Black Star Line

African American topics sidebar|rightThe Black Star Line was a shipping line incorporated by Marcus Garvey, who organized the UNIA (United Negro Improvement Association). s in search of a way to get back to their homeland. The shipping line was supposed to involve the transportation of goods and eventually African Americans throughout the African global economy.

The Black Star Line started in Delaware on June 23, 1919. Having a maximum capitalization of $500,000, BSL stocks were sold at UNIA conventions at five dollars each. The company's losses were estimated to be between $630,000 and $1.25 million.

The Black Star Line did surprise all its critics when, only three months after being incorporated, the first of four ships, the SS "Yarmouth" was purchased with the intention of it being rechristened the "Frederick Douglass." The "Yarmouth" was a coal boat during the First World War, and was in poor condition when purchased by the Black Star Line. Once reconditioned, the "Yarmouth" proceeded to sail for three years between the U.S. and the West Indies as the first Black Star Line ship with an all-black crew and a black captain. Later Joshua Cockburn, the captain of the "Yarmouth", was accused of receiving a "kick back from the purchase price".

The SS "Yarmouth" was not the only ship to be purchased in poor condition and to be completely oversold. Garvey spent another $200,000 for more shipsFact|date=October 2007. One, the SS "Shadyside", sailed the "cruise to nowhere" on the Hudson River one summer and sank the next fall because of a leak many thought to be sabotage. Another was a steam yacht once owned by Henry Huttleston Rogers. Booker T. Washington had been an honored guest aboard the ship when it was owned by his friend and confidant, Rogers, and was known as the "Kanawha". However, Rogers had died in 1909, and the once well-maintained yacht had also served in the first World War. Renamed by the Black Star Line the SS "Antonio Maceo", it blew a boiler and killed a man off the Virginia coast on its first voyage from New York to Cuba, and had to be towed back to New York Fact|date=October 2007.

Besides oversold, poorly conditioned ships, Black Star Line was beset by corruption of managementFact|date=October 2007 and infiltration by agents of J. Edgar Hoover's Bureau of Investigation (the forerunner to the FBI), who - according to historian Winston James - sabotaged it by throwing foreign matter into the fuel, damaging the engines [ [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/garvey/peopleevents/p_hoover.html American Experience | Marcus Garvey | People & Events ] ] . The first commission for the "Yarmouth" was to haul whiskey from the U.S. to Cuba before Prohibition. Although the ship made it in record time, it did not have docking arrangements, so it lost money sitting in the docks of Cuba while longshoremen had a strike.Fact|date=October 2007 A cargo-load of coconuts rotted in the hull of a ship on another voyage because Garvey insisted on having the ships make ceremonial stops at politically important ports.Fact|date=October 2007

The Black Star Line ceased sailing in February 1922. It is regarded as a considerable accomplishment for African Americans of the time, despite the thievery by employeesFact|date=October 2007, engineers who overcharged, and the Bureau of Investigation's acts of infiltration and sabotage.

Reggae singer Fred Locks, an adherent of the Rastafari faith, re-introduced it to a Jamaican audience with his 1976 hit "Black Star liners" (which has been called one of "the most important songs in reggae music of the 1970s"), portraying Garvey as a Moses-like prophet: [ [http://www.reggaehead.com/song-blackstarliner.htm Reggae Head ] ] [ [http://www.reggae-vibes.com/concert/fredlocks/fredlocks1.htm Interview with Fred Locks] ] "Seven miles of Black Star Liners coming in the harbour / [...] I can hear the elders saying / These are the days for which we've been praying / ... [Marcus Garvey] told us that the Black Star Liners are coming one day for us". The Black Star Line was also commemorated in song by blues singers Hazel Meyers and Rosa Henderson, Fact|date=July 2008 reggae singer Burning SpearFact|date=July 2008, and the musical group Brand Nubian (on their 1993 album "In God We Trust").

References

External links

* [http://www.unia-acl.org/history/history2.htm UNIA History]
* [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/garvey/peopleevents/e_blackstar.html People & Events: The Black Star Line]
* [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/garvey/peopleevents/p_hoover.html People & Events: J. Edgar Hoover]
* [http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5121/ “The Collapse of the Only Thing in the Garvey Movement Which Was Original or Promising”: Du Bois on Garvey]
* [http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5123/ “The Black Star Line”: Singing a Song of Garveyism]