African Americans and the Chesapeake Bay

http://www.marinersmuseum.org/sites/micro/waters/index.html

Waters to Slavery Slave ships unloaded their human cargo at Annapolis, Alexandria, Yorktown, Norfolk, and the ports of the Eastern Shore. During the 1600s, most of the slaves were imported by way of the West Indies; by the 1700s, most arrived directly from Africa. By 1750, slavery was firmly entrenched in the economy and culture of the region. Ultimately, more than 100,000 enslaved Africans were brought to the colonies of Maryland and Virginia. By the 1730s, the slave population was naturally self-sustaining. Though the legal, international slave trade ceased in 1807, Maryland and Virginia continued to ship slaves to other domestic markets before the Civil War. Each year, thousands of slaves were separated from their families. From 1817 to 1860, at least 40,000 slaves were shipped from Norfolk, Richmond, Charleston, Alexandria, and Baltimore to New Orleans and Mobile. The domestic trade also included kidnapping free blacks, many of whom were sailors, and shipping them southward.

Enslaved Africans Shipped as Human Cargo, 1808  The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament by Thomas Clarkson The Mariners' Museum Research Library and Archives HT1162.C6a.C Vol. I Slave Inventory and Mortgage Document, circa 1790s The Mariners' Museum CK 78 When a slave owner died, settling the estate might mean selling slaves to pay off debts or carry out bequests. The slaves were often split up; even family members were separated. For many Africans, enslavement meant being stripped of their identity as well as their freedom. On this list from Onancock, Virginia, some individuals, such as Bungo, Juba, Yaba (reverse side), and Quomino (named on back), seemed to have retained their original, African names. "Juba" is a female name for Monday. Illustrating the individual's skills, the entry "1 Jack a Boatman" is probably an Anglicized African name. "Jack" may be derived from the African name "Quacko."

West African Boatmen Fishing and Transporting Slaves
J. Kip, artist
The Mariners' Museum
LE 529

Most enslaved Africans who came to Virginia and Maryland were originally from Western or Central Africa. Many were skilled boatmen, fishermen, and boatbuilders. Ironically, African boatmen carried European slavers from their ships to shore-based factories and trading partners. The boatmen also ferried captives to slave ships. In the maritime communities of the Chesapeake Bay, African boatbuilding and boat-handling skills were in great demand. A notice from the Virginia Gazette in 1772 describes a runaway slave: "He calls himself Bonna, and says he came from a Place of that name in the Ibo Country, in Africa, where he served in the Capacity of a Canoe Man."

Tobacco Plantation, 1821
London
Richard Holmes Laurie, publisher
The Mariners' Museum
75.23.2

Slaves provided much of the labor for the early tobacco industry. They grew tobacco, cut trees for tobacco hogsheads (barrels), fashioned the barrels, and rolled them to the river. Black boatmen ferried the tobacco to market, where slaves loaded the hogsheads on ships. In the center of this engraving, the scallop, shell, cask, and fouled anchor stress the ties between Chesapeake plantations and merchant shipping.

Chesapeake Bay Tobacco Wharves, circa 1750
Elmo Jones, artist
The Mariners' Museum Research Library and Archives
PH 1444

This engraving was influenced by a map created by Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson's father. The setting of the illustration is thus more representative of London than the Chesapeake region. Nevertheless, it does correctly illuminate the activities of slaves as coopers, laborers, boatmen, and menservants.

Domestic Slave Trade, November 26, 1831
Niles' Weekly Register
The Mariners' Museum Research Library and Archives

In 1807, the international slave trade was outlawed. However, the domestic trade continued to flourish until the Civil War. To insure that transported slaves were owned by United States citizens, manifests were required even for short trips.

Fiddle player Solomon Northup was a free black from New York. In 1841, Northup journeyed to Washington, D.C., where he was drugged, chained, robbed, and eventually shipped from Norfolk to New Orleans on the brig Orleans. Twelve years later, Northup was rescued from a Louisiana cotton plantation. He wrote an autobiography about his ordeal.

Sailor's Sea Chest from the Brig Sultan, circa 1850s
The Mariners' Museum
FC11

The sailor who owned this mid-nineteenth-century chest was apparently involved in the domestic slave trade. The bold interior illustration of a slave and trader implies that the sailor was either brazen, proud of his profession, or both.

Waters to Freedom The geographic location of the Chesapeake Bay offered numerous opportunities for bold or fortunate slaves to seize their freedom. The Underground Railroad thrived in seaports such as Norfolk and Baltimore. If runaway slaves reached Philadelphia, they could be guided further north where sympathetic citizens and favorable laws offered some protection from continued enslavement. Some slaves were able to purchase their freedom through maritime work. With the blessing of local authorities, other slaves and free blacks sailed from the Chesapeake Bay to settle in Haiti and Liberia in search of a better life. Olaudah Equiano authored one of the best-known slave narratives. In the 1750s, he spent his boyhood working on a Chesapeake plantation. Fatefully, Michael H. Pascal, master of the Industrious Bee, purchased Equiano as a present for friends in England. Pascal renamed the young slave Gustavus Vassa. On board the Bee, the slave learned the sailor's trade. Through personal enterprise, Equiano earned enough money to purchase his own freedom. After decades at sea, he settled in England. Before his death in 1797, his autobiography was reprinted in eight separate editions. Anthony Burns, circa 1855 R. M. Edwards, printer, Boston Courtesy of the Library of Congress Anthony Burns escaped on a steamboat, traveling from Virginia to Boston. He was captured in 1854 and returned to his owner as legal property, and subsequently sold into North Carolina. Many Northerners were outraged, and his plight became a cause célèbre. African-American minister Leonard A. Grimes spearheaded the drive to purchase Burns from his owners. Later, Burns attended Oberlin College, becoming a preacher in Canada.

The American Colonization Society In the early 1800s, the American Colonization Society was formed to offer slaves and free blacks the opportunity to return to Africa. Promising slaves passage to Liberia and support in establishing new lives, the society hoped to provide a peaceful solution to slavery and racial conflict. Most African-Americans opposed the plan, but a few thousand did settle in Liberia. Many departed from the ports of Baltimore and Norfolk. A few black watermen paid extra to have their boats shipped to Africa with them.

Joseph Jenkins Roberts, circa 1851
Reproduction from a daguerreotype
Rufus Anson, daguerreotypist
Courtesy of the Library of Congress

Virginia is the home of two founding presidents: George Washington and Joseph Jenkins Roberts. Born in Norfolk and reared in Petersburg, Roberts became the first President of the Republic of Liberia. Roberts was a skilled barber and boatman who became a merchant when he emigrated to Liberia. His family owned small river craft, a commercial venture that allowed him to move among the elite of Petersburg's large, free black population. He served as president from 1847 to 1855 and 1871 to 1876. African-American daguerrotypist Rufus Anson of New York City probably took this image of President Roberts during the latter's visit to the United States.

Monrovia, July 1856 Harper's New Monthly Magazine The Mariners' Museum Research Library and Archives Monrovia became the capital of Liberia, in honor of President James Monroe. Monroe was an early supporter of the colonization movement.

The Underground Railroad

The famed Underground Railroad, a secret federation that harbored runaway slaves and guided them to freedom, ran on both land and water. With thousands of sail and steam vessels plying the Bay, countless slaves sought freedom through the aid of benevolent sea captains who might be willing to take a risk, and maybe a bribe, to smuggle slaves northward. Harriet Tubman of Maryland, one of the most accomplished conductors of the Underground Railroad, sometimes traveled by water. The Underground Railroad was a loose system, in which runaways may have been aided in some way by "conductors," "trainmen," or a caring person willing to offer aid. In the 1850s, perhaps 2,000 slaves a year escaped in this manner. In some areas, the Railroad was very well organized; elsewhere, it could be makeshift, relying mostly on the slave's own resources.

"About Christmas, 1837, we made an arrangement to run away. Zip was calculating to take the vessel that the white people had left during their absence…. We intended to carry off seventy, but we were disappointed because we could not carry out our arrangements. It was a very cold Christmas Eve, so much so that the river was badly frozen, not making it favorable for us to capture her: hence we gave up that project until the spring of 1838."

James L. Smith, former Virginia slave

$50 REWARD, circa 1850s
Chesapeake Bay area newspaper clipping
Eldredge Collection
The Mariners' Museum Research Library and Archives

John Parker's slave William apparently escaped from Nanjemoy Creek, Maryland, in a boat.

Escaping in a Chest, 1872
Underground Railroad by William Still
The Mariners' Museum Research Library and Archives
E450.S75 1872

The desperate need to escape led to dangerous and dramatic dashes to freedom. Lear Green hid in a sailor's sea chest on an Ericsson Line steamer from Baltimore to Philadelphia. A blanket and bottles of water were Green's only material comforts. Her future mother-in-law helped her, opening the box to give her air. Linking the two mid-Atlantic cities, the Ericsson Line was sought by runaway slaves and conductors of the Underground Railroad.

 

Frederick Douglass was the most notable African-American of the nineteenth century. A newspaper editor, abolitionist, and ambassador, Douglass was born into slavery on Maryland's Eastern Shore. He made his first escape attempt aboard a canoe. After this attempt failed, he disguised himself as a sailor, taking advantage of the common presence of black seamen in Maryland.

Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton, for Four Years and Four Months a Prisoner, 1855
Daniel Drayton, author
The Mariners' Museum Research Library and Archives
E450.D76

Not all attempts to escape by water were successful. In April 1848, Edward Sayres and Daniel Drayton of the schooner Pearl sought to smuggle seventy slaves from Washington, D.C., to Frenchtown, New Jersey. Unfavorable sailing wind and the treachery of a black cab driver foiled the plan. Armed officials and vigilantes boarded a steamboat and met the Pearl at the mouth of the Potomac River. Outraged citizens of the district blamed the liberal New Era newspaper for inciting the escape attempt. Many of the slaves who attempted to escape on the Pearl were sold "down the river" to the lucrative slave markets of the Deep South. Slave owners in the Upper South often sold troublesome slaves or those convicted of crimes to these markets, where treatment was sometimes brutal and lives were short.

Escape to the Dismal Swamp

Slaves thirsting for freedom did not always have to flee the Chesapeake region. Many found refuge in the Great Dismal Swamp on the Virginia-North Carolina border, or in Maryland's Pocomoke Swamp. Within these forbidding wetlands, former slaves established runaway, or maroon, communities.

"The Slave in the Dismal Swamp," from Poems, Vol. I, 1856
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet
Courtesy of Benjamin H. Trask

Slave refugees, swamps, primeval forests, and local legends fascinated nineteenth-century artists and writers such as Thomas Moran, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This fascination has aptly been described as a "dark Eden."

Dred; A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, Vol. II, 1856
Harriet Beecher Stowe, author
Courtesy of Benjamin H. Trask

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best selling novel of the nineteenth century. It first appeared in a serialized format in the National Era of Washington, D.C. In 1852, the novel was issued in a two-volume set. Stowe's Dred followed that same format.

Osman, September 1856
Harper's New Monthly Magazine
The Mariners' Museum Research Library and Archives

David Hunter Strother, an artist for Harper's Magazine, journeyed to the Dismal Swamp to illustrate and document its many tantalizing features. He remarked, "I had long nurtured a wish to see one of those sable outlaws who dwell in the fastnesses of the Swamp." He observed a runaway slave named Osman and noted, "His hair and beard were tipped with gray, and his purely African features were cast in a mould betokening, in the highest degree, strength and energy. The expression of the face was mingled fear and ferocity, and every moment betrayed a life of habitual caution and watchfulness."

Waters to War

Prior to 1865, many slaves faced difficult choices during times of war. Should they side with their masters? Should they flee, or support their masters' enemy in the hope of gaining freedom? During the American Revolution and War of 1812, thousands of slaves sought British warships. The risks were high–they might be sold to a new master in British territory, or caught and punished for the attempt to flee. Likewise, during the American Civil War, slaves sought Union camps and ships with the hope that freedom would be their reward.

However, from the American Revolution until the outbreak of the Civil War, African-Americans also served in the United States Navy. During wartime, slaves served as their masters directed. Free blacks, however, served of their own volition. They enlisted as cabin boys, cooks, landsmen, and seamen.

After the Emancipation Proclamation, the naval services still offered black men employment, but little chance for social mobility. After World War I, African-Americans demanded recognition for their sacrifices while in uniform. During World War II, African-Americans received advanced training in a variety of fields and earned commissions as officers. Today, African-American men and women serve in all capacities in the U.S. Navy, from seaman to admirals.

The American Revolution

During the Revolutionary War, the Royal Navy offered many slaves a chance to embark on a new life. Escape was a calculated risk, since slaves never knew if the British might sell them back into slavery in the British West Indies. However, British ships might provide sanctuary from the colonial slave system, and many British commanders also valued the skills and talents of the former slaves under their protection. The British were not acting entirely from altruism: by encouraging slaves to flee, they were deliberately seeking to weaken their enemy, whose economy rested heavily upon the labor of enslaved Africans. Some African-Americans did serve on the side of the colonial forces as pilots and seamen. The hope of a new nation may have led some to believe that their lives would be different as well.

The Earl of Dunmore was Virginia's last royal governor. In November 1775, operating from the HMS William in the Elizabeth River, Dunmore published a proclamation that called for slaves to join him in return for their freedom. To counter this, colonial revolutionary officials in Maryland and Virginia alternately promised harsh punishment and leniency to defectors. Approximately 800 slaves throughout the Bay region stole sloops, schooners, and scows to join "Lord Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment." Slaves served as boatmen, guides, and foragers for Dunmore. Joseph Harris, a runaway bondsman trained as a pilot, earned the praise of Royal Navy officers for his navigation knowledge of the lower Bay.

However, within a year the governor's scheme had failed. Defeated at Great Bridge, harassed, and devastated by smallpox, the remnants of Dunmore's flotilla divided and sailed for St. Augustine, Bermuda, and Sandy Hook.

African-American Soldier during the Revolution, from the deVerger Diary 
Courtesy of the Anne S. K. Brown Collection of Military History, Brown University

Those African-Americans who fought on behalf of the revolutionary government did so either because they were directed to as slaves, or because they felt a sense of loyalty to their masters and the cause. African-Americans served as pilots and seamen in the Virginia and Continental navies. Some of them were awarded state and federal pensions and land grants.

The HMS Savage

British Captain Thomas Graves sailed up the Potomac River to check the southern movement of American revolutionary forces. Graves commanded the HMS Savage and her escorts. The British destroyed warehouses, plantations, small craft, and crops. In the midst of these raids, Graves gathered runaway slaves. In the same year that George Washington led French and colonial troops to victory at Yorktown, approximately seventeen slaves, about a tenth of Washington's bondsmen, joined the British. Some of Washington's slaves were later recaptured and sent back to Mt. Vernon.

Summary from the Log of HMS Savage on the Potomac River Environs, April 1781

April 13	-Near Mount Vernon, Virginia, and Piscataway Creek, Maryland, thirteen slave refugees were taken on board.
April 15	-Sailing down the Potomac River, five slave refugees were brought on board.
April 16	-Between Smith and Maryland points, six slave refugees joined the Savage.
April 18	-At Nanjemoy Creek, Maryland, twenty-one slaves were placed on the Defiance to be transported to Portsmouth, Virginia. Eight more slave refugees arrived and were employed gathering wood.
April 23	-The Savage sailed north towards Cove's Point, Maryland.
April 25	-Eight slave refugees boarded the ship near Pooles Island.
April 26	-The Savage sailed south.
April 27	-At anchor near Thomas's Island, eight slave refugees were sent on the Hope, bound for Portsmouth.
April 28	-While sailing up the Potomac River, several refugees were taken on board and transferred to Rambler for transportation to Portsmouth.
April 30	-Five refugee slaves boarded near Cedar Point, Maryland. The War of 1812 As the American Revolution had done, the War of 1812 offered slaves an opportunity for freedom by taking refuge with the enemy. Approximately 4,000 slaves sought sanctuary with the Royal Navy. Captain Robert Barrie of the HMS Dragon in Lynnhaven Bay reported, "The Slaves Continue to come off by every opportunity and I have now upwards of 120 men, women, and children on Board…. Amongst the Slaves are several very intelligent fellows who are willing to act as local guides should their Services be required in that way, and if their assertions be true, there is no doubt but the Blacks of Virginia & Maryland would cheerfully take up Arms & join us against the Americans." Enlisting the aid of former slaves, the British did establish a unit of African-American "Colonial Marines" and trained them on Tangier Island to participate in landings along the Bay's coastline. Fighting on behalf of the United States, African-American soldiers and sailors participated in the battle of Craney Island off Norfolk and the defense of Baltimore against the British. Boats of the HMS Asia, Cherrystone Creek, Maryland, 1814 Irwin Bevan, artist The Mariners' Museum QW 377 The British created a unit of African-American Colonial Marines from runaway slaves of the Chesapeake region. The Colonial Marines took part in actions like the raid on Cherrystone Creek.

Port of Spain, Trinidad 
Cazabon, artist
The Mariners' Museum
LP 972

Following the war, the Colonial Marines were first sent to Bermuda. Later, with black women and children, the marines were dispatched to the newly acquired island of Trinidad as settlers. In the 1990s, ethnomusicologist Lorna McDaniel confirmed that Trinidadian Spiritual Baptists were descendants of these settlers and traced their hymns to the mid-Atlantic United States.

The Civil War

With much of the Civil War naval action occurring on Southern waterways, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles encouraged Union officers to enlist African-Americans. He wrote, "Flag-officers are required to obtain the services of these persons for the country by enlisting them freely in the Navy, with their consent, rating them as boys, at $8, $9, or $10 per month and one ration." Enlistees signed on directly with a Union ship. After May 1862, recruits were also processed at the receiving ship USS Brandywine at Portsmouth. On March 17, 1865, Acting Ensign William N. Summers led a party of mostly black sailors into action on Mattox Creek. Confederate musket fire cut away half of the launch's oars. Undeterred, Summers' men destroyed three schooners. For his part in the raid, African-American landsman Aaron Anderson earned the Congressional Medal of Honor. Official reports noted, "Anderson carried out his duties courageously in the face of devastating fire."

Ned, March 1857
Harper's New Monthly Magazine
The Mariners' Museum Research Library and Archives

In the 1840s, Englishman J. S. Buckingham traveled to Norfolk and made the following observation about black sailors: "It was really to me a most agreeable sight to see forty or fifty of these fine athletic Africans holding their heads up like men, and looking as if conscious of their independence and equality.…"

Crew of the USS Monitor, 1862
The Mariners' Museum
PN 514

Photographed in July 1862 on the James River, the African-American sailor in the middle is most likely Siah Carter. There were six other African-Americans who served on the ironclad, most of whom enlisted in the fall. When the Monitor sank at the end of that same year, the youngest crewmember to perish was Robert Cook. Records imply that Cook was a former slave from Gloucester County, Virginia.

During the Civil War, Mary Louvestre, a slave from Portsmouth, secretly met with Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles to report on the new Confederate ironclad, CSS Virginia. Louvestre apparently received permission from her owners to visit a sick relative in northern Virginia. Instead, she headed to Washington, D.C. A Norfolk shipyard mechanic with Union sympathies had been able to provide her with information concerning the CSS Virginia. Meeting privately with Welles, Louvestre shared timely documents that revealed that Union forces would not be able to invade Norfolk before the Confederate ironclad was completed. Welles recalled that "Louvestre encountered no small risk in bringing this information to the [Navy] Department." "Late in February [1862], a negro woman…came to the Navy Department and desired a private interview with me. She and others had closely watched the work on the 'Merrimac,' and she, by their request, had come to report that the ship was nearly finished, had come out of the dock, and was about receiving her armament. The woman had passed through the lines, at great risk to her self, to bring me information…. This news, of course, put an end to the test, which had been originally designed, of destroying the 'Merrimac' in the dry-dock; but made us not less anxious for the speedy completion of the battery [Monitor]." Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy

Explosion at City Point, August 9, 1864
Harper's Weekly, August 27, 1864
The Mariners' Museum Research Library and Archives

Thousands of former slaves worked as construction laborers and longshoremen for the Union army and navy. On August 9, 1864, at City Point (Hopewell), Virginia, Confederate saboteurs detonated a bomb in a barge, killing hundreds of people and destroying weapons, ammunition, a wharf, and a huge warehouse. One report listed 169 people killed or wounded. This count, however, did not take into consideration the scores of unregistered black laborers who were slain by the great blast.

Belle Plain Wharf under Repair, Potomac Creek, Maryland, 1864
The Mariners' Museum
PH 2863

Mobility and the ability to resupply were critical to the success of the Union's Army of the Potomac over its Confederate counterpart. African-American workers provided much of the labor required to unload vessels, construct docks, and assemble pontoon bridges to keep the federal forces on the move and well-supplied.

Stampede of Slaves to Fortress Monroe, May 1861
Wood engraving
Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War by A. H. Guernsey and H. M. Alden, 1894
Courtesy of Benjamin H. Trask

This illustration reveals how slaves traveled by small craft to Union fortifications. The sails have not been furled, indicating that the vessel was hastily beached that evening. During the Civil War, slaves commandeered boats to escape to Union ships and garrisons, such as Fort Monroe and camps in Hampton. The former slaves were classified by the Union as "contrabands of war," and thus could not be returned to their masters. After the federals captured Norfolk, runaway slaves also convinced federal troops to escort them in efforts to rescue loved ones.

The Fugitive Slaves Entering Fortess Monroe, Passing the Drawbridge at the Main Entrance, June 8, 1861
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper 
The Mariners' Museum
95.28.1

As word spread among the slave communities in the early days of the Civil War that the federal commanding officers at Fort Monroe offered refuge to runaway slaves, thousands of bondsmen journeyed by foot and by boat to this fortified sanctuary. Traveling by night, the slaves relied on moonlight for illumination and the stars as heavenly guides.

USS Congress, circa 1850s
The Mariners' Museum
U-PN 159

Union warships blockaded Southern ports, including Hampton Roads. Surgeon Edward Shippen of the USS Congress recalled, "on Monday morning we often had boat-loads of 'contrabands,' coming from the other side. Sunday being a holiday, the negroes were not so readily missed, and would slip off, and then, having some old canoe or skiff concealed in the Nansemond [River], or some of the other creeks, would drop silently down in the darkness." In a scene reminiscent of an escape over East Germany's Berlin Wall, the Confederate batteries fired on the desperate slaves. The Union sailors could not offer assistance until the slaves touched the hull of the blockading ship. Tugs then transported them to safety at Fort Monroe.

The Postbellum Navy

Following the Civil War, the U.S. Navy went into decline, as did the number of African-American sailors. Blacks continued to enlist as cooks, stewards, and sailors, but African-Americans were no longer compelled to enlist in large numbers to fight for their freedom. The navy also offered little chance for promotion for blacks at that time. During World War I, roughly 3,000 African-Americans served in the navy out of a total complement of more 240,000 officers and men. By the middle of the twentieth century, however, modest changes in racial equality and the great need for well-trained sailors and WAVES gave black men and women new opportunities.

Ship's Cook Prepares a Meal 
Rufus Fairchild Zogbaum, artist
"All Hands": Pictures of Life in the United States Navy, 1897
The Mariners' Museum Research Library and Archives
VA59.Z8 O

More than just food for sailors and marines, wholesome, tasty meals are critical to maintaining the health and morale of the ship's company. Holidays and naval anniversary celebrations traditionally revolve around a properly prepared feast.

Christmas Pudding–Plum Duff
Rufus Fairchild Zogbaum, artist
"All Hands": Pictures of Life in the United States Navy, 1897
The Mariners' Museum Research Library and Archives
VA59.Z8 O

World War II

The demands for large numbers of skilled sailors and petty officers created new opportunities for African-Americans in the U.S. Navy. Thousands of young black men were trained in specialized skills at naval facilities in the Chesapeake region. A handful of African-American men and women even became warrant and commissioned officers, a groundbreaking step that opened the door for commissioning future African-American admirals.

U.S. Coast Guard, Galley Scene, circa 1945
L. Mariani, artist
The Mariners' Museum
Q 312

In the decades before the Second World War, African-Americans normally served as navy cooks and stewards, although many apparently were unofficially cross-trained in other duties. In this galley sketch, African-Americans are preparing meals for hundreds of hungry servicemen. To stir the steaming contents of these 750-gallon pots, the Coast Guard relied on canoe paddles.

Two Crew Members of the USS Mason on Commissioning Day in Boston, March 20, 1944
Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration

LCDR William M. Blackford and Crew Members of the USS Mason on Commissioning Day in Boston, March 20, 1944
Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration

The U.S. Navy manned USS Mason (DE 529) with a mostly black complement of officers and men. Built in Boston, the Mason served on Atlantic and Mediterranean convoy duty, with ports in New England and Norfolk. To honor the naval contributions of the crew of the USS Mason (DE 529), the U.S. Navy authorized the construction of a new warship named Mason (DDG 87).

HAMPTON ROADS PORT OF EMBARKATION

During World War II, the Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation (HRPE) was an awesome military logistical complex that processed outward-bound troops, vehicles, munitions, and supplies. The facility also received Axis prisoners and Allied wounded. Many African-American soldiers under the supervision of white officers were assigned to segregated units. Black civilians provided much of the labor needed to make the Port of Embarkation a success.

Soldiers Assigned to the HRPE Receive Instructions on Handling Explosives, 1943
Gelatin silver print
The Mariners' Museum, HRPE Collection
C 3310

Handling munitions was a dangerous and thankless task. A 1944 explosion at a naval installation at Port Chicago near Sacramento, California, killed more than 300 sailors, most of whom were African-American. Following the disaster, some black sailors refused to return to work. The navy charged them with mutiny. The sailors responded that they were overworked and poorly trained. Eventually, however, most returned to their assignments.

HAMPTON UNIVERSITY

The demands of World War II resulted in new careers for many African-Americans. To meet the need for skilled workers, the Department of the Navy and Hampton Institute (now University) formed an educational alliance. The alliance established the "training of mechanical specialists for the U.S. Navy, in the first training program for Negroes in America's history." Black sailors received training as quartermasters, shipfitters, carpenters' mates, cooks, machinists, coxswains, yeoman, and signalmen. Prior to the war, blacks had served as seamen, cooks, and stewards. From January 1943 to 1945, more than 4,100 sailors graduated.

Motor machinist school graduate Adolph W. Newton recalled that the "people of Hampton were so pleased that the Navy had chosen Hampton Institute as a service school that they gave all Navy personnel stationed there the key to the town. This meant that we Negro sailors, wearing the gold service-school S on our uniforms, could go anywhere in the town. This freedom applied only to Navy personnel, and not to Negroes who lived in Hampton."

The Modern Navy

After World War II, African-Americans began to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. Nevertheless, by the 1960s and 1970s, the broader issues of civil rights were reflected in racial tension among the navy's ranks. Since then, the navy has made efforts to confront issues concerning race. In the twenty-first century, African-Americans serve in every capacity in the United States Navy. From admirals to astronauts, all fields and specialties are opened to young African-American men and women. Future African-American leaders in the naval services are training at Hampton University, Norfolk State University, and the United States Naval Academy. These young men and women will earn commissions in the United States Navy or United States Marine Corps upon graduating.

Midshipman Wesley A. Brown, circa 1949
Courtesy of U.S. Naval Academy Museum

Beginning in the 1870s, African-Americans were accepted sporadically into the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. However, because of discrimination, alienation, and poor preparation, none of these black midshipmen graduated. In 1949, Wesley A. Brown became the first African-American to graduate from Annapolis.

Waters to Work

There is no major commercial venture associated with the Chesapeake Bay that has not involved the labor, skills, and ingenuity of African-Americans. Blacks of all ages, women and men, enslaved and free, have toiled for more than three centuries on and along these waters. African-American oystermen, canal diggers, coopers, crab pickers, pilots, cooks and waiters on steamboats, stevedores, cullers, cart men, oyster shuckers, fish mongers, boatmen, watermen, caulkers, riveters, welders, metal workers, sawyers, ferrymen, ship carpenters, and boatbuilders have all made vital contributions to the economy of the Bay region. The Bay has also been a source of sustenance, financial independence, and varying degrees of freedom for African-Americans. The seasonal bounty of the waters allowed slaves and working class African-Americans to provide nourishment for their families.

"We used to catch oyster and fish nights, and hire other slaves to peddle them out on Sunday mornings. By this way I have helped some to get their freedom." G. W. Offley, former slave of Centreville, Maryland

"…the pot was swung from the fire and the children squatted around it, with oyster shells for spoons." James L. Smith, former slave of Virginia

Shipwrights and Boatbuilders

Skilled black laborers and craftsmen toiled in the boat and shipyards. In the mid-1700s, most white shipwrights of Norfolk owned slaves to whom they taught the shipbuilding trades. Ironically, slaves probably helped construct sloops involved in the trade of slaves and goods between Chesapeake and the West Indies. They may have built vessels such as the Charming Betsy, destined for the African slave trade.

Blacks dominated the caulking trade in the early half of the nineteenth century in Norfolk and Baltimore. Frederick Douglass was among their number. White laborers offered competition, and the two factions clashed. In one brawl, Douglass was seriously injured. Nevertheless, African-Americans continued the trade as long as there were enough wooden vessels on the Bay that required their care.

" Frederick Douglass was sent to Baltimore to work in the shipyards of Gardiner. Here the workers were Negro slaves and a poor class of whites. The slaveholders caused much friction between the two groups. It was in one of the many brawls here that Douglass almost lost an eye. Douglass had become a master of his trade, that of ship caulker. Seeing no reason why at the end of the week he should give his complete wages to a man he owed nothing, again he planned to escape."

http://www.marinersmuseum.org/sites/micro/waters/work/work07.htm

Recordings:

"I'm Not Paying for Them Singing," A Caulker's Oral History, 1980
Lee Wynn, speaker
Courtesy of the Blue Ridge Institute and Museum of Ferrum College

"Come Along Down," Working Song 
Virginia Work Songs, 1983
Courtesy of the Blue Ridge Institute and Museum of Ferrum College

African-Americans plied their trade as caulkers into the middle of the twentieth century, when steel-hulled ships no longer required such maintenance. When work was plentiful, the caulking trade paid well. Listen as Lee Wynn recalls an old humorous story about caulkers and work songs at the Colonna Shipyard in Norfolk. The story is followed by John Mantle leading four former caulkers in "Come Along Down."

Booker T. Washington, circa 1900s
Courtesy of Hampton University Archives
In the early 1900s, African-American migration intensified as racial prejudice, Jim Crow laws, and lynchings in the South led them to hope for a better life up North. Homer Ferguson of Newport News Shipbuilding was concerned about the mass departure of black employees. As a way of improving life for blacks, Ferguson converted a YMCA building for African-Americans on Madison Avenue in Newport News. In 1912, Ferguson also arranged for Booker T. Washington to address all shipyard workers. Washington encouraged African-Americans to remain in Tidewater.

The silent film The Art of Shipbuilding (1930-1931) documented the construction of the Dollar Line's President Coolidge and President Hoover at Newport News Shipbuilding. Segments from the multipart production illustrate how African-American foundry workers, laborers, riveters, and caulkers provided much of the hard work and skill required for the construction of these passenger/cargo vessels. At the time of their launching, the presidential pair were the largest two liners built in America.

Y. B. Williams, circa 1980
Courtesy of Newport News Shipbuilding

African-Americans are now in management, professional training, and engineering positions at the Newport News Shipyard. One of the more prominent individuals in recent years was Vice President of Community Affairs Y. B. Williams.

A Cylinder Is Lowered into Place on the Aircraft Carrier USS Harry S. Truman, 1997
Courtesy of Newport News Shipbuilding