New York · Cuba · Jamaica · Colón · 1919–1925
Port 06 · MemorySeason one, docked
Arrived1 Nov 2026
Led by Dr. Jewell Ruth-Ella Humphrey. An introduction to Marcus Garvey, the Black Star Line and the legacy of the UNIA. Nothing is graded. Pick what calls you.
Before week one, read: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Langston Hughes ↗ (first printed in The Crisis, June 1921).
The last Sunday ran almost two hours, with about twenty people at the peak, the biggest room of the series. They checked in from Jamaica, Trinidad, Panama, Puerto Rico, Belgium and across the U.S. and Canada, with roots in Uganda, Ghana, Ethiopia, Haiti, Brazil and Venezuela: the Black Star Line’s map, still in use. Dr. Humphrey followed the Black Star Line past 1925, to Kwame Nkrumah’s Black Star Line of Ghana in 1957, then played the music that carried Garvey forward, from the Universal Ethiopian Anthem to Bob Marley. Our guest, Alexx A-Game, born in St. Ann like Garvey and Marley, told us about growing up reciting Garvey’s words and writing “Rise Up Now.”
“We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery, because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves might free the mind. Mind is your only ruler.”
Marcus Garvey, “The Work That Has Been Done,” Sydney, Nova Scotia, 1937. The line Bob Marley carried into “Redemption Song.”
“Universal Ethiopian Anthem,” and the 1924 Black Star Line anthem
“Black Star Line,” Brand Nubian · “Unbroken,” Bizwe C
“Redemption Song,” Bob Marley · “Rise Up Now,” Alexx A-Game
Yarmouth 1919 and 1920, Kanawha 1921, Booker T. Washington 1925, and the Phyllis Wheatley line to Liberia that was never sailed. Open the full interactive to play each voyage, toggle the circle between the plan and what happened, and move the what-if dials.
The 1921 brochure prints “Capital Stock $10,000,000.” The federal indictment says the line began in June 1919 with $500,000 in capital and raised it to $10,000,000 on 22 December 1919. That number is authorized capital: the most stock the company was allowed to sell. It is not money raised.
| Shares | At $5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Ceiling, June 1919 | 100,000 | $500,000 |
| Ceiling, Dec 1919 | 2,000,000 | $10,000,000 |
| Actually issued by Aug 1921 | 151,430 | $757,150 |
About 7.6% of the ceiling was ever sold. The first ship alone cost $171,500, a third of the old ceiling, so the old limit was about to pinch. In Delaware a board vote and a filing raised it, with no financial statements required. Du Bois made that point in The Crisis, January 1921. Still open: the board’s stated reason. The Delaware filing and Hill’s Garvey Papers, Vol. II, should hold it. Watson dates the change to 14 February 1920, with a new name, Black Star Line Steamship Corp.
Mail-fraud indictment, U.S. v. Garvey et al., C 33-688, p. 1 (National Archives) · Milton H. Watson, “Black Star Line,” Steamboat Bill, pp. 264–67 · Du Bois, The Crisis, Jan 1921, as quoted in Garvey’s 1923 petition in the same file · NMAAHC broadside, “Capital Stock $10,000,000”
Jeffrey D. Howison, “‘Let Us Guide Our Own Destiny’: Rethinking the History of the Black Star Line,” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 28, no. 1 (2005): 29–49
Natanya Duncan, “‘If Our Men Hesitate Then the Women of the Race Must Come Forward’: Henrietta Vinton Davis and the UNIA in New York,” New York History 95, no. 4 (2014): 558–83. doi ↗
Flewellen, “Dress and Labor” ↗, and “Convention of the UNIA Parade, 1921,” Negro World