedom and were returned to Africa and John Quincy Adams, “Old Man Eloquent,” won late-in-life popularity and respect as “the acutest, the astutest, the archest enemy of Southern slavery that ever existed.”

We dug into this story in our Season 3 episode “The Amistad, the Creole, and Madison Washington.”

Pictured: Anthony Hopkins as John Quincy Adams in the 1997 film Amistad.

(Courtesy Of Plodding Through The Presidents)

He did meet Martin Luther The King!!