Inspiring people today by recovering erased history

PortSide NewYork's African American Maritime Heritage (#AfAmMH) program was launched May 2018. PortSide started this program because these are relevant WaterStories all Americans should know. We launched this, before properly “ready” and funded, because of the virulent racism, fake news and fake history about USA race history that was and is resurgent.

AfAmMH encompasses stories of Black achievement, struggles against the sea, struggles against racism, and aspects of daily life and work (it’s not all derring-do) around the country. The maritime part of the African American story is largely forgotten, even though some of these stories and people were famous in their day. As we mention in the ABOUT section below, historians of the Underground Railroad are just recently, since the launch of this page, recognizing that they had largely missed the role of maritime (boats, waterways, maritime workers) in that oft-told story. Thus, this AfAmMH program reflects how this history was erased and efforts to erase it in the present. You can find our posts about this program on social media via #AfAmMH.

When PortSide prepared to launch AfAMMH, we expected to find many stories about how maritime figured in the Underground Railroad; because as maritime people, we knew that the waterways were how ideas and people moved most readily and longer distances during the period of the Underground Railroad. We did not find a lot, but we learned in 2023 that our instincts were right.
In 2022, new scholarship emerged, and a conference was held that addressed the fact that the study of the Underground Railroad had been overly land-focused and had missed that the waterways were a MAJOR escape route. More on that in one of our sections below.
Also clear to us over our five years of work on this is that mainstream American history had erased the prevalance, during the age of slavery, of Black efforts at physical rebellion from group slave revolts to individual acts of self-defense using violence. One such story is William Tillman’s below. Back in the age of slavery, slave owners suppressed such news to prevent it sparking more attempts at self-liberation, and history (dominated by white people) carried that silence forward.
Also clear is that historians have overplayed the role of whites in the Underground Railroad and abolition and minimized or erased the powerful roles and number of Black actors.
As of early 2023, the most visible national example of attempted erasure comes from Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis who claimed that the pilot AP class in African American history is “inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.” DeSantis uses the strategy of cherry picking which parts of Black History are valid and deeming some flawed for being “woke.” In his framework, queer history, intersectionality, critical race theory (CRT), Black Lives Matter, “systemic inequality” or “systemic” anything relating to race is an issue, as are campaigns for restitution and more.
New Jersey’s Governor Phil Murphy pushed back and is expanding use of the AP course from one to twenty-six New Jersey schools. More about that and the curriculum content here.
After several weeks of uproar, the College Board announced their regrets for not having called out earlier what they deemed “slander” by DeSantis, also saying “we were naive not to announce Florida’s rejection of the course” and we were not “in frequent dialogue with Florida about the content” as claimed, and that Florida had misrepresented their work with a politicking strategy.
Noted scholar and a contributor to the AP curriculum, Henry Louis Gates weighed in via a New York Times op-ed covering the long history of whites using erasure and disinformation to attempt thought control, both to subjugate Blacks and to convince whites of their superiority.

All this is a lesson in the struggle to research and tell Black History up to today, showing how Black history remains a subject that some white people will vigorously try to erase — from the moment the history is made, to the telling of it going forward, and also retroactively.
Moving on to what we offer here: These resources are not intended to be comprehensive; they reflect the limitations of our own capacity to do deep, original research. These topics are an introduction and starting point as we research and learn ourselves. We seek partners to grow AfAmMH. Please get in touch if you want to get involved or have suggestions for us. You can help by donating to our AfAmMH library, which we make available to the public. We accept used books in good condition as well as new ones. Our growing list of books is at the bottom.

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African American Red Hook WaterStories - Brooklyn

"The American Revolution created opportunities for some enslaved Blacks to obtain freedom. Self-interested economic and military reasons prompted the British to declare the freedom of all enslaved Blacks in America who joined them in New York harbor as Royal Navy seamen, British privateersmen or as laborers in the British Army - thus providing Blacks with financial independence. But, in a foreshadowing of 20th century racial conflicts on New York’s waterfront, Black maritime workers found themselves largely shut out of dockyard work due to white artisans’ resistance. At the same time Black mariners serving on captured British ships often found themselves sold into slavery. When the war ended, the best option for most of the British-freed Blacks was to flee away from the United States but for the vast majority of enslaved Blacks a door to freedom was firmly shut."
LINK : https://redhookwaterstories.org/exhibits/show/blacks-on-the-waterfront/blacks-waterfront-american-rev
Four years before the American Civil War, a legal battle emerged from a situation that occurred aboard a steamship from Savannah to New York. One of the passengers, Thomas Steele, a light skinned man, was accused of being a fugitive slave by another passenger. There was no proof whatsoever to support this. Nevertheless, as described in the The New York Herald, December 4, 1857, upon the ship’s arrival in New York, Steele was brought to the home of a Thomas McNulty, a grocer and boarding house keeper in Red Hook, where he was to be held until he could be sent back to Savannah.
However, before this could occur, a petition was made to City Judge, E. D. Culver. It informed the court of Steele's plight, explaining that he was being “detained and restrained of his personal liberty.”
The judge ordered that Steele be removed from McNulty's house and brought before him. McNulty was also ordered to appear before the judge, but he refused. With no one giving evidence against Steele, Judge Culver released him – allowing him to disappear – and charged his captors with kidnapping. Local papers in reporting the story, varied greatly in their sympathy to Thomas Steele.
Link to the full story.
“The race question is extending itself upon the seas." At the beginning of the 19th Century, one out of five American sailors were Black; at the start of the 20th Century, Black sailors in Brooklyn were facing severe job discrimination.
LINK: https://redhookwaterstories.org/items/show/947
In the summer of 1850, an African-American woman was abducted and brought to Red Hook Point - just below the Atlantic Dock - to be put on a schooner and brought to a Southern slave state. The captors told suspicious workers in the area that the woman was a runaway slave – this the woman vehemently denied. Two of the workmen ran to get the police, and when they returned the slavers were gone leaving the woman free.
Link to the full story
A pivotal event in the ending of slavery occurred on December 5, 1860, in Atlantic Basin, Red Hook when the slave ship ERIE was sold at government auction after being captured off the coast of Africa for being engaged in the illegal act of slaving (shipping captured Africans to have them sold into slavery). The ERIE’s captain and owner, Nathaniel Gordon, was then executed for engaging in the slave trade. President Abraham Lincoln himself made sure that an example was made of Captain Gordon and his ship ERIE.
LINK: https://redhookwaterstories.org/exhibits/show/slaveship/full-article--slave-ship

AmBrose Lyons , New York Public Library Schomburg Center

Communities & Themes

The US Coast Guard’s historian’s office compiled a chronology of notable African Americans in their service. Starting in 1795, the list, largely of notable firsts, runs through 2019. Also available on the site is an extensive historical bibliography of Minorities and the U.S. Coast Guard and an account by Commander Carlton Skinner of the USS Sea Cloud, IX 99, which became an experiment in racial integration aboard U. S. naval vessels from December 1943 to November 1944.
"By the 1860s, the Chesapeake Bay became the primary source of oysters in the U.S. This created an industry in need of strong labor. The availability of jobs and relatively low start-up costs for new watermen lured many newly freed Blacks to the region. In addition to harvesting the Bay's bounty, many also found jobs building boats and processing the day's catches."
"New African-American communities sprung up along the Bay's shores. These communities became economic and cultural centers for Blacks in the region. During the early 1900s, it was not uncommon to hear men singing while hauling in seines full of fish. These rhythmic songs, known as chanteys, are rooted in African tradition. Chanteys helped the men coordinate their movements and control the pace of the grueling work. Many watermen believed that singing chanteys helped them haul in nets faster and more efficiently than those who did not sing." [Description from chesapeakebay.net page: African Americans in the Chesapeake]. The Chesapeake Bay website also discusses: Six ways African-American history helped shape the Chesapeake.
In the same current, The Chesapeake Bay Foundation website provides short bios of some “Black Heroes of the Bay” (2018).
Focusing on this topic is also the Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation. They work “to bring to light the maritime history of African Americans in the Chesapeake Bay”. They maintain a collection of records, artifacts, genealogies, and more than 40,000 photographs representing 200 years of African American life and work in the seafood and maritime industries. Links on their website include: A vanishing legacy: Black Captains of the Chesapeake Bay, African-American Land Conservation & Preservation (complete with sign language interpretation) and other articles relating to Blacks of the Chesapeake Bay.
NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuaries interviewed the founder and past-president of Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation: “Vince Leggett Tells of African American Ties to History, Culture, and Waterways of Chesapeake Bay Region”
The Sandy Ground community is the oldest continuously inhabited free Black settlement in the United States. It began with ferry boat operator Captain John Jackson. In 1828 he was the first Black person to own property on Staten Island, buying in what is now the South Shore community of Rossville. He was joined by freed black men and women who took up oystering and farming.
Over time, more Black oyster fishermen joined them from Maryland, Delaware and elsewhere in New York, finding in Sandy Ground a welcoming place to practice their trade as free people and thrive. Ten families living there today trace their roots back to the original settlers.
“Oysters can still be found on the Conference House beaches" according to the Sandy Ground Historical Museum website.
In December 2019, Mayor de Blasio announced that one of the new Staten Island ferries would be named “Sandy Ground.” The ferry started service in early 2022.
Sandy Ground in Wikipedia
Sandy Ground Historical Society listing in NYC-Arts
Sandy Ground in Forgotten New York
"They Will Not Be Moved; A Bastion of Black History Amid S.I. Development" The New York Times, November 4, 2003
“Staten Island Ferry Facts,” https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/ferrybus/ferry-facts.shtmlNYC DOT
Information on this is in several of the books below and is covered in a book dedicated to this topic “Whaling Captains of Color – America’s First Meritocracy” written by Skip Finley.
Here are links to two of Skip Finley’s articles on the topic:
• For Whaling Captains, Diversity Flourished
• Black Whaling Captains Found Liberty at Sea
And two audio/video links of Skip being interviewed:
• Skip Finley on Whaling Captains of Color: America's First Meritocracy, Nantucket Book Festival, August 2020
• The History of Whalers of Color, All of It, WNYC.org
In 1839, captured Africans aboard the schooner AMISTAD bound for slavery in America took control of the ship and tried to sail to freedom. The ship was apprehended off the coast of Connecticut. Their case reached the US Supreme Court and was notable in the abolition movement. There are two stories related to the ship AMISTAD where Women’s History and African American Maritime Heritage intersect.
One of the four captured children on the AMISTAD headed towards slavery was Margru (sometimes spelled Margu) from Bendembu, Mandingo country about 100 miles from what is now Freetown, Sierra Leone. After the AMSTAD court case was resolved in favor of the Africans, she returned to Africa but later came back to the USA to go to Oberlin college, which had, as of 1835, "an official policy admitting African American students, both male and female—the first college in the country to do so,” from an Oberlin link with alot of Margru's story. We learned about Margru thanks to the ever-informative content on the Facebook page of Parting Ways Cemetery and the Hartford Courant article that they shared explaining that Margu’s story is brought to life by historical actor Tammy Denease.
As we looked into Margru’s story we found a Wikipedia page that said that the file used by the captured Africans aboard the AMISTAD to break their shackles was brought aboard and hidden by a woman. If so, a woman had the tool that was used to physically liberate all the shackled Africans on the AMISTAD, an UNNAMED woman. We must point out that this is SO TYPICAL of what happens to women’s contributions: OVERLOOKED, UNNAMED, ERASED. Does someone know the name of this woman or want to take on this research project?
“On July 2, 1839, one of the Africans, Cinqué, freed himself and the other captives using a file that had been found and kept by a woman who, like them, had been on the Tecora” from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._The_Amistad
The Black Surfing Association (EC) - Rockaways
The East Coast chapter of the Black Surfing Association was founded by Louis Harris in 2016. Harris, an African American, started surfing in 2006 after moving to the Rockaways. There he met Brian James, then the only other Black man in the water. Inspired by a love of surfing and the need to keep the local children active and occupied Mr. Harris now offers free surf lessons to any children who show up. About 35% of the Rockaway residents identify themselves as Black and nearly 30% as Hispanic.
• Black Surfing Association (EC) website. Also on Instagram
• Black Surfing Association (founded in California, 1975)
• Brian James, The Nautical Negro, Adventures of a Black Waterman, An Autobiography of an African American surfer. (website for book)
• Cheddar, “Black Surfing Association Combats Racism By Teaching Kids to Hang Ten,” by Michelle Castillo, September 14, 2020
• Surfer, “NYC Surfers Will Paddle Out For Racial Justice This Saturday,” by Owen James Burke, August 20, 2020
• The New York Times, “Surfing Remade in the Rockaways” Dec. 22, 2018
Steamship Historical Society of America’s lesson plan provides a nice overview of the history of black sailors in America.
Link to website
Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line was the first black owned and operated steamship company. The short-lived line (1919−1922), was envisioned by Garvey to create economic opportunities and pride among the Black Community by being completely owned, operated, and financed by black people, but a host of problems ranging from inexperience, overpaying for used boats in bad condition, and investigations by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI ended the line.
Sources:
“The Black Star Line,” lesson plan of the Steamship Historical Society of America.
“The History Behind Chance the Rapper’s Black Star Line Festival,” by Ella Feldman, Smithsonianmag.com, December 22, 2022
“Black Star Line,” Wikipedia
“Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line,” by Jay E. Moore, Ph.D, The Mariner’s Museum and Park, February 26, 2021
From 1840, the Colored Sailors' Home, located near the water in lower Manhattan, offered a place where Black sailors could stay between ships and jobs. There were similar places for other sailors, but Black seamen were generally not welcome there. The Colored Sailor's Home was also a center of activism. It was established by William Powell, Sr., a Black man. Albro Lyons, Sr. worked with him for a time and then established a similar place nearby. A report in 1848, in The Sailor's Magazine, and Naval Journal noted that home catered to the needs of the "2,200 colored seamen who sail out of New York." Quoting from the Carla Peterson piece below “On the Lower East Side, two colored sailors homes, one run by William Powell on Dover Street, the other by Albro Lyons on Vandewater Street, lay in close proximity. These were boarding houses for Black sailors, but also centers of Black activism; Powell’s housed a labor union for Black seamen while Lyons’s was a stop on the Underground Railroad. To complicate matters, they were also family homes.”
The Colored Sailors' Home was one of the many Black establishments that were attacked by violent mobs during the Draft Riots of 1863.
• The Sailor's Magazine, and Naval Journal. American Seamen's Friend Society, 1846
• Carla Peterson, Black Elites and the Draft Riots, New York Times blog, 2013
• 15 Underground Railroad stops in New York City, www.mswnyc.com blog, 2018
• Double ambrotype portrait of Albro Lyons, Sr. and Mary Joseph Lyons, Black Gotham Archive (accessed 2018)
• "Albro Lyons, Sr."1860. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. The New York Public Library Digital Collections.
Maritime activity moves people and food and changes what and how people cook.
Rice in the Americas has a racial history, and maritime activity is part of the story. More broadly, slavery had huge maritime elements: shipping captured people; shipping food stuffs as part of the trade; naval battles with alliances along race lines. White northern Europeans had no experience growing or cooking rice; Africans did and were deliberately captured and enslaved to grow rice here. African American enslaved cooks were given European recipes and then gave them an African twist. Free Blacks continued this culinary tradition. Then, there is a variety of rice that reveals to historians, biologists, and geneticists stories of the African diaspora. One part of this story is the Merikins of Trinidad & Togago below. For more on the rice topic, see our 2019 blogpost.
• "Finding a Lost Strain of Rice, and Clues to Slave Cooking: The search for the missing grain led to Trinidad and Thomas Jefferson, and now excitement among African-American chefs," Kim Severson, The New York Times, Feb. 13 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/dining/hill-rice-slave-history.html
• Michael Twitty, culinary historian and the author of ”The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South.” His webpage https://thecookinggene.com
Youtube videos: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Michael+Twitty
Joe Frogger Cookies
Joseph Brown (1750-1834) and his wife Lucretia Thomas Brown (1772-1857) are known for creating a cookie favored by Massachusetts mariners and others: the Joe Frogger. The large cookie, originally made with sea water, rum and spices, has a long shelf life, suitable for sea voyages. Born into slavery, Joseph Brown’s mother was Black and his father a member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head on Martha’s Vineyard. Brown may have been freed for his Revolutionary War service. Both of Lucretia Thomas Brown’s parents had been enslaved. Joe and Lucretia ran a beloved tavern in Marblehead, Massachusetts. The building, known as “Black Joe’s Tavern,” still stands.
• “Joe Froggers: The Weight of the Past in a Cookie,” by Julia Blakely. Unbound, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, November 1, 2016.
• “Encore for Lost Recipes,” by Clementine Paddleford. Evening Star. (Washington, D.C.), September 24, 1961, (includes a recipe)
• “Joseph & Lucretia Brown,” by Lauren McCormack, Marblehead Museum. 2021
• “Black Heritage in Marblehead: Joseph & Lucretia Brown,” by the Marblehead Racial Justice Team, YouTube
• “Joe Froggers: The legend of these rum-and-molasses cookies leads to a New England tavern owned by a Black Revolutionary War veteran,” by Leigh ChavezBush. Atlas Obscura

During the War of 1812 between the British and the US, the British offered freedom and a home in the empire for Black people in America who joined their side. Many became Marines, and men from Chesapeake Bay, and the coasts of Virginia, Maryland and Georgia formed six military companies. After the war they, their families, and their rice relocated to Trinidad & Tobago, where their community, known as Merikins, lives on. For more on this topic, see our 2019 blogpost.
• "The Merikins. America, Trinidad and Canada's forgotten history official documentary," Nu Generation Studios, YouTube video (accessed 2/10/2020)
45 min.
• "Merikins Celebrate 200th Anniversary in Trinidad - April 28, 2016," Hollis Clifton, YouTube video (accessed 2/10/2020). 2hrs 8 min.
• Who are the Merikens? - Travel Thru History - Quick History," Travelthruhistory, YouTube video (accessed 2/10/2020). 1 min.
• THE MERIKINS: FREE BLACK SETTLERS 1815-1816, National Library of Trinidad and Tobago. (accessed 2/10/2020).
• Jill Neimark, "A Lost Rice Variety — And The Story Of The Freed 'Merikins' Who Kept It Alive," The Salt, National Public Radio, May 10, 2017. (accessed 2/10/2020).
• PBS, “Black Sailors and Soldiers in the War of 1812,” The War of 1812. Text and video. (accessed 2/10/2020).
Destinations in North America were only a small part of the Atlantic slave trade. Slate magazine created an interactive map covering “315 years. 20,528 voyages. Millions of lives” which provides a visual representation of known ships leaving Africa with enslaved people.
There is a deep and growing archive about slave ship voyages, representing decades of research, on the website Slave Voyages. An example of the data that can be found on the site is a list of known ships traveling to New York, from other North American ports (largely the Caribbean) and how many captives they held. To learn more about how that archive came to be, find other related links, and learn about the moral aspects of handling this data, see this excellent essay in the New York Times by Jamelle Bouie. He was one of the creators of the Slate map above.
Although the American Civil War lead to the abolishment of slavery in the United State, the North by no means was innocent when it came to slavery. The Atlantic Black Box Project is a working to bring attention and scholarship to New England merchant ships role in the slave trade. New York Ships are included too. A book below “Complicity, How the North Promoted, Prolonged and Profited from slavery” delves into how many aspects of the maritime industry in the North revolved around slavery. The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage is the title of John Harris’s 2020 book detailing how long after the transatlantic slave trade was officially outlawed, slave traders made NYC a key hub in their operation in the 1850s and 60s and how the US Government before shutting it down in 1867 ignored or even abetted this human trafficking. Link: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300247336/last-slave-ships
H.E. Ross researches northern Caribbean maritime heritage. He maintains a Facebook page about Cayman maritime heritage among other endeavors. He culled a list of African and African descent sail designs on this blogpost. He credits the source as the book Aak to Zumbra - A Dictionary of the World's Watercraft. We would welcome more info from experts on this area.

The history of Black Americans and swimming is fraught because racism excluded Blacks from beaches and pools, meaning that over time, few Blacks learned to swim. According to an International Swimming Hall of Fame (ISHOF) document “African American Swimming History” 1866 to 1945 was the “for Whites Only” period of swimming in the USA. The legacy of Jim Crow swimming rules is long. According to the CDC, Black children at the national level drown at much higher rates in pools than whites. In NYC, Blacks drown at city beaches at a higher rate than whites. Fear of water and swimming is a result of this history for some Black American ADOS (American Descendants of Slavery) whereas Black Americans from the West Indies come from island, beach and boat cultures. Thus, for some Black Americans, learning to swim means facing inter-generational trauma. In that spirit, here is a personal testimonial about a Black mother teaching her son to swim, and see the group Black People Will Swim. According to the International Swimming Hall of Fame (ISHOF), the recent history of Black swimming in the USA inverts what had been the state of affairs for a millennium: Africans were adept swimmers when swimming had fallen out of favor with Europeans after early Christians closed the Roman baths in the 5th century, scandalized by what happened there. This all relates to Blacks in maritime because a fear of water or swimming can be a deterrent for getting involved with boats.
Recently resurgent is awareness of William Still, the African-American abolitionist and his 1872 book “Underground Railroad” which recounts stories of escape, a significant number of which involve fleeing on East Coast Ships. Still’s book popularized the phrase “Underground Railroad.”
The telling of the history of the escape routes of enslaved Blacks in America, known as the Underground Railroad, has largely focused on land routes. New scholarly research and a new appreciation of old writings are beginning to tell a more complete story by recognizing the major significance of ships and waterways in the journeys of people to freedom.
“The absolute fundamental bedrock reason for why escape by water worked and the conditions existed to get people out of places very, very far away from the free states was the labor force on the waterfront of the entire Southern Seaboard, every little inlet and port city and tidal waterway and river … down to the ports for loading onto larger ocean going vessels to take them to market. All of that labor was enslaved African American labor,” says Timothy Walker, PhD. Walker is the editor and contributor to the 2021 book Sailing to Freedom: Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad. His goal is to change people’s understanding of the Underground Railroad as being primarily overland.
Similarly, David Cecelski, in his 2002 book, The Waterman’s Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina notes:
Maritime routes of the Underground Railroad were vital for thousands of fugitives who stowed away, impersonated free black mariners, bought passenger tickets, or enlisted the aid of sympathetic captains and crewmembers. Runaways depended on maritime blacks. …
On 9/10/22, we learned of the massive 1898 history of the Underground Railroad by historian Wilbur Siebert, which now gives us the context for what we learned from the Women History Blog below. Siebert recounts the story of an excursion boat, the White Pigeon. The boat, operated by Austin Bearse in Boston Harbor, would “… run the boat down in the harbor to meet Southern vessels. The practice was to take along a colored woman with fresh fruit, pies, etc. – she easily got on board and when there, usually found out if there was any fugitive on board; then he was sometimes taken away by night”. (Source for this is the womenhistoryblog)
Sources:
“Historian Timothy D. Walker helps tell story of Underground Railroad’s maritime route,” The New Bedford Light. By Joanna McQuillan Weeks, May 2022. Includes interview video of Timothy Walker.
“Maritime Underground Railroad” History of American Women, womenhistoryblog, 2015
William Still, The Underground Rail Road, 1872. Scanned copy, Transcribed copy
“Sailing To Freedom: Maritime Dimensions Of The Underground Railroad.” Webpage of a 2022 exhibit at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.
“Symposium Highlights Enslaved People’s Escape by Water,” by Kip Tabb, CoastalReview.org. May 26, 2022
The “Underground Railroad” is often described as following land routes but a great many people, quite possibly more, found they way to freedom by water.
This history is a lesson in Freedom Seekers: The Underground Railroad, Great Lakes, and Science Literacy Activities Middle School and High School Curriculum is a collaborative effort led by Sea Grant educators throughout the Great Lakes watershed.
Abigail Diaz's essay “Great Lakes Vessels Helped Free Enslaved Africans on Underground Railroad” provides a brief overview using the example of HOME, a two-masted schooner, built in 1843 to move grain and lumber in the Great Lakes. In addition to moving cargo the ship, captained by abolitionist Captain James Nugent, secreted many people to freedom.
Author Saladin Allah, the third great-grandson of Josiah Henson, a man who sailed to freedom in Canada is quoted by a reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) as saying "One of the important things to note about the maritime aspect of the Underground Railroad or freedom ships is that when these ships left the South, our ancestors boarded them as cargo, yet disembarked as passengers — as people," he said. "So symbolically speaking, to berth that freedom ship was also the birth of one's freedom."
Sources:
Freedom Seekers Curriculum website and curriculum.
Abigail Diaz, “Great Lakes vessels helped free slaves on Underground Railroad,” Herald Times Reporter, July 2, 2020
“Great Lakes Region: Pathway For Freedom Seekers, Then And Now,” Here & Now, WBUR radio. By Angelica Morrison, Great Lakes Today October 13, 2017. (audio story)
“HOME (1843),” Wisconsin Shipwrecks.
Bee Quammie, “Freedom Ships and the Little-Known History of Resistance,” CBC, Nov 09, 2020
Steamboats facilitated the enslavement of people - estimates suggested that 500,000 to one million enslaved people were shipped via steamship or forced to walk from the Upper South — Virginia, Maryland and Kentucky — to labor on plantations in the Deep South between 1810 and 1865. For some, steamboats were also a means to travel to freedom. This is what is discussed in Steamship Historical Society of America’s curriculum “Mississippi Steamboats: Enslavement and Freedom”
Learn more at: Steamship Historical Society of America’s website
The African American community of Weeksville in central Brooklyn was formed in the late 1830's. The occupation of Mr. Weeks, for whom Weeksville is named, may have been a longshoreman (what is known is that was the job of a Weeks who lived there). It was also the home of people who worked as sailors, one of the few jobs open to African-Americans at the time. For example, in the 1840s, Junius Morel moved to Weeksville to be a teacher and principal of Colored School No. 2. Morel was born in slavery, fleeing the Carolinas by ship around 1810, and then working several years as a sailor.
• Great profile with many photos by The National Trust for Historic Preservation “Preservation Magazine” Fall 2022 issue.
• Mullarkey, Lara Steensland. In the hands of their own: The story of the Weeksville School 1840–1893. Teachers College, Columbia University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2012.
• Weeksville Society web site: http://www.weeksvillesociety.org/
During World War II the Brooklyn Navy Yard was the largest naval construction facility in the United States. The demand for war ships and with many men at war, the need for people to fill wartime jobs at the Navy Yard opened up new opportunities for Blacks, other minority groups and women.
Ducat Media, led by Vivian Ducat, produced a series of short films for the New-York Historical Society’s 2012 exhibit, WWII & NYC including one that focuses on the oral history of a Black man who worked in the shipyard: WWII & NYC: Brooklyn Navy Yard at War .
Professor Wilbur H. Siebert’s comprehensive history, The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom was published in 1898, after decades of research. A free searchable digital version is available on Gutenberg.org and a searchable scanned copy can be found on HathiTrust.
The William H Siebert Underground Railroad Collection, a compellation oh his original sources is now freely available (there was a fee before) on the Ohio History Connection website.
Seibert research includes many references to the waterways being an important and integral part of the Underground Railroad. Among his very many sources is the work of William Still (1872).

Individuals

Featured

Shameen Ebony Anthanio-Williams

Shameen E. Anthanio-Williams is a commissioned officer in the United States Coast Guard and a children's book author. She grew up in the Bronx and attended the LaGuardia High School of Music & Arts and Performing Arts. Next came the United States Coast Guard Academy and, in 2016, she earned the rank of Commander. Her assignments include Marine Safety & Security, Naval Engineering, and Acquisitions Management. She also holds a master of science degree from George Washington University.

Anthanio-Williams is the author of two children's books: Little Erroll: the story of Admiral Erroll M. Brown, First Black Coast Guard Admiral (2014) and Tulsa Girl (2016). Tulsa Girl is based on the memories of Dr. Olivia J. Hooker - the first African American woman in the US Coast Guard (1945), a doctor of psychology, and a civil rights activist - who as a six-year-old experienced the Tulsa race riot (massacre) of 1921. Anthanio-Williams hopes that people will learn from this history: “Our nation once again finds itself steeped in fierce racial discord, and I want all parents to sit down with their children and teach them what it actually means... I know discussing politics with children is unconventional, but you only have to look at our nation s racial tensions to see what ignorance leads to”

Sources:

Shameen Anthanio-Williams: Facebook, Linked In:

Shameen Anthanio-Williams, webpage for Tulsa Girl:

“Shameen Ebony Anthanio-Williams”, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators

Everybody Wins DC's Facebook post thanking Lieutenant Commander Shameen Anthanio-Williams for sharing her book, Little Erroll: The Story of Admiral Erroll M. Brown.

“Little Erroll The Story of Admiral Erroll Mingo Brown: First Black Coast Guard Admiral,” Indiebound.org

Crispus Attucks - 1723-1770

Crispus Attucks, a whaler, ropemaker and revolutionary has the unfortunate distinction of being known as the first to die in the American Revolution. Born in Massachusetts, in 1723, his father was African and his mother native Wampanoag. Enslaved at birth, at the age of 27 he escaped to Boston and became a sailor. The sailing trade was one of the few open to Blacks. It is estimated that of the 100,000 sailors employed on American ships around the time of the Revolution about one-fifth of them were African American. Whaling was a hard life, but hard for all. By the 1760s he had a home in the free black community of Providence, in the Bahama Islands.

Sailors, laborers and slaves wanted a change in the system that disrespected them and treated then unfairly. In Boston on March 5, 1770, Attucks was one of several American colonists expressing their anger to British Troops. In what is now known as the Boston Massacre, Attucks was shot and killed along with four white men. That event is considered one of the important milestones leading up to the American Revolution, and was used by revolutionaries at the time, such as Samuel Addams, as a rallying cry. Aside from slavery, a maritime reason that Attucks would have anti-British was their practice of capturing American sailors and forcibly drafting them into the British Navy. Attucks became a symbol in the Abolitionist movement in the 1840s and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

Sources:

“8 Things We Know About Crispus Attucks,” by Patrick J. Kiger, History.com, March 4, 2021

“An account of a late military massacre at Boston, or the consequences of quartering troops in a populous town, March 12, 1770,” New York, John Holt, 1770. Library of Congress digital resource.

“Crispus Attucks,” Boston National Historical Park, National Park Service.

“Crispus Attucks, First Martyr of the American Revolution,” Biography. Youtube video.

“Speculative portrait of what Attucks might have looked like,” Wikipedia.

“The Revenge of Crispus Attucks; or, The Atlantic Challenge to American Labor History.” Labor Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, December 2004

Sydney Barber

Sydney Barber became the 1st Black woman Brigade Commander of the US Naval Academy in 2020. The honor is roughly equivalent to class president but with more significance within the military. Barber, who is majoring in mechanical engineering, said of her ceiling breaking appointment: "with every step I take, I leave the ladder down for the next person."

Sources:
”Sydney Barber became the 1st Black woman Brigade Commander of the US Naval Academy in 2020.“ NPR. November 19, 2020

“Sydney Barber Becomes the First Black Woman Brigade Commander at The U.S. Naval Academy” Black Enterprise. November 11, 2020

“Black Woman, for First Time, Will Lead Midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy”. The New York Times, November 11, 2020

Absalom Boston (1785–1855)

Absalom Boston was the first whaling ship captain to sail with an all-Black crew.

Boston was captain at a time when African-Americans were able to find work in the maritime industry. At the height of the whaling industry in the mid-1800s, about 700 Black men were either harpooners or officers on American whaling ships. A few, like Boston, sailed as captains.

Black men were more likely to be promoted on whaling ships than merchant vessels and assume more responsibility. One Black owner of a boardinghouse for seamen noted that on a whale ship, “A coloured man is only known and looked upon as a man, and is promoted in rank according to his ability and skill to perform the same duties as the white man.”

Sources:
“Captain Absalom Boston,” Voyage to Discovery, (2016 archive copy)
“Absalom Boston,” Wikipedia

“Absalom Boston: First African-American Captain To Sail A Whaleship With All-Black Crew In 1822,” Blackthen.com, 2020

Carl Maxie Brashear (1931– 2006)

Carl Maxie Brashear, BMCM (master chief boatswain's mate) was the first African American to become a U.S. Navy Master Diver, rising to the position in 1970 despite also having an amputated left leg.

Sources:

US Naval Institute, “Brashear, Carl M., Master Chief Boatswain's Mate, USN (Ret.)”
https://www.usni.org/heritage/brashear

Voyage to Discovery, “Carl Brashear” https://web.archive.org/web/20160408210620/http://www.voyagetodiscovery.org/brashear.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Brashear

Erroll Brown (1950 - )

In 1998 Erroll Mingo Brown became the first African American admiral in the United States Coast Guard. At the time of his retirement in 2005 he was Coast Guard's top ranking engineer, overseeing naval, civil and aeronautical engineering and logistics for 23,000 facilities, 230 ships, 1,800 boats and 200 aircraft and managing an annual budget of $1 billion.

Born in Florida, Brown earned a degree of marine engineering from the Coast Guard Academy in 1972. That was the first of his 5 degrees – the others are MS in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering; MS in industrial operations and engineering; Masters of Business Administration; and a MS in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College. Shameen Ebony Anthanio-Williams, has written a kid's book story of his life Little Erroll: The Story of Admiral Erroll M. Brown, First Black Coast Guard Admiral to inspire.

Sources:

“Notable People,” United States Coast Guard website

“Erroll M. Brown,” by Maritza Fernandez, 2018, blackpast.org.

“Rear Admiral Erroll M. Brown,” myblackhistory.net

Siah Carter (Born ca. 1840)

Siah Carter, in 1862, during the American Civil War, escaped from slavery on a Virginia plantation and found refuge on the USS Monitor, the first iron clad ship of the US. He enlisted aboard the ironclad as a "first class boy," serving as a coal heaver and cook's assistant for the duration of the ship's short existence.

Sources

Civil War Navy Sesquicentennial Blog, “Black History Month Highlight: Siah Carter”
http://civilwarnavy150.blogspot.com/2012/02/black-history-month-highlight-siah.html

Naval History Magazine, “The Monitor Boys”
https://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2012-04/monitor-boys

Bruce Parsons, Siah Carter and the Ship Monitor (book)
link to Google preview

Twelve Explorers: Maritime Heritage and Innovation, “Siah Cater”
https://12explorers.org/2017/08/12/siah-carter-2

Pyrrhus Concer (March 17, 1814 - August 23, 1897)

Pyrrhus Concer was born into slavery, in in Southampton, Long Island, NY. At the age of five he was separated from his mother and sold to Mr. Elias Pelletreau by Captain Nathan Cooper.

Around age 26 he was able to strike out on his own and after a brief stint as a farmhand shipped out on a whaling vessel, like many other Long Island men of the time. Whaling ships were one of the few places where Black men were treated as well (or badly) as the rest of the crew. By 1832 he had learned the ropes and became a pilot. In 1845, the whaleship Manhattan was serving on became famous in America for returning shipwrecked Japanese sailors back to their homeland, which at the time was a closed society, not open to foreigners. Back in Long Island starting with a house he inherited from his grandmother he acquired more property, and notably for a Black man of that era successfully maintained clear title to his land. Continuing his ties to the water, he operated a ferry on Lake Agawam near where he lived and became one of the most respected members of the village.

Elihu Root, Concer’s neighbor, Nobel prize winner and President Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary of state wrote Concer’s epitaph: “Though born a slave, he possessed those virtues, without which kings are but slaves.”

Sources:

“Pyrrhus Concer, A Life Of Significance,” Southampton African American Museum

“Endangered Historic Places 2021: Pyrrhus Concer Home Site,” Preservation Long Island

“Preservation Update: The Case Of The Pyrrhus Concer Homestead,” by Dr. Georgette Grier-Key, Long Island History Journal, 2016

“Archaeological Investigation Of The Pyrrhus Concer Homelot,” by Dr. Allison McGovern, 2017 (PDF)

“Pyrrhus Concer Homestead Now Southampton Historical Landmark,” by David Taylor, Behind the Hedges, February 5, 2021

“A Hamptons Property Fight Over a Black Whaler’s Homestead,” by Lindsay Gellman, The New York Times, Nov. 1, 2022

Richard Crafus (c.1791 – 1835)

Richard Crafus was famous in his day, but his history is now unclear. He became a prominent African American leader, known as "King Dick" while imprisoned by the British during the War of 1812. An imposing man and boxer, it is said he was a privateer – a government approved pirate – captured by the British, as were many of the other Black men imprisoned with him. During the war of 1812, nearly 20% of the U.S. seamen were African Americans.

After the war historians think he returned to Boston and became a leader in the city’s African-American community.

Sources:
Alan Thomas Lipke, The Strange Life and Stranger Afterlife of King Dick including His Adventures in Haiti and Hollywood With Observations On The Construction Of Race, Class, Nationality, Gender, Slang Etymology and Religion. January 2013.
https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=5727&context=etd

New England Historical Society, "Richard Crafus, Black Captive King of the War of 1812," 2018. http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/richard-crafus-black-captive-king-war-1812/

Reginald Horsman, "The Paradox Of Dartmoor Prison," American Heritage. February 1975. https://www.americanheritage.com/paradox-dartmoor-prison

Stephen B. Luce Library, Black History Month 2015: Prolific African Americans in Maritime History, Society and Industry. February 11, 2015. https://www.slideshare.net/LuceLibrary/black-history-month-2015

Image source: http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/richard-crafus-portrait-2.jpg

Paul Cuffe (1759-1817)

Paul Cuffe, the son of a freed slave and a Native American, went to sea as soon as he was old enough to leave home. During the American Revolution he served on a privateer and often participated in running American supplies through British blockades. At the end of the war, he and his brother-in-law opened a ship yard. With his ships he went on trading and whaling expeditions. By 1811 he was said to be the richest African American in the US and the largest employer of free African Americans. In 1839 he published Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Paul Cuffe, a Pequot Indian: During Thirty Years Spent at Sea

Sources

Paul Cuffe’s book on-line
https://archive.org/details/narrativeoflifea00cuff

BlackPast, “PAUL CUFFE SR. (1759-1817)”
http://www.blackpast.org/aah/cuffe-paul-sr-1759-1817

Britanica, “Paul Cuffe : American ship owner, merchant, and Pan-Africanist”
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Paul-Cuffe

PaulCuffe.org, “Paul Cuffe, a Brief Biography”
https://paulcuffe.org/biography

Frederick Douglass (1818-95)

Frederick Douglass was an important African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He escaped from slavery in Maryland by pretending to be a sailor. Trained to fix boats he borrowed the federal government issued Seaman’s Protection Certificate of a friend, and boarded a train to New York with the story that he was traveling to a job on a boat there. In his article My Escape from Slavery, he wrote "My knowledge of ships and sailor's talk came much to my assistance, for I knew a ship from stem to stern, and from keelson to cross-trees, and could talk sailor like an 'old salt.'"

Seaman’s Protection Certificates, were issued to American sailors of all races primarily to establish their citizenship when at sea or abroad, but they could offer a modicum of protection to Black sailors traveling between jobs in the US.

Sources:

Douglass, Frederick. "My Escape from Slavery." The Century Illustrated Magazine 23, n.s. 1 (Nov. 1881): 125-131. http://www.usc.edu:80/libraries/archives/ethnicstudies/historicdocs/douglass_articles.txt

Voyage to Discovery, “ Frederick Douglass” https://web.archive.org/web/20150416063416/http://voyagetodiscovery.org/douglass.htm

American Sailing, “Frederick Douglass: The Sailor You Should Know” by Zeke Quezada. https://asa.com

Henry Francis Downing (1846-1928)

Henry Francis Downing was an author, playwright, consul and sailor. He was born in New York City in 1846, the son of Henry and Nancy Downing. His family maintained an oyster business that had been owned by his grandfather, Thomas Downing, a well-known freeman. In 1864 Henry Downing enlisted in the Union Navy at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

After the Civil War, Downing began a journey around the world. He reached Liberia where his cousin, Hilary Johnson, would later become president of Liberia from 1884 to 1892. Downing lived in Liberia for three years where he was a private secretary to the secretary of state. Downing returned to the United States and in 1872, reenlisted in the Navy and served for three years. Most of his time was served on the U.S.S. Hartford which operated off the coast of East Africa. With considerable time spent in both West and East Africa, Downing was one of the African Americans most knowledgeable about the African continent and its politics

Sources:

BlackPast, “Henry Francis Downing (1846-1928)”
http://www.blackpast.org/aah/downing-henry-francis-1846-1928

Wikipedia “Henry Francis Downing”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Francis_Downing

Image Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/puzzlemaster/4536784830

Thomas Downing (1791-1866)

Thomas Downing, an African-American, amassed a fortune selling oysters during the 19th century. Upon his death, in 1866 at the age of 75, the New York Chamber of Commerce did something unheard of; it closed on a weekday so that its prestigious members could attend his funeral. Thomas Downing was born a free man to enslaved parents in Virginia, as a brief loophole in slavery laws allowed the Downing’s parents to gain their freedom. He learned about oysters raking them as a child on Chincoteague Island. He moved to NYC and introduced the idea of an upscale oyster house. At the time, oyster houses were rough places of ill repute, and Downing’s success had him serving NYC’s elite. Unbeknownst to them, he used the cellar as a stop on the underground railroad. He also used the fortune generated by the oyster house to fund schools for African American children, and he fought to desegregate NYC’s trolley system. His grandson Henry Francis Downing, continued running the oyster house and civil rights efforts in addition to careers as an author, playwright, consul, and sailor.

Sources:

“Downing's Oyster House,” Mapping the African American Past.

“How A Child of Virginia Slaves Became the Oyster King Of New York — And A Favorite of The Queen of England”. The Virginian-Pilot, Feb 15, 2020 by Matthew Korfhage

“How Thomas Downing became the Black Oyster King of New York”, The Splendid Table, March 14, 2018 by Francis Lam.

“The Venerable Thomas Downing – Black Oyster King Of New York”, the oyster's my world, October 2014

“Thomas Downing, From Son of Slaves to Oyster King of New York City,” The Old Salt Blog, Feb. 22, 2020 by Rick Spilman

Petition: An award honoring Thomas Downing, by Rudy Keefer

Song: “Downings Oyster Bar,” from The Oyster Aristocracy by Bob Wright and Harbortown

ALSO SEE: Freestyle Drive with Moody, the owner of Mother Shuckers, an Oyster Cart Business in Brooklyn, NY., Lebanese Ether, YouTube, December 1, 2020.

Olaudah Equiano c. 1745-1797

At the age of 11, Olaudah Equiano was kidnapped from Nigeria and sold to a sea captain in 1756. He became a skilled member of a ship's crew. Equiano was sold to a Quaker merchant from Philadelphia who allowed him to purchase his freedom in 1766. He is thought to be the author of the first Black slave narrative, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa the African (1789) a strongly abolitionist autobiography. The book became a bestseller and, as well as furthering the anti-slavery cause, made Equiano a wealthy man.

Sources:

Africans in America - WGBH, “Olaudah Equiano”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p276.html

Brycchan Carey, brycchancarey.com “Olaudah Equiano, or, Gustavus Vassa, the African” http://www.brycchancarey.com/equiano/

Voyage to Discovery, “Olaudah Equiano”
https://web.archive.org/web/20160315151514/http://www.voyagetodiscovery.org/equiano.htm

Wikipedia, “Olaudah Equiano”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaudah_Equiano

Captain Richard Etheridge (1842 -1900)

Captain Richard Etheridge, born a slave in North Carolina, joined the Union army during the US Civil War. Later, he entered the United States Life Saving Service (USLSS). By dint of his dedication and skill, in 1880, he was promoted to captain the Life-Saving station off the coast of Pea Island, North Carolina, becoming the first African-American to command such a position. Together with his all African-American crew, he rescued the lives of sailors in peril. In 1996, he and his team were posthumously awarded Gold Lifesaving Medals by the Coast Guard for the daring rescue of the crew of the three-masted schooner, the E.S. Newman that went aground in a terrific storm one hundred years earlier.

The USLSS, founded in 1848 to save the lives of the shipwrecked, merged with the Revenue Cutter Service in 1915 to form the US Coast Guard.

Sources:
Rescue Men: The Story of the Pea Island Life Savers (website for film by Allan R. Smith) http://www.rescuemenfilm.com/The_Story.html [accessed 2019]

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library, "Richard Etheridge Statue, Manteo," Commemorative Landscapes of North Carolina. https://docsouth.unc.edu/commland/ [accessed 2019]

U.S. Coast Guard, Captain Richard Etheridge, Keeper, USLSS, https://www.history.uscg.mil/Portals/1/personnel/pdf/Richard_Etheridge.pdf [source of image of Captain Etheridge and his crew]

Rear Admiral Evelyn Fields (1949 - )

Evelyn J. Fields was the first African American rear admiral of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps. She served in that positon from 1999 to her retirement in 2003. She joined the NOAA Commissioned Corps in 1973 not looking to be a pioneer but just for an interesting occupational challenge after working as a civilian cartographer in the agency. "I think the highest praise you could give her is 'getting the job done,' " said Michael Henderson, a retired NOAA commander.

Denise Watson, “Norfolk's Evelyn J. Fields: Innovator for NOAA's research fleet”, The Virginian-Pilot, , February 5 2008. https://pilotonline.com/guides/african-american-today/article_24158fba-2224-53e6-8276-a9b271edd726.html

“Rear Admiral Evelyn Fields,“ Voyage to Discovery, (archived 2016) https://web.archive.org/web/20160414003636/http://www.voyagetodiscovery.org/fields.htm

“Evelyn J Fields”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_J._Fields
https://celebrating200years.noaa.gov/transformations/corps/side.html

Benjamin Harrison Fletcher (1890-1949)

Benjamin Fletcher, born in Philadelphia, as a longshoreman, loading and unloading cargo ships, joined the union, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the Socialist Party in 1912. The IWW, known as the Wobblies, believed that all workers should unite as a class regardless of ethnicity or country of origin with the end goal of overthrowing the capitalist system. Fletcher became a popular speaker in the union and a prominent leader in Local 8 of the IWW, which was organized in 1913. Local 8 was unusual in its day for having integrated work gangs, leadership and gatherings. Its membership included African Americans, West Indians, European Americans, and European immigrants.

The federal government, targeted Fletcher and IWW leaders because of their stand against the war. Fletcher was one of 100s of IWW members who were convicted of treason in 1922. Fletcher served 3 years in prison before his sentence was commuted in 1922. His release became a celebrated cause among Black radicals. He died in Brooklyn in 1949.

Sources:
Cole, P. Benjamin Harrison Fletcher (1890-1949). BlackPast.org 2009. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/fletcher-benjamin-harrison-1890-1949 (accessed 10/2021)

Encyclopedia.com, “Benjamin Fletcher” https://www.encyclopedia.com/african-american-focus/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/fletcher-benjamin (accessed 10/2021)

Conatz, Juan, “Ben Fletcher: Portrait of a Black Syndicalist” libcom.org, 2014 https://libcom.org/history/ben-fletcher-portrait-black-syndicalist (accessed 10/2021)

James Forten (1766-1842)

James Forten was born a freeman in Philadelphia, the grandson of slaves and the son of Thomas Forten, a sailmaker. . At the age of 8 he began working at a sail loft, making sails.

During the Revolutionary War Forten as boy of 12 served on the privateer Royal Louis. The ship was captured by the British but Forten was allowed to go back to work at the sail loft.

32 years later he owed the business with nearly 40 employees.He developed a sail better for maneuvering and maintaining greater speeds and amassed a fortune.With his wealth, he purchased slaves freedom, helped to finance and bring in funding for William Garrison's newspaper, the Libertarian, opened his home on Lombard Street as an Underground Railroad depot and opened a school for Black children.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160324135251/http://voyagetodiscovery.org/forten.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Forten

http://www.blackpast.org/aah/forten-james-1766-1842

Charles Jackson French (1919 – 1956)

With a rope around his stomach, United States Navy Petty Officer First Class Charles Jackson French, swam for hours through shark infested waters, towing a raft of survivors of the sunken USS Gregory away from Japanese fire to safety on the shores of the Solomon Islands during WWII. The Seattle newspaper, The Northwest Enterprise, reported February 5, 1943, that the NAACP sought an award for Charles Jackson French. “French Receives Citation for Bravery” was a headline in his hometown paper, The Omaha Guide (member of the Associated Negro Press), May 22, 1943. According to that paper the citation was from Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., USN., Commander, South Pacific Area and South Pacific Force, and reads in part: “For meritorious conduct in action while serving on board a destroyer transport which was badly damaged during the engagement with Japanese forces in the British Solomon Islands on September 5, 1942. After the engagement, a group of about fifteen men were a drift on a raft which was being deliberately shelled by Japanese naval forces. French tied a line to himself and swam for more than two hours without rest, thus attempting to tow the raft. His conduct was in keeping with the highest traditions of the Naval Service." An article in the same paper, Nov 7, 1942, reported that the raft held 25 men and he swam for 6 hours. The Michigan Chronicle, December 5, 1942, reported that French was reunited with a fellow shipmate on a nationwide NBC radio program celebrating his “6 hour swim through shark infested waters.” An editorial printed in the November 21, 1942 edition of the Jackson Advocate decried the reluctance of the white press to properly credit acts of heroism and bravery by Black men such as Dorrie Miller and Charles Jackson French. Efforts for French to receive more than a letter but a medal for his actions continue to the present.

Sources:
Black Lifesavers of WWII by Bruce Wigo, International Swimming Hall of Fame 2016 (pdf)
Black Swimming History: A World War II Hero. Swimming World Magazine
Charles Jackson French, Wikipedia
How Charles French swam eight hours in shark waters to save 15 U.S sailors in WWII, by Michael Eli Dokosi, Face2FaceAfrica.com.
The Story of Charles Jackson French, by Bruce Wigo, ishof.org (pdf)
Weaquatics (Facebook post)
The Omaha Guide. Nov. 7, 1942 & May 22, 1943.
Jackson Advocate. (Jackson, Miss.), Nov. 21, 1942.
The Michigan Chronicle. (Detroit), Dec. 5, 1942.
The Northwest Enterprise. (Seattle, Wash.), Feb. 5, 1943.

Samuel Lee Gravely (1922-2004)

Samuel Lee Gravely Jr. was a highly decorated Navy Officer who pioneered the way with a multitude of firsts for African Americans in the military. Some of his most notable achievements included, being the first African American Navy Vice Admiral, the first African American to command a Navy warship, the first African American to command a warship during combat, the first African American to command a Navy Fleet, and the first African American to obtain Flag Rank in the military. His decorations include the Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Navy Commendation Medal, and Meritorious Service Medal.

Sources:

Ryan Hurst, “Samuel Lee Gravely (1922-2004) Black Past. www.blackpast.org/aah/gravely-samuel-lee-1922-2004

Regina T. Akers, Naval History Blog, “Vice Adm. Samuel L. Gravely, Jr., USN: Naval Officer, Trailblazer.” January 31, 2004. https://www.navalhistory.org/2014/01/31/vice-adm-samuel-l-gravely-jr-usn-naval-officer-trailblazer-prepared-by-regina-t-akers-ph-d-historian-naval-history-and-heritage-command

The Washington Post, “Samuel Lee Gravely JR., 82” Chicago Tribune, October 25, 2004. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2004-10-25-0410250014-story.html

Briton Hammon (c. 1720s-after 1776)

A Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings, and Surprising Deliverance of Briton Hammon, A Negro Man,… first printed in 1760, is the first published narrative by an African American. In it Hammon tells of his almost thirteen years of adventures at sea, much of it not of his own choosing. According to the account, Hammon, an enslaved man, working for General Winslow of Massachusetts, sailed to Jamaica in 1747. On the return trip back, his ship runs aground off the coast of Florida and he is captured an indigenous group. Next, he is sold to a Spanish captain then sold to the Governor of Cuba. Refusing to serve in a Spanish royal ship, he serves almost 5 years in jail, before being freed by the governor. Hammon escapes Cuba by getting aboard a British vessel and joining the crew. In a battle with the French, he is hurt , released of his duties, and sent to London to recover. Needing work, he joins a ship setting sail to Massachusetts, only to find on board General Winslow. Their reunion is described as a happy accident.

Scholars see in Hammon’s narrative a careful criticism of slavery in New England, in the way he describes how his liberty was robbed by the Spanish while saying that he was treated well. The account also provides a glimpse into what life was like as Black sailor in late 1700s.

Sources:

A Narrative Of The Uncommon Sufferings, And Surprizing Deliverance Of Briton Hammon, A Negro Man,--Servant To General Winslow …, by Britton Hammon, 1760. Transcribed copy at Documenting the American South.

“Briton Hammon,” BIMAAR: Black Inter-American Mobilities and Autobiography in the Age of Revolutions.

“Briton Hammon.” By Bradley, Jonathan. BlackPast.org, December 2020.

“Briton Hammon, Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings” Early Visions of Florida

“Briton Hammon,” Wikipedia.

Captain Gail Harris

Captain Gail Harris an African American woman whose career in the Navy was one of "firsts," notably, in 1973, she was the first African-American woman to serve as a Naval Intelligence Officer. When she retired in 2001, Harris was the highest-ranking African-American woman in the Navy. Her resume includes instructing at the Armed Forces Air Intelligence Training Center and heading the Pentagon's intelligence, support for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Her memoir, A Woman's War, was published in 2010.

Sources:
Gail Harris, "GailForce," Foreign Policy Association blog. https://foreignpolicyblogs.com/author/gailharris/

Wikipedia contributors, "Gail Harris (naval officer)," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gail_Harris_(naval_officer)&oldid=858809962 (accessed February 21, 2019).

Captain of Persistence: Gail Harris http://gailharrisspeaker.com/gail_bio.html

Michael Augustine Healy (1839 - 1904)

Michael Healy was a career officer with the United States Revenue Cutter Service. His father was a Irish immigrant planter who owned Healy’s mother and lived with her as his wife, and their children passed as white. Healy is honored as the first Black officer in what became the Coast Guard (USCG) and has a USCG icebreaker named after him, their largest vessel.

Sources:

BlackPast, “Michael Augustine Healy”
http://www.blackpast.org/aaw/healy-michael-augustine-1839-1904

James M. O'Toole, “Racial Identity and the Case of Captain Michael Healy, USRCS”
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1997/fall/michael-a-healy-1.html

Ocean Explorer - NOAA, “Captain ‘Hell Roaring’ Mike Healy—Tamer of America’s Western Sea Frontier”
https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/19bear/background/healy/healy.html

We’re History, “Hiding in Plain Sight: Hell-Roaring Mike” http://werehistory.org/mike-healy

Matthew A. Henson (1866 – 1955)

Matthew A. Henson, at the age of 11 or 12, left Baltimore as a cabin boy aboard a ship. He soon sailed to the Baltic Sea where bitter cold locked the ship in ice for several months. Far from putting him off, he would become the first African American explorer in the Artic, and, in 1909, may have been the first to reach the North Pole, slightly before his more famous mentor and fellow explorer Robert E. Perry.

Sources:
Digital and audio versions of his book: A Negro Explorer at the North Pole, are available on line:
Matthew Alexander Henson, A Negro Explorer At the North Pole. New York: Frederick A. Stokes company, 1912.
LibriVox audio book: https://archive.org/details/negro_explorer_north_pole_ls_1412_librivox
Digital copy: https://archive.org/details/negroexploreratn00hens/page/n19

African American Registry, Explorer from the heart, Matthew Henson

https://aaregistry.org/story/explorer-from-the-heart-matthew-henson/ [accessed 2019]

Brian Clark Howard, "Historic Photos Celebrate Pioneering Black Explorer." National Geographic website: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/160224-polar-explorer-matthew-henson-photos/ [accessed 2019]

Cheryl Lederle, "Polar Explorer Matthew Henson and the Blizzard of Fame," Teaching with the Library of Congress. February 20, 2018. https://blogs.loc.gov/teachers/2018/02/polar-explorer-matthew-henson-and-the-blizzard-of-fame/ [accessed 2019]

The Robinson Library, Matthew Henson: the first man to reach the North Pole, http://www.robinsonlibrary.com/geography/geography/arctic/henson.htm [accessed 2019]

Olivia Hooker (1912 -2018)

In 1945, Olivia Hooker became the first African American woman in the US Coast Guard. She served in the Coast Guard until her unit disbanded in mid-1946. She went on to be a psychologist and a professor at Fordham University. She retired at 87 and joined the Coast Guard Auxiliary at age 95. She was a survivor of the Tusla Massacre of 1921. She was a founder of the Tulsa Race Riot Commission and one of the survivors who filed an unsuccessful federal lawsuit seeking reparations in 2003.

Tulsa Girl, a children’s book by Shameen Ebony Anthanio-Williams (see her own entry on this list) tells Olivia’s story experiencing the Tulsa Race Riot as a young girl

Sources:

Google Doodle, Olivia J. Hooker (Coast Guard) - Veterans Day 2018. https://vimeo.com/300222346 (accessed February 2019).

Olivia Hooker speaks at a screening of the film Before They Die: A documentary about the Survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre and their quest for justice. Vimeo video, 2010

President Obama, “The President Delivers the United States Coast Guard Academy Commencement Address” - At 26:46 to 29:52 President Obama speaks about Dr. Hooker. She, then 100 years old, was present. Youtube. 2015

US Coast Guard, “Dr. Olivia Hooker: A SPAR's Story,” Youtube, 2013 (Interview)

Wikipedia contributors, "Olivia Hooker," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Olivia_Hooker&oldid=880893878 (accessed February 20, 2019).

LT Stephanie Young, “Olivia Hooker: A SPAR’s Story,” Coast Guard Compass, http://coastguard.dodlive.mil/2013/10/olivia-hooker-a-spars-story (accessed February 20, 2019)

Featured

John Mashow

John Mashow (1805 -1893) was a boat builder born to an enslaved woman and South Carolina rice planter father. He designed over 100 ships and supervised construction of over 60. About a third of these were whalers

He was freed by his father and sent to live in Massachusetts. Around 1818 he became apprenticed to Leban Thatcher as a shipbuilder. In 1845 he partnered with three other men to form the Mathews, Mashow & Company shipyard outside of New Bedford. The company lasted a little over ten years but some of their ships sailed into the next century, and likely more of them would have but for the South’s sinking of whalers during the Civil War.

Sources:

“From War Ships of the Past to Educational Beauties of Today,” by Skip Finley, Vinyard Gazette, July 7, 2016.

“John Mashow,” Organization of Black Maritime Graduates, obmg.org

“John Mashow: From Slavery to Master Shipbuilder and Designer,” by Skip Finley. New Bedford Historical Society, Sea History, vol 174, Spring 2021.

“Shipbuilder's Half Hull Model, Whaleship Jireh Swift,” Smithsonian, SI.edu

“Ships Built/Designed by John Mashow,” list compiled by Skip Finley

Rear Admiral Zeita Merchant, USCG

Update: April 22, 2024.

This entry was first written when Zeita Merchant was promoted to Captain of the Port for the NYC region. On April 22, 2024, in a ceremony held at the theater which is home of the musical Hamilton (Hamilton established the Coast Guard), Merchant was promoted to Rear Admiral becoming the highest ranking African American woman in the Coast Guard’s 234 years.

Captain Zeita Merchant became just the 3rd third Black woman in the history of the Coast Guard to achieve the rank of Captain, when she was promoted on July 1, 2020. In May of the following year she became the 2nd woman to lead US Coast Guard's Sector New York. aka Captain of the Port (COTP), and the 1st minority to do so. At the time she had 24 years of military experience with extensive education and training in national security and environmental issues.

Merchant was born on the west side of Chicago and grew up in Jackson, Mississippi after her family moved. A chance meeting with a USCG recruiter in college inspired her to sign up. Merchant started her Coast Guard career as a graduate of the first Officer Candidate School (OCS) class at the Coast Guard Academy. During her first tour in D.C., Merchant met Dr. Olivia Hooker (also featured on this page) the first African-American woman to enlist in the Coast Guard. With few Black women in the USCG, Dr. Hooker remained, until her death, an important mentor to Merchant.

Merchant graduated with honors from Tougaloo College with a BS in Biology (1998). Her additional degrees are: MS in Quality Systems Management from the National Graduate School of Quality Management (2004), MPA of Public Administration, Environmental and Emergency Management from George Washington University (2010), DBA of Business Administration from National Graduate School of Quality Management (2011). She has completed fellowships in national security and foreign policy at Harvard and MIT.

Sources:
PortSide NewYork’s Instagram post about Merchant’s promotion. with video clip of the ceremony. (Portside’s director was pleased to be in attendance.)

“Zeita Merchant becomes 1st Black female admiral in Coast Guard history,” PIX11 News, April 22, 2024

“Coast Guard Captain Zeita Merchant Keeps New Yorkers Safe While Blazing New Trails,” by Maurice DuBois, CBS New York, February 2, 2022

“Honor, Respect, Devotion to Duty: Cmdr. Zeita Merchant” Coast Guard Compass, September 2, 2016 & Friday, July 6, 2018 (two articles)

“Interviews: Commander Zeita Merchant, PhD” The Journal of the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at The George Washington University, Volume 25, 2018

“Representation Matters: When I think about the little girls that may be looking and say, ‘Hey, can I ever do that?’ Yes you can.” Fleet Week New York, Facebook post, May 29, 2021. (Video)

US Coast Guard’s Facebook post, July 1, 2020

Raye Jean Montague (1935 – 2018)

The first computer-generated rough draft of a U.S. naval ship was created by African American naval engineer Raye Jean Montague. She was the first female program manager of ships in the United States Navy. She credits here interest in engineering from seeing a midget submarine in traveling exhibit that came to her home town of Little Rock, Arkansas when she was a young girl: “My grandfather took me downtown to see that submarine and I was able to go down a little ladder into that sub. It was like a tin can. That was my first introduction to ships. You just never know what inspires a person.”

Montague joined the Navy as a clerk in 1956, There she watched watched a UNIVAC computer in use and one day when all the engineers were out sick she jumped in and showed she was quite capable of running it herself. Jobs more in keeping with abilities followed and she became the program director for the Naval Sea Systems Command’s Integrated Design, Manufacturing and Maintenance Program. In 1970, Montague recalled, “The admirals came to me and said, ‘Young lady, we understand you’ve got a system to design ships,' ‘The President has given us two months, we can give you a month, can you do it?” She did it just under 19 hours.

Sources:

Butler, Caitlan ."Rotary celebrates International Women's Day with discussion on Raye Montague, pioneering Navy engineer" Eldoradonews.com, March 8, 2021

"Engineer Raye Montague: The Navy's 'Hidden Figure'". blackdoctor.org. February 2, 2017.

Finley, Mosca J, and Daniel Rieley. The Girl with a Mind for Math: The Story of Raye Montague. Ashland: The Innovation Press, 2020

Raye Jean Jordan Montague (1935–2018), encyclopediaofarkansas.net

Raye Montague: The "Hidden Figure" Who Revolutionized Naval Ship Design, amightygirl.com, 2022

“Storytime with DMNH: The Girl With the Mind for Math,” Delaware Museum of Nature & Science. Youtube video.

Wikipedia, Raye Montague

Isaac Myers (1835-1891)

Isaac Myers was born in Baltimore at a time when many American Blacks were enslaved, but both his parents were free. At the age of 16, he apprenticed as a ship caulker, making wooden boats watertight, and by age 20 he was leading the job on large clipper ships. In 1865, after more than 1,000 black longshoremen and mechanics lost their jobs because of their color, Myers joins with other business men to raise funds and open a color-blind shipyard. The company operates until 1884.

Myers had many other accomplishments including being key to the formation of the first national black labor union.

Sources:
Isaac Myers, The Baltimore Sun, February 12, 2007 https://www.baltimoresun.com/features/bal-blackhistory-myers-story.html

Isaac Myers: Pioneer of the African-American Trade Union Movement, APWU.org, January 2009

http://www.apwu.org/labor-history-articles/isaac-myers-pioneer-african-american-trade-union-movement

Isaac Myers (1835-1891), by Camille Heung Black Past, June 23, 2008

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/myers-isaac-1835-1891/

Doris "Dorie" Miller (1919-1943)

On December 7, 1941, Doris Miller, an African-American sailor aboard the USS West Virginia, went from serving as the ship’s cook to a war hero when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

Several movies include his story; Cuba Gooding Jr. portrays Miller in the 2001 Movie Pearl Harbor and Miller is shown being awarded the Navy cross in the 2019 film Midway.

In 2020 the US Navy let it be known that they are building a supercarier to be christened the USS Doris Miller. She will be first named for an enlisted sailor and the first to be named after an African American.

Sources:

BlackPast. “Doris Miller”
http://www.blackpast.org/aah/miller-doris-dorie-1919-1943

NPR.org, “A Military 1st: A Supercarrier Is Named After An African American Sailor” (includes radio audio) https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917816651/a-military-first-a-supercarrier-is-named-after-an-african-american-sailor

Voyage to Discovery, “"Dorie" Miller” https://web.archive.org/web/20160413215736/http://www.voyagetodiscovery.org/miller.htm

Wikipedia, “Doris Miller”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Miller

Captain Hugh Mulzac (1886-1971)

In 1942 at the age of 56, Hugh Mulzac became the first African-American merchant marine naval officer to skipper an integrated crew. More than two decades earlier, Captain Mulzac had declined command of a ship with an all-Black crew saying "under no circumstances will I command a Jim Crow vessel."

With Mulzac at the helm, the Liberty Ship SS Booker T. Washington made 22 round-trip voyages in five years carrying 18,000 troops to Europe and the Pacific.

Sources:

gCaptain, “Captain Mulzac WW2 Hero and America’s First Black Master Mariner”
https://gcaptain.com/mulzac-first-black-master-mariner/

MARAD Maritime Administration, “The First African-American Shipmaster: Captain Hugh Mulzac”
https://www.maritime.dot.gov/k-12/salute-african-american-mariners/first-african-american-shipmaster

WNYC - NEH Preservation Project, “Hugh Mulzac: Captain, Victim, Survivor” (Includes radio audio)
https://www.wnyc.org/story/hugh-mulzac-captain-victim-survivor/

LT Harriet Ida Pickens and ENS Frances Eliza Willis, WWII

LT Harriet Ida Pickens and ENS Frances Eliza Willis Graduates became the first African-American women commissioned into the U.S. Navy when they became WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) in 1944. More than 70 otherBlack women followed their lead by September 2 1945.

Francis Willis Thorpe wrote about her experiences in her 2007 book, Navy Blue and Other Colors: A Memoir of Adventure and Happiness.

Sources:
Regina Akers, Ph.D, "Remembering the First Black Women Naval Officers" The Sextant, October 17 2014. http://usnhistory.navylive.dodlive.mil/2014/10/17/remembering-the-first-black-woman-naval-officers/ [accessed 2019]

Andrew Zimmerman, Courage in Adversity: Harriet Pickens & Frances Wills. Aug 30, 2017 https://womenoffshore.org/courage-in-adversity-harriet-pickens-frances-wills/ [accessed 2019]

William "Bill" Pinkney (1935-August 31, 2023 )

In 2021, Captain Bill Pinkney received a well-deserved award from the National Sailing Hall of Fame, a "Lifetime Achievement Award – Enthusiastic Trend Setter." His list of accomplishments is HUGE. He was the first captain of the replica AMISTAD (which visited PortSide) now run by Discovering Amistad.

Before that, Pinkney was the first Black sailor to solo circumnavigate the globe. In addition to that sailing feat, we really admire him for his dedication to educating and inspiring youth, especially Black youth like him who did not see themselves sailing. He made his circumnavigation an educational event - in the early 1990s, well before people were blogging from sea. Over 1,000 students greeted him on the dock as he finished his circumnavigation

The National Sailing Hall of Fame noted that his "27,000 mile circumnavigation took 22 months and ended on June 9, 1992. Throughout the trip Pinkney sent footage back to Globe TV and communicated with some 30,000 school children. The finished production titled, The Incredible Voyage of Bill Pinkney, won the George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in children’s television programming. The film has aired on the Disney Channel, National Geographic and PBS stations. He was in high demand as a public speaker. His book, “Captain Bill Pinkney’s Journey” was used for learning to read, and for teaching the lessons of commitment and reaching goals. His talks, book and film have inspired thousands of sailors of all ages."

Pinkney published his second children’s book in 2022 after raising funds with GoFundMe appeal: Sailing Commitment Around the World with Bill Pinkney. In 2023, Bill Pinkney died at the age of 87. the result of a fall. Pinkney chose the Jewish faith at the age of 12 and formerly converted after becoming engaged to his second wife, Ina Pinkney. he maintained his faith throughout his life.

Sources:
“Lessons from Bill Pinkney’s Historic Solo Sail Around the World,” PBS News hour.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/lessons-from-bill-pinkneys-historic-solo-sail-around-the-world

National Sailing Hall of Fame:
https://nshof.org/inductees/pinkney-william
BlackPast.org
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/pinkney-william-bill-1935/
Black Chicago Sailors
http://blackchicagosailors.org/captainbillpinkn.html
The History Makers
https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/capt-william-bill-pinkney-39
The New York Times. “Sailor Makes Solo Voyage Around Globe”, https://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/10/us/sailor-makes-solo-voyage-around-globe.html

“Captain William Pinkney Around The World Alone (Part II)”, Atlantic Creole: Black Folk Don't Sail XXXVII [Source of image]
http://herossea.blogspot.com/2014/05/atlantic-creole-black-folk-dont-sail_29.html

“Jewish sailor Bill Pinkney, first Black person to circle the globe solo, dies at 87,” The Times of Israel, September 6, 2023.

Featured

Venture Smith (c. 1729 – 1805)

Venture Smith was one of nearly 12 million Africans who came to America as a captive, but one of very few who wrote a first-hand account of his experiences: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa: But Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of America. Related by Himself, published in 1798. Smith was able to buy his freedom and returned to the sea for a time as a sailor on a whaling expedition.

Sources
The National Humanities Center “Venture Smith (Broteer Furro) Describes His West African Homeland & His Capture” (PDF)
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai/freedom/text3/furro.pdf

County Times, “Larger-Than-Life Former Slave Lives On in Project” February 3, 2011
http://www.countytimes.com/news/larger-than-life-former-slave-lives-on-in-project/article_bcd7beb5-4223-59b6-8bbd-8e00ecb0641d.html

Culture24, “The Life of Venture Smith: Hull reveals the remarkable story of a self-freed slave” August 23, 2011
http://www.culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/art362727

Conneticut History.org, “Venture Smith, from Slavery to Freedom” February 16, 2015
https://connecticuthistory.org/venture-smith-from-slavery-to-freedom

PBS - Learning Media, “The Life of Venture Smith” (video) https://ny.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/adlit08.ush.col.smith/the-life-of-venture-smith/#.Wl0darynFlY

Robert Smalls (1839 - 1915)

Robert Smalls, 22 years old, was working as a slave on a Confederate military supply boat, the PLANTER in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina at the outset of the Civil War. On May 12, 1862, Smalls commandeered the ship, faked being the captain, sounded pass codes to get past two forts, and steered by three more on an over 7 miles trip to freedom. On his way out of the harbor, he stopped the PLANTER to pick up the families of the rest of the enslaved Black crew. Arriving at the open sea he surrendered the fully loaded PLANTER, along with valuable military info, to Northern forces. Enraged Confederates put a bounty on his head, but in the North, he became a celebrity, giving public speeches in NYC and elsewhere.

In October of 1862, Smalls returned to the PLANTER as pilot and was involved in 17 military actions including the assault on Fort Sumter. Smalls was promoted to Captain, and starting in December 1863, earning $150 a month, making him one of the highest paid Black soldiers of the Civil War.

After the war, he returns to South Carolina, and becomes the 1st Black man elected to the State Assembly. There he writes the legislation that leads to the 1st free compulsory public schools in South Carolina – the first in the US. Smalls was also the 1st Black man elected to Congress, serving 5 nonconsecutive terms, 1874-1886. (In 1885 his state revised their constitution effectively stripping Blacks of their Voting rights.)

Smalls was also involved in transportation: he led a mass boycott of segregated public transportation in Charleston and he formed with partners the Enterprise Railroad, an 18-mile horse-drawn railway that moved people and goods between Charleston harbor and inland depots. It’s board of directors was entirely Black except for one.

February 2023, the US Navy announced that it would be renaming one of their guided-missile cruisers to honor Robert Smalls. The vessel was one of two ships identified by a commission tasked with purging Confederate names from the Department of Defense. The ship's current name, Chancellorsville (CG-62), memorializes a battle won by the Confederate South that resulted in the death of their General “Stonewall” Jackson. Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said in a statement.

“The renaming of these assets is not about rewriting history, but to remove the focus on the parts of our history that don’t align with the tenets of this country, and instead allows us to highlight the events and people in history who may have been overlooked.”

The renamed ship, however, is scheduled to be decommissioned in 2026.

This is an abridged version of PortSide’s AfricanAmerican MiniHistory on Robert Smalls. (This PDF prints on 6 double-sided pages to make a 12 page booklet.)

Sources: (some of many)

Henry Louis Gates, Jr, “Which Slave Sailed Himself to Freedom? “ https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/which-slave-sailed-himself-to-freedom

History, Art & Archives, U.S. House of Representatives, “SMALLS, Robert,” https://history.house.gov/People/Listing/S/SMALLS,-Robert-(S000502)/ (October 06, 2021)

Helen Boulware-Moore, "The Life and Times of Congressman Robert Smalls," A Traveling Exhibition (archived website). [The Boulware-Moore are descendants of Robert Smalls.] https://web.archive.org/web/20160305003017/http://www.robertsmalls.com/index.html.
See also: “The Descendants: Robert Smalls' great-great grandson says he's the unsung hero of the Civil War,” The Grio.com, February 21, 2013. https://thegrio.com/2013/02/21/the-descendants-robert-smalls-great-great-grandson-says-hes-the-unsung-hero-of-the-civil-war

Michael Boulware Moore, “The Audacity of Robert Smalls” TEDx talk by his great grandson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6T7ksyhUkw

NOAA..“NOAA identifies probable location of iconic Civil War-era steamer: Former slave piloted Planter to freedom,” NOAA, National Marine Sanctuaries press release 5/14/2014. https://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/news/press/2014/pr051314.html

P.K Rose. “Black Dispatches: Black American Contributions to Union Intelligence During the Civil War” Reprint of article from Studies In Intelligence, a journal published by CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence. https://web.archive.org/web/20160924025142/https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/black-dispatches

Bruce G. Terrell, Gordon P. Watts & Timothy J. Runyan, “The Search for PLANTER: The Ship that Escaped Charleston and Carried Robert Smalls to Destiny”. NOAA Maritime Heritage Series No. 1, 2014. (PDF) http://npshistory.com/publications/noaa/search-for-planter.pdf

“USS Chancellorsville to be Renamed After Former Slave Who Captured Confederate Ship,” by Sam LaGrone, February 27, 2023, USNI News.

William Tillman (b. 1834)

William Tillman was a steward and cook on-board the merchant schooner S.J. Waring a few months into the American Civil War when his the ship was captured by Confederate privateers. They declared the ship and William Tillman, their property and proceed to sail the ship from the waters off of New Jersey to the South. Fifty miles off Charleston, South Carolina, Tillman overpowers the privateers, recaptures the ship and sails it back to New York where he is rewarded and celebrated.

Sources:
Black Past, “William Tillman”
http://www.blackpast.org/aah/tillman-william-b-k-william-tilghman-1834-1880

US Maritime Administration, “A Story of High Seas Heroism: The Story of William Tillman”
https://www.maritime.dot.gov/k-12/salute-african-american-mariners/story-high-seas-heroism-0

The New York Times, “The Lion of the Day”
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/the-lion-of-the-day/

Rick Spillman’s OLD SALT blogpost: http://www.oldsaltblog.com/2020/02/black-history-month-william-tillman-and-the-privateer-jefferson-davis/

Dr. Gladys West (b. 1931)

Gladys West was part of the team that developed the Global Positioning System in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1956 she was hired as a mathematician by the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division. There she learned how to program and code an early computer. Her refined scientific calculations from satellite data led to an extremely accurate mathematical model of the Earth, which in turn became the basis of today’s Global Positioning System (GPS).

West later worked for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as the program manager for SEASAT, the first satellite designed to collect data on ocean surface winds, temperatures, waves, ice and topography.

Sources:

“100 Women: Gladys West - the 'hidden figure' of GPS,” By Amelia Butterly, BBC News, May 19, 2018

“Gladys West, 2021 NCWIT Pioneer in Tech Award Recipient” The National Center for Women & Information Technology

“Here's one of the people to thank for your GPS” By Cathy Dyson, Military Times, February 13, 2018

“Meet Dr. Gladys West, the hidden figure behind your phone’s GPS,” By Lauren Mackenzie Reynolds, Massive Science, December 25, 2019

“Navy Hidden Hero: Gladys Mae West and GPS” U.S. Navy. YouTube, December 19, 2018.

Dawn Wright

Dawn Wright, first African-American woman to dive in the three-person submersible Alvin. Dawn Wright is a professor of Geography and Oceanography

Sources:

“Dawn Wright's Historic Expedition” from Video Storytelling Studio November 18th, 2022. https://mediaspace.esri.com/media/t/1_x8dwu3cc

Marine Careers, “Dawn Wright: GIS and Geological Oceanography Specialist”
https://www.marinecareers.net/dawn-wright

Voyage to Discovery, “Dawn Wright”
https://web.archive.org/web/20160316204900/http://voyagetodiscovery.org/wright.htm

Wikipedia, “Dawn Wright”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_Wright

African American Maritime Heritage books in our library

These books can be read if you visit PortSide. The library is in the Captain's Cabin aboard our ship MARY A. WHALEN.

If you would like to recommend a book to us, please email chiclet@portsidenewyork.org. We will be thrilled if you buy the book and ship it to us at 190 Pioneer Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231. Thanks!

(Books are in alphabetical order by author’s last name.)

PortSide supported Capt. Bill Pinkney’s effort to publish his second children’s book because it is a story for the ages. This book “Sailing Commitment Around The World” is about his voyage as the first black man to sail around the world solo via the southern ocean and Cape Horn. Capt. Pinkney designed that voyage as a vehicle for inspiration and education for children and networked with kids around the world and got the message out before the internet existed to make such things easy. In 1994, he published a book for 1st graders about the voyage, and his new book will bring the story to more young readers. Pinkney’s list of accomplishments is long, on top of that voyage, he was the first captain of the Amistad, was honored by the sailing Hall of Fame, and more. His story offers inspiration for all children; and since representation matters, it is a particularly powerful one for Black children. Please join us in donating and visit his Go Fund Me page. They have a modest goal of $15,000.

Featured

Tulsa Girl

Anthanio-Williams, Shameen

2016

Yearning to Breathe Free

Billingsley, Andrew

2007

Black Jacks

Bolster, W. Jeffrey

1997

Captives & Cousins: Slavery, Kinship and community in the Southwest Borderlands

Brooks, James F.

2002

Black life on The Mississippi

Buchanan, Thomas C.

2004

Which Way to Freedom?: And Other Questions About the Underground Railroad

Carson, Mary Kay

2015

From Slave to Civil War Hero; the Life and Times of Robert Smalls

Cooper, Michael L.

1994

Bound to the Fire: How Virginia's Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine

Deetz, Kelley Fanto

2017

American Negro Folktales

Dorson, Richard M.

2015, 1967

Vigilance

Diemer, Andrew K.

2022

Africa Is My Home: A Child of the Amistad

Edinger, Monica and Byrd, Robert

2013

The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings

Equiano, Olaudah

2003

How the North Promoted, Prolonged and profited from Slavery Complicity

Farrow, Anne and ‎Joel Lang, ‎Jenifer Frank

2006

Whaling Captains of Color: America's First Meritocracy

Finley, Skip

2020

From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans 3rd Ed.

Franklin, John Hope

1967

Troubled Water

Freeman, Gregory A.

2009

The Men All Singing: The Story of the Menhaden Fishing

Frye, John

1978

Dairy of a Contraband The Civil War Passage of a Black Sailor

Gould, William B. IV

2002

The Empire of Necessity

Grandin, Greg

2014

Seven Miles to Freedom

Halfmann, Janet

2008

Bound to the Fire: How Virginia's Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine

Harris, Jessica B

2010

Patroons and Periaguas

Harris, Lynn B.

2014

The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage

Harris, John

2020

The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales

Hamilton, Virgina
Dillon, Leo
Dillon, Diane

1985

Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey

Hodges, Graham Russell

1999

Seamen Ashore

Hohman, Elmo Paul

1952

Red Seas

Horne, Gerald

2005

Sail Away

Hughes, Langston Ill & Ashely Bryan

2015

The 1619 Project: Born on the Water

Jones, Nikole Hannah & Watson, Renee

2021

Featured

American Heroes Robert Smalls: The Boat Thief

Kennedy, Robert F. J.R

2008

If You Traveled on the Underground Railroad

Levine, Ellen and Johnson, Larry

1988

The Heroic Slave / Frederick Douglass: A Cultural and Critical Edition

Levine, Robert S.; John Stauffer; John R. McKivigan: Editors

2015

The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic

Linebaugh, Peter
Rediker, Marcus

2000

Be Free or Die: The Amazing Story of Robert Smalls’ Escape from Slavery to Union Hero

Lineberry, Cate

2017
Buy

The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

McBride, James

1995

What Was the Underground Railroad?

McDonough, Yona Zeldis

2013

The Rest I Will Kill: William Tillman and the Unforgettable Story Of How A Free Black Man Refused To Become A Slave.

McGinty, Brian

2016

Black Hands, White Sails

McKissack, Patricia C. & Fredrick L. McKissack

1991

Gullah Statesman

Miller, Edward A. Jr.

1995

Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake & Lowcountry

Morgan D. Philip

1998

The Girl With A Mind For Math

Mosca, Julia Finley

2018

Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City

Peterson, Carla L.

2011

Sailing Commitment Around The World with Bill Pinkney

Pinkney, Bill

2022

Featured

The Slave Ship A Human History

Rediker, Marcus

2007

Words Set Me Free: The Story of Young Frederick Douglass

Ransome, Lesa Cline & Ransome, James E.

2012

The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom

Rediker, Marcus

2012

The Underground Railroad From Slavery To Freedom

Siebert, Wilbur H.

1992 (reprint of 1898 edition)

Saltwater Slavery; A middle passage from Africa to American Diaspora

Stephanie E. Smallwood

2007

Charles Benson Mariner of Color in The Age of Sail

Sokolow, Michael

2003

Captain of the Planter: The Story of Robert Smalls

Sterling, Dorothy

1958

The Underground Railroad Records

Still, William

1872

William Still and His Freedom Stories: The Father of the Underground Railroad

Tate, Don

2020

Sailing To Freedom

Walker, Tomothy D.

2021

New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America

Warren, Wendy

2016

How Sweet the Sound: The Story of Amazing Grace

Weatherford, Carole Boston

2018

I, Matthew Henson: Polar Explorer

Weatherford, Carole Boston

2007

Sink or Swim: African-American Lifesavers of the Outer Banks

Weatherford, Carole Boston

1999

The Negro in the American Rebellion: His Heroism and His Fidelity

Wells, Brown, William

2014

Somewhat More Independent: The End Of Slavery In New York City

White, Shane

1991

The launch of this program was supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

Past events:

2019:

Black History Month: We regret that we do not have a venue for public events in the winter. Our “auditorium” is our ship deck, and after September, that’s too cold to use. We ran a digital program by sharing updates on this blogpost. In July, the AMISTAD cancelled their visit to us planned for August 2019 citing issues with crew.

2018:

2nd event: Summer 2018 visits by the historic ship Amistad

Two dates:
Tuesday, 7/24, 10am - 1pm & 2pm - 5pm
Saturday, 8/11, 10am - 1pm & 2pm - 5pm

The replica ship Amistad, built in 2000, is operated by Discovering Amistad. It relates to an important story in American history based on the 1839 episode when Mende captives from Sierra Leone took control of the ship Amistad. The replica Amistad is the flagship ambassador of Connecticut today.

1st event: 1st History Challenge

Wednesday, 5/30/18, 4:00-6:00pm

This event for 5th and 6th grade students from Red Hook schools will occur in the auditorium of Summit Academy. Ten teams from Summit Academy and two teams from BASIS Brooklyn will participate. The public and media are invited. Photo ID required for entry if you are over 18 years old.

PortSide NewYork

PortSide NewYork

African-American Maritime Heritage

PortSide NewYork

Inspiring people today by recovering erased history

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African American Red Hook WaterStories - Brooklyn

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African American Maritime Heritage books in our library

Past events:

2019:

2018:

2nd event: Summer 2018 visits by the historic ship Amistad

1st event: 1st History Challenge