In  A Gentleman of Color, Julie Winch provides a vividly written, full-length biography of James Forten, one of the most remarkable men in the 19th century.

Forten was born in 1766 into a free black family. As a teenager he served in the Revolution and was captured by the British. Rejecting an attractive offer to change sides, he insisted he was a loyal American. By 1810, he was the leading sailmaker in Philadelphia, where he became well known as an innovative craftsman, a successful manager of black and white employees, and a shrewd businessman. He emerged as a leader in Philadelphia’s black community and was active in a wide range of reform activities. He was especially prominent in national and international antislavery movements, served as vice-president of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and became close friends with William Lloyd Garrison, to whom he leant money to start up the Liberator. Forten was also the founder of a remarkable dynasty. His children and his son-in-law were all active abolitionists, and a granddaughter, Charlotte Forten Grimké, published a famous diary of her experiences teaching ex-slaves in South Carolina’s Sea Islands during the Civil War.

When James Forten died in 1842, five thousand mourners, black and white, turned out to honor a man who had earned the respect of society across the racial divide. This is the first serious biography of Forten, who stands beside Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Pantheon of Americans who fundamentally shaped American History.

James Forten—master sailmaker and owner of the sail loft where he once worked as a boy—was a free black man and one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest citizens in the early nineteenth century. A man of extraordinary talent and boundless energy, he was as dedicated to winning freedom and equality for all blacks as he was to achieving personal success.

In this exciting fast-paced biography, Brenda Johnston brings together the many facets of this remarkable man who found adventure at sea during the American Revolution, Risked his own safety to work with the Underground Railroad, taught black children in his home when they were excluded from the public schools, and challenged government officials with his eloquent pamphlets and petitions. As a leader in the large, active community of free blacks in Philadelphia, James Forten counted among his closest friends the Reverend Richard Allen, who founded the first black church in America, and Paul Cuffe, whose dream of African colonization he shared for many years.

Set against the background of the young United States, in which slavery and repression of black s were considered an unalterable way of life, the story of James Forten’s life is a testament to his courage and determination to gain justice for his race. This warmly human portrait, illustrated with Don Miller’s handsome line drawings, was an award-winning book in the annual competition sponsored by the Council on Interracial Books for Children.

Few Americans, black or white, recognize the degree to which early African American history is a maritime history. W. Jeffrey Bolster shatters the myth that black seafaring in the age of sail was limited to the Middle Passage. Seafaring was one of the most significant occupations among both enslaved and free black men between 1740 and 1865. Tens of thousands of black seamen sailed on lofty clippers and modest coasters. They sailed in whalers, warships, and privateers. Some were slaves, forced to work at sea, but by 1800 most were free men, seeking liberty and economic opportunity aboard ship.
Bolster brings an intimate understanding of the sea to this extraordinary chapter in the formation of black America. Because of their unusual mobility, sailors were the eyes and ears to worlds beyond the limited horizon of black communities ashore. Sometimes helping to smuggle slaves to freedom, they were more often a unique conduit for news and information of concern to blacks.

But for all its opportunities, life at sea was difficult. Blacks actively contributed to the Atlantic maritime culture shared by all seamen, but were often outsiders within it. Capturing that tension, Black Jacks examines not only how common experiences drew black and white sailors together—even as deeply internalized prejudices drove them apart—but also how the meaning of race aboard ship changed with time. Bolster traces the story to the end of the Civil War, when emancipated blacks began to be systematically excluded from maritime work. Rescuing African American seamen from obscurity, this stirring account reveals the critical role sailors played in helping forge new identities for black people in America.

An epic tale of the rise and fall of black seafaring, Black Jacks is African Americans’ freedom story presented from a fresh perspective.

"What a miserable life a seafaring life is," wrote steward Charles Augustus Benson (1830–1881) in his journal in 1862. As a career mariner for nearly two decades, he was well acquainted with the common privations and tribulations of life at sea. But as a black man, Benson faced even greater challenges, especially when it came to his duties, his shipboard status, and his interactions with the other men on board. In nineteenth-century America, thousands of black men served as sailors. What makes Benson distinctive is the detailed diary he kept, a fascinating narrative that documents his experiences and feelings.

In this volume, Michael Sokolow uncovers the inner world of this remarkable individual. Raised in a small town in Massachusetts, Benson was the great-great-grandson of slaves, the great-grandson of a rare eighteenth-century intermarriage between a black man and a white woman, and the grandson of a veteran of the American Revolution. His own life had been marked by economic struggle, marital conflict, and the social ambiguities of mixed race heritage.

In his personal writings, Benson reflected on both the man he was and the man he wanted to be. Living in a culture that prized "self-made" individuals, he sought to forge his own identity even as he labored under strictures that severely limited opportunities for blacks. From his youth in rural Middlesex County, Massachusetts, to his subsequent adult life in the bustling port city of Salem, Benson measured himself against the mores of white, middle-class America. Undeterred by early failures in both marriage and finance, he held fast to his personal vision and became a respectable husband, provider, worker, and member of the black community.

From the beginning of nautical history blacks have played active, important, but relatively unheralded roles. With a maritime tradition that goes back to the earliest known seafarers from the African continent, they have had careers as seagoing fisherman and traders, as crews aboard slave ships, and as pirates and privateers.

Black sailors served on whalers that circled the globe as well as on small craft along the coast. Their descendants today dominate the menhaden fishing industry and harvest oysters and crabs in coastal waters. Cape Verdeans operated the last deep-water sailing ships out of U.S. ports. A champion of freedom, Frederick Douglass, worked as a caulker in a shipyard, and blacks have served in the United States Navy since the Revolutionary War.

In September 1862, William Benjamin Gould escaped from slavery by rowing to the U.S.S. Cambridge , a Union gunboat patrolling off the coast of Wilmington, North Carolina. He served in the United States Navy for the remainder of the Civil War and left a diary of his experiences—one of only three known diaries of African American sailors from the period. It is distinguished not only by its details and eloquent tone, but also by its author’s reflections on the conduct of the war, on his own military engagements, on race, on race relations in the Navy, and on what African Americans might expect after the war and during Reconstruction.

The adventures of a Negro Sea-Captain in Africa and on the Seven Seas in his attempts to found an Ethiopian Empire: An Autobiographical Narrative

 

 

He fulfilled his childhood ambition of going to sea, proved that a ship captained and crewed by blacks could hold its own, prospered to the point of having a fleet -- and, still troubled by the anomaly of being a successful black in America, sought his roots and a refuge for free Negroes in Africa. Thus Paul Cuffee (1759-1817), who further was instrumental in establishing the right of all property owners to vote in Massachusetts (as per the Revolutionary cry of ""no taxation without representation""). It is good to know about him, and to have incidental intelligence on the controversial African colonization movement.... Revolutionary War danger: ""If I get caught in any fighting I'll just try to show that I'm another black American who is willing to fight for freedom"" -Kirkus Review

Against the background of frozen arctic wastes, Dark Companion unfolds the spellbinding tale of an epoch-making discovery, unparalleled for sheer human courage and drama. Until now the fantastic true story of Matthew Henson, who was with Peary discovered the North Pole, has been hidden behind the White Curtain of racial bias and official indifference. Only now is the world realizing the full significance of Henson’s achievement. A fascinating close-up of arctic exploration, the extraordinary biography is also a deeply moving story of an 18 year friendship which transcended the color line to prove that equality among men is a matter of the heart and spirit…not skin. Despite perils and repeated failures in the North and ridicule at home, Peary knew that one day he would reach the Pole. He knew also that the only man who could help was Henson.

William Alexander Leidesdorff is probably one of the best-kept secrets in the pioneering of the West and the creation of the State of California. Born out of wedlock in St. Croix, Danish West Indies in 1810 to Jewish Danish sugar planter and a plantation worker, he went on to become the first black millionaire when gold was found on his property. William was educated in his ancestral country of Denmark, and then spent a couple of years in New Orleans working in his father’s cotton business. After becoming a successful merchant, he became involved in national politics and was appointed the Vice-Consul of the United States to Mexico. William also went on to have many other ‘firsts’ in his time.

Before the turn of the twentieth century, maritime industries provided the greatest opportunities for Black employment and investment in America. Between the Revolution and the Civil War, more African Americans were employed in the maritime trades than in any other industry. In New England, the representation of Black men on shipboard was proportionally far greater than in the general population. African Americans were represented on the vast majority of the region's vessels as employees, investors or owners.

Successful research into the role of Black seafarers in maritime industries is dependent on documents which identify individual’s mariners by race. While this information is not always available, many of the historic records kept by maritime museums, libraries and historical societies in New England do include physical descriptions.

The purpose of African Americans in the Maritime Trades: A Guide to Resources in New England is to introduce the kinds of documents that might provide information about African Americans, and to identify some of the repositories that collect relevant documents, photographs, artworks and artifacts.

“This is a short book on an unusual people of eastern Africa, those known as Swahili. Much of the world knows their name but little about them and their civilization. One reason is that they do not easily fit into the general Western picture of "African" peoples. As international merchants for over more than a thousand years they are different from the kinds of people usually studied by anthropologists and historians. In this book I describe and consider their society and civilization to show their importance both for anthropologists and for others interested in Africa." - John Middleton

It has been said that one of the most important things is to know one's own history. One cannot see where they are going without knowledge of their past. This is why Kathryn Joy McKnight wrote this book. It is important for everyone to understand the struggles of their ancestors. Being able to learn the different aspects of one's history will allow them to be proud of whom they are.

"Afro-Latin Americans have contributed economically, socially, culturally, religiously, and politically to the construction of the Americas. They done so despite the slavery, discrimination and marginalization to which they have been subjected. Even today, Afro-Latin Americans continue to be a great influence in Latin American societies and even within our own U.S. American society" (Kathryn Joy McKnight).

After much research, Kathryn Joy McKnight complied all that she found in this awesome and shocking story.

"Although some Afro-Latinos in the early modern world did read and write and many engaged with literate culture, almost none composed texts that were considered publishable at the time. Consequently, the written sources in which their voices survive are primarily juridical, ecclesiastical, and administrative documents located in the archives of Europe and Latin America. This collection includes judicial inquires, letters, last wills and testaments, petitions, trial proceedings, written dialogue, and as-told- to biography. In these texts people of African decent speak about war and politics; they define and support their families and communities; they reveal a broad gamut of spiritual beliefs and practices; and they claim and defend their rights against the cruelties of enslavement and the discrimination of a racialized society." The Afro-Latino stories in this collection help break down assumptions, stereotypes, and over-generalizations that continue to limit our understanding of the lives of people of African descent and how they themselves imagined their lives. These narratives counteract the still prevalent myth of Ibero-Atlantic blacks as primarily enslaved, working on plantations in Brazil and the Caribbean, and excluded from determining the courses of their own lives.

In January 1944, sixteen black enlisted men gathered at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Illinois to begin a cram course that would turn them into the U.S. Navy's first African-American officers on active duty. The men believed they could set back the course of racial justice if they failed and banded together so all would succeed. Despite the demanding pace, all sixteen passed the course. Twelve were commissioned as ensigns and a thirteenth was made a warrant officer. Years later these pioneers came to be known as the Golden Thirteen, but at the outset they were treated more as pariahs than pioneers. Often denied the privileges and respect routinely accorded white naval officers, they were given menial assignments unworthy of their abilities and training. Yet despite this discrimination, these inspirational young men broke new ground and opened the door for generations to come.

In 1986, oral historian Paul Stillwell began recording the memories of the eight surviving members of the Golden Thirteen. Later he interviewed three white officers who served with and supported the efforts of the men during World War II. This book collects the stories of those eleven men. Introduced by Colin L. Powell, they tell in dramatic fashion what it was like to be a black American.

On April 25, 1944, the United States Navy launched a social experiment—PC 1264. On board were sixty-three men—fifty-eight enlisted men, fifty of whom were Negro, and five white officers. Not since the end of World War I had Negroes been permitted to serve in the United States Navy in any capacity other than as mess attendants.  But at a time when ships were being built faster than men could be trained, the Navy desperately needed manpower. So, despite irrational but strong opposition claiming the Negroes could not be seamen, USS PC 1264 put to sea—one small ship of 500 tons displacement, an inexperienced crew, and a captain with only ten days at sea before assuming command—all charged with demonstrating that race did not determine a man’s ability.

Black Company is primarily a human story. It is the story of the commanding officer, fearful that his inexperience would jeopardize the aspirations of an entire people; of the crew, quick to resent a slur and quicker to charm an inspection party; proud of their uniform and the effect it had upon women; of a young Ensign, starting a career that would make him the first Negro Rear-Admiral in the United States Navy; of all the ship’s company—their reactions during submarine contacts, on convoy, on patrol in the North Atlantic in the depth of winter, and on liberty; a story of their hopes and dreams discussed under star-studded southern skies.

Eric Purdon, Captain of the USS PC 1264, tells the story of his ship with all the drama, comedy and emotion as it was lived by this strangely condensed society. Nowhere in the annals of Negro or Naval history is the story of this experiment to be found—this experiment which was directly responsible for the more rapid integration of the Negro into the United States Navy.

In an astonishing eighteenth-century memoir, Olaudah Equiano recounts his life story, which begins when he is kidnapped in Africa as a boy and sold into slavery and culminates when he has achieved renown as a British antislavery advocate. The narrative “is a strikingly beautiful monument to the startling combination of skill, cunning, and plain good luck that allowed [Equiano] to win his freedom, write his story, and gain international prominence,” writes Robert Reid-Pharr in his Introduction.

The Waterman's Song chronicles the maritime world of slaves and free black fishermen, pilots, rivermen, sailors, ferrymen, and other laborers who, from the colonial era through Reconstruction, plied the vast inland waters of North Carolina from the Outer Banks to the upper reaches of tidewater rivers. Demonstrating the vitality and significance of this local African American maritime culture, David Cecelski also reveals its connections to the Afro-Caribbean, the relatively egalitarian work culture of seafaring men who visited nearby ports, and the revolutionary political tides that coursed throughout the black Atlantic.

Black maritime laborers played an essential role in local abolitionist activity, slave insurrections, and other antislavery activism. They also boatlifted thousands of slaves to freedom during the Civil War. But most importantly, Cecelski says, "they carried an insurgent, democratic vision born in the maritime districts of the slave South into the political maelstrom of the Civil War and Reconstruction".

This work examines the debt owed by Europe to the Moors for the Renaissance and the significant role played by the African in the Muslim invasions of the Iberian Peninsula. While it focuses mainly on Spain and Portugal, it also examines the races and roots of the original North African before the later ethnic mix of the blackamoors and tawny Moors in the medieval period. The study ranges from the Moor in the literature of Cervantes and Shakespeare to his profound influence upon Europe's university system and the diffusion via this system of the ancient and medieval sciences. The Moors are shown to affect not only European mathematics and map-making, agriculture and architecture, but their markets, their music and their machines. The ethnicity of the Moor is re-examined, as is his unique contribution, both as creator and conduit, to the first seminal phase of the industrial

The history of Spain offers us a melancholy contrast. Twelve hundred years ago, Tarik the Moor added the land of the Visigoths to the long catalogue of kingdoms subdued by the Moslems. For nearly eight centuries, under her Mohammedan rulers, Spain set to all Europe a shining example of a civilized and enlightened State. Her fertile provinces, rendered doubly prolific by the industry and engineering skill of her conquerors, bore fruit a hundredfold. Cities innumerable sprang up in the rich valleys of the Guadelquivir and the Guadiana, whose names, and names only, still commemorate the vanished glories of their past. Art, literature, and science prospered, as they then prospered nowhere else in Europe. Students flocked from France and Germany and England to drink from the fountain of learning which flowed only in the cities of the Moors

African Americans have been drawn to the sea for hundreds of years. In this collection of biographies, Eloise Greenfield examines how that connection to the sea has influenced generations of African Americans—from a shipbuilder-businessman during the American Revolution to the first woman and African American to hold the highest-ranking position in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commission Corps. The lives of the extraordinary men and women included here create a stirring image of the power

In 1954, a young Egyptian archaeologist, clearing a site just south of the Great Pyramid at Giza, discovered a great papyri form ship, built for a king and then dismantled and buried at the height of the Egyptian Old Kingdom. This book tells the story of this Royal Ship--its discovery, excavation and reconstruction. The author also addresses who built the ship and why, how it has survived intact for so long, and what connection it may have had with the age-old Egyptian myth of the Sun-god, eternally journeying across the heavens in the Reed Float. This book is also the story of Ahmed Youssef Moustafa, Chief Restorer of the Department of Antiquities, who almost single-handedly put back together the 1,223 pieces of the ship.

"Here is a graphic recounting of five days at sea with the crew of a fishing boat working the coastal waters of the southeastern United States. The crew is black, the captain is white, but all are bound together in the mystique and commerce of fishing for pogy. The author has the audacity to tell the tale from the viewpoint of the decrepit Moona Waa Togue's mate who describes his job as, '... between the left eye for the captain and the right eye of the crew, you wink your way through a bad day...' The author, and the mate, pull it off. A first-class re-issue by the Second Chance Press of a book critically acclaimed when it was was first published in 1954." -San Diego Union

Maroon Societies is a systematic study of the communities formed by escaped slaves in the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States. These societies ranged from small bands that survived less than a year to powerful states encompassing thousands of members that survived for generations and even centuries. The volume includes eyewitness accounts written by escaped slaves and their pursuers, as well as modern historical and anthropological studies of the maroon experience. For this edition, Richard Price has written a new preface reflecting recent changes in both maroon scholarship and in the lives of contemporary maroons throughout the Americas.

"The collection provides valuable insights into the nature of maroon communities, their problems of survival in difficult environments, their necessary ties and even alliances to other economic groups and interests, their struggles to maintain themselves against state efforts to destroy them, and the remnants which survive up to the present. What emerges is a comprehensive picture of universal black resistance to the institution of slavery."

“Black Sailors is the first scholarly attempt to treat black seamen in their own right. Relying mainly on analysis of the crew lists filed by captains in the ports of New Orleans, Baltimore, Newport, Philadelphia, New York and New Bedford. It describes the black presence aboard ship, provides thumb-nail sketches of some twenty black sea captains, shows the inter-generational commitment to the sea of common black sailors, and touches on reasons for the decline of black seafaring.

Professor Putney is indisputably the most knowledgeable living interpreter of crew lists as an historical source. She forthrightly presents their limitations, and candidly discusses their discrepancies. Her book reveals painstaking perusal of thousands of these records, and is a useful source for any historian interested in mining the crew lists’ rich vein of social history.”

This volume, No. 52 in the Major Industrial Research Unit Studies series (Studies of Negro Employment Vol. VII) examines overall black employment in the relatively small, but critical maritime industries. The change in the status of Negroes is examined from a group confined to the lower status occupations to one that is now receiving a larger share of jobs in these industries than in most other industries in the country. Special emphasis is placed on developments since mid- 1960’s when the change gained momentum.

Of special note is the fact that in all three maritime industries, the improvements in the number of blacks employed and in their occupational status were achieved despite a general decline in employment. With ship-building employment now expanding and with whites reluctant to seek employment as seamen or longshoremen, the production of Negroes in each of these industries is expected to continue to increase.

This study is based upon individual reports first published in RACIAL POLICIES OF AMERICAN INDUSTRY series. A final chapter compares and contrasts the situations in the three maritime industries with those in the 28 other analyzed in this series.

Back at the Smithsonian Institute, Lucy, Tomas, Kevin, and Emma are visiting the Whaling Exhibit at the National Museum of American History. The mural of a whale hunt reminds Emma of an old family story. Her great-great-great grandfather was a harpooner on a whaling ship long ago. As Emma tells the story to her friends, the water in the mural seems to shimmer.

Suddenly, cold water splashes Emma’s face, and she realizes that she is on a whaling ship over one hundred years ago! Caught up in the bustle and excitement of the crew, Emma soon finds herself in a long boat and face to face with a giant sperm whale.

From Newbery Honor author Patricia C. McKissack and her husband, Fredrick L. McKissack, comes the dramatic, little-known story of the role African Americans played in the East Coast whaling industry. The whalers also played a significant part in the formation of the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad.

Despite the dangers of the sea, runaway slaves were eager to work on the ships, which supplied eighty percent of the oil used by Americans. Free black seamen signed on because of the career opportunities: one day they might be first mates, captains, or even owners. And there was less prejudice onboard a whale ship than on land, since cooperation was crucial for the common good of all. As one black seaman wrote, "The sea was an equalizer of men, therefore the captain chose his crew based on who could do the job best."

Black Hands, White Sails details complete voyages of whaling ships, from signing on at the docks, to the hunt, to the return home. Readers will learn about the lives of such well-known figures as Paul Cuffe, ship owner and captain; Lewis Temple, who designed the toggle-harpoon, revolutionizing the whale hunt; and Frederick Douglass, a leading abolitionist who was once a caulker of ships; as well as lesser-known individuals.

Archival photos and drawings are included, bringing this special time in history alive for young readers.

Christmas John, 12, lives in a pine-board cabin with Granny Judith, who was enslaved when strangers lured her to their ship with a piece of red flannel. Now on a plantation in Kentucky, Granny Judith and Christmas John help others escape across the river to the free state of Ohio by taking advantage of John's youth–he's young enough to avoid notice, and old enough to row a boat across and back. Granny Judith stitches a quilt, incorporating the colors the escapees wear. What color is freedom tonight? As the quilt approaches completion and the risks grow, the time comes for their own escape. –Nina Lindsay, Oakland Public Library, CA

Quickly and quietly, Robert Smalls headed the ship of Charleston Harbor. Now was his chance to escape. Across the wide river was the Union Army and freedom for slaves like him. On Robert's side of the river was the Confederate Army. He could see the nearby forts and their cannons ready to fire. The confederate soldiers would capture Robert if they could. Could he sail across hidden by darkness of night? Could he pass by disguise?