Black Star Line

The Oceanic Steam Navigation Company (Black Star Line)

Company type	Partnership
Industry	Shipping, transportation
Founded	1919 (1919)
Defunct	1922
Fate	Bankruptcy
Area served	Transatlantic

The Black Star Line (1919−1922)

The Black Star Line and its successor, the Black Cross Navigation and Trading Company, operated between 1919 and 1922. It stands today as a major symbol for Garvey followers and Pan-Africanists. It is not to be confused with the later Black Star Line, the state shipping corporation of Ghana.

History

The Black Star Line was incorporated as a Delaware corporation on June 27, 1919.^[3] Having a maximum capitalization of $500,000, BSL shares were sold at UNIA conventions at five dollars each.

The first directors of the Black Star Line were Marcus Garvey, Edgar M. Grey, Richard E. Warner, George Tobias, Jeremiah Certain, Henrietta Vinton Davis, and Janie Jenkins. The officers of the corporation were President Marcus Garvey, First Vice President — Jeremiah Certain, Second Vice President Henrietta Vinton Davis, Treasurer George Tobias, Secretary Richard E. Warner, Assistant Secretary Edgar M. Grey and Assistant Treasurer Janie Jenkins. Six months after incorporation the board of directors voted to increase the Black Star Line market capitalization to $10 million (equivalent to $176 million in 2023).^[3]

The Black Star Line surprised all its critics when, only three months after being incorporated, the first of four ships, Yarmouth was bought with the intention of renaming it Frederick Douglass. Yarmouth was a collier in the First World War, and was in poor condition when the Black Star Line bought her. Once reconditioned, Yarmouth sailed for three years between the US and the West Indies as the first Black Star Line ship with an all-black crew and a black captain. Later Joshua Cockburn, the captain of Yarmouth, was accused of receiving a "kick back from the purchase price".^[4][5]

Yarmouth was not the only ship that BSL bought in poor condition and completely oversold. Garvey spent another $200,000 for more ships (equivalent to $3 million in 2023).

In 1919, J. Edgar Hoover and the BOI charged Marcus Garvey and three other officers with mail fraud. The prosecution stated that the brochure of the Black Star Line contained a picture of a ship that the BSL did not own. The ship pictured was

The Black Star Line ceased sailing in February 1922. The Shady Side was abandoned on mudflats at Fort Lee, New Jersey.^[10] The company's losses were estimated to be between $630,000 and $1.25 million ($22,753,000 in 2024).

In popular culture

• Reggae singer Fred Locks re-introduced the Black Star Line to a Jamaican audience with his 1976 hit "Black Star Liner" (which has been called one of "the most important songs in reggae music of the 1970s"), portraying Garvey as a Moses-like prophet:^[15][16] "Seven miles of Black Star Liners coming in the harbor [...] I can hear the elders saying. These are the days for which we've been praying ... Marcus Garvey told us that the Black Star Liners are coming one day for us".^[17]
• The 1977 reggae album by Culture, Two Sevens Clash, featured a song called "Black Starliner Must Come".^[18]
• A 1978 reggae song named "Black Star Liner" by The Regulars (later renamed to Reggae Regular) appears to still be a popular song on YouTube.^[19] Also Black Slate on their album Amigo recorded a song called "Freedom Time (Black Star Liner)",^[20] with references to Marcus Garvey and "seven miles of Black Star Liner".
• The Black Star Line was also commemorated by blues singers such as Hazel Meyers and Rosa Henderson;^[21] by the musical group Brand Nubian (on their 1993 album In God We Trust);^[22] and by Ranking Dread with "Black Starlina" on his Kunta Kinte Roots album.^[23]
• "Train to Zion" by Linval Thompson (writer) and U Brown featured the lines: "Train to Zion is coming / Don't want no one to miss it / It's the Black Star Liner / It's going to Zion..."^[24]
• Mercury Music Prize nomination in 1999 for their album Bengali Batam Youth Foundation.^[25]
• "Marcus Senior" by Burning Spear on their Marcus' Children album, contained lyrics about the struggle Marcus Garvey endured.^[26]
• Spanish singer-songwriter
  Chico Cesar and the song was released on his 2018 album "Paraisos Mejores".^[27]
• Mos Def and Talib Kweli for their work as a duo. Their 1998 album Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star, was a reference to Garvey and the Black Star Line.^[28]
• In the Xenowealth series of future science fiction novels by Caribbean-American author
  interstellar shipping company responsible for resettling marginalized, primarily Black, emigrants from Earth on a number of terraformed planets.^[29]
• The BlackStar Film Festival, a Philadelphia film festival focused on films about and by black, brown and indigenous people from around the world, was named after the shipping company.
• Black Star Line Festival,^[30] founded in 2022 by the artist Chance the Rapper was inspired by the shipping company.^[31]

Legacy

The flag of Ghana adopted a black star as an homage to their own shipping line, The Black Star Line, which was the national shipping corporation of Ghana.^[32][33]

Bibliography

Notes