"Black Star Line"

Was a shipping line incorporated by Marcus Garvey, organizer of the UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association).The shipping line was supposed 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 Marcus felt he could duplicate,which would become a standard of his Back-to-Africa movement.It was 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 newspaper.The Black Star Line and its successor,The Black Cross Navigation and trading Company,operated between 1919&1922.It stands today as a major symbol for Marcus followers and African Americans in search of a way to get back their homeland.The black star Line stated in Delaware on June 23,1919,Having capitalization of $500,000 BSL,stocks were sold at UNIA conventions at five dollars each.The company's loses were estimated to be between $630,000 and $1.25 million.The Black Star Line surprised all its critics when, only three months after being incorporated,the first of four ships,the SS Yarmouth was purchased with the intention of it being rechristened the Frederick Douglass.The Yarmouth was a coal boat during the First World War,and was in poor condition when purchased by the Black Star Line ship  with an all-black crew and a black captain.Later Josh Cockburn,the captain of the Yarmouth was accused of receiving a "kick back from the purchase price."The SS Yarmouth was not the only ship to be purchased in poor condition and to be completely oversold.Marcus spent another $200,000for more ships.One the SS Shadyside,sailed the "cruise to nowhere"on the Hudson River one summer and sank the next fall because of a leak many through to be sabotage.Another was a steam yacht once owned by Henry HuttlestonRogers Booker T. Washington had been an honored guest aboard the ship when it was own by his friend and confidant,Henry and was known as the Kanawha.However,Henry had died in 1909,and the once well-maintained yacht had also served in the first World War.Renamed by the Black Star Line the SS Antonio Maceo,it blew a boiler and killed a man off the Virgina coast on its first voyage from New York to Cuba,and had to be towed back to New York.Besides oversold,poor conditioned ships,Black Star Line was beset by corruption of management and infiltration by agents of J Edgar Hoover's Bureau of Investigation (the forerunner to the FBI),who according to historian Winston James-sabotaged it by throwing foreign matter into the fuel,damaging the engines.The first commission for the Yarmouth was to haul Whiskey from the U.S. to cuba before prohibition.Although the ship made it in record time,it did not having docking arrangements,So it money sitting in the docks of cuba while longshoremen had a strike, a cargo-load of coconuts rotted in the hull of a ship on another voyage because Marcus insisted on having the ships make ceremonial stops at politically important ports.The Black Star Line ceased sailing in February 1922.It is regarded as a considerable accomplishment for African Americans of the time,despite thievery by employees, engineers who overcharged and the Bureau of investigation's acts of infitration and sabotage.