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Black Star Line

The Black Star Line (1919−1922)[1] was a shipping line incorporated by Marcus Garvey, the organizer of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and other members of the UNIA. The shipping line was created to facilitate the transportation of goods and eventually African Americans throughout the African global economy. It derived its name from the White Star Line, a line whose success Garvey felt he could duplicate.[2] The Black Star Line became a key part of Garvey's contribution to the Back-to-Africa movement, but it was mostly unsuccessful, partly due to infiltration by FBI agents.[2] It was only one among many businesses which the UNIA originated, such as the Universal Printing House, Negro Factories Corporation, and the widely distributed and highly successful Negro World weekly newspaper.

For the 19th-century company operating transatlantic sailing vessels, see Williams & Guion Black Star Line.

Company type

Partnership

Shipping, transportation

1919 (1919)

1922

Bankruptcy

Transatlantic

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.

Reggae singer 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]

Fred Locks

The 1977 reggae album by , Two Sevens Clash, featured a song called "Black Starliner Must Come".[18]

Culture

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. 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".

[19]

The Black Star Line was also commemorated by 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]

blues

"Train to Zion" by (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]

Linval Thompson

was the name of a British electronic group, who won a Mercury Music Prize nomination in 1999 for their album Bengali Batam Youth Foundation.[25]

Black Star Liner

"Marcus Senior" by on their Marcus' Children album, contained lyrics about the struggle Marcus Garvey endured.[26]

Burning Spear

Spanish singer-songwriter sings about the North American slaves' dream of going back to their plundered and subdued Africa, in his song "Black Star Line". Ruibal sings along with Chico Cesar and the song was released on his 2018 album "Paraisos Mejores".[27]

Javier Ruibal

is the group name adopted by 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]

Black Star

In the Xenowealth series of future science fiction novels by Caribbean-American author , the Black Starliner Corporation is an interstellar shipping company responsible for resettling marginalized, primarily Black, emigrants from Earth on a number of terraformed planets.[29]

Tobias Buckell

The , 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.

BlackStar Film Festival

Black Star Line Festival, founded in 2022 by the artist Chance the Rapper was inspired by the shipping company.[31]

[30]

Legacy[edit]

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]

(May 13, 1922). "Col. Marcus Garvey , President of the Black Star Line Steam ship Company, Admitted on the Witness Stand in New York City That More Than $600,000 Has Been Blown to the Wind". The Broad Ax. Julius F. Taylor. ISSN 2163-7202. OCLC 10392922. Retrieved June 27, 2019.

The Broad Ax

(1995). Hill, Robert Abraham (ed.). The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Vol. IX: Africa for the Africans June 1921-December 1922. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520916821. - Total pages: 840

Garvey, Marcus

(2009). Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey. Vintage. ISBN 9780099501459. - Total pages: 560

Grant, Colin

Murdock, George W. (April 4, 1939). . The Kingston Daily Freeman. Retrieved June 27, 2019.

"Hudson River Steamboats. No.86-Shady Side"

Murillo-Chaverri, Carmmen (1999). (PDF). Revista de Historia. 39 (enero–junio, 1999). ISSN 1012-9790. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 16, 2016. Retrieved June 27, 2019.

"Vaivén de arraigos y desarraigos: Identidad afrocaribeña en Costa Rica 1870-1940"

Springer, Robert & Randall Cherry, John Cowley, David Evans (2006). Nobody Knows where the Blues Come from: Lyrics and History. . ISBN 9781578067978.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - Total pages: 303

University Press of Mississippi

Notes


References

Archived 2020-02-18 at the Wayback Machine

People & Events: The Black Star Line

Archived 2017-02-26 at the Wayback Machine

People & Events: J. Edgar Hoover

“The Collapse of the Only Thing in the Garvey Movement Which Was Original or Promising”: Du Bois on Garvey

“The Black Star Line”: Singing a Song of Garveyism