Black Star Line

(noun)

The Black Star Line was a shipping line incorporated by Marcus Garvey, organizer of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). The shipping line was 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, which would become a standard of his Back-to-Africa movement.

Related Terms

Examples of Black Star Line in the following topics:

  • Marcus Garvey

    • He founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL), as well as the Black Star Line, part of the Back-to-Africa movement that promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands.
    • He visited Tuskegee and afterward met a number of black leaders.
    • On June 27, 1919, the Black Star Line of Delaware was incorporated by the members of UNIA, with Garvey as President.
    • By September, the Black Star Line obtained its first ship, rechristened as the S.S.
    • Run by a group called the Friends of Negro Freedom, the campaign pressed the federal government to investigate the Black Star Line.

  • The Rise of Garveyism

    • Marcus Garvey, a political leader and orator, was a proponent of black nationalism and Pan-Africanism.
    • He founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL), and also founded the Black Star Line, part of the Back-to-Africa movement.
    • Garvey visited Tuskegee, and afterward visited with a number of black leaders.
    • On June 27, 1919, the Black Star Lineof Delaware was incorporated by the members of the UNIA, with Garvey as president.
    • Convinced that blacks should have a permanent homeland in Africa, Garvey sought to develop Liberia.

  • Jackie Robinson

    • Jackie Robinson was the first black Major League Baseball player in the United States.
    • His athletic abilities prevailed despite the intense pressures caused by breaking the "color line. " Robinson won respect and became a symbol of black opportunity.
    • His impressive running speed, powerful hitting, and strong fielding made Robinson a key player on a team with many stars.
    • The Dodgers succeeded well with such black stars as Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, and Don Newcombe.
    • Jackie Robinson was the first black Major League Baseball player in the United States

  • The "Color Line"

    • The phrase "color line" was originally used as a reference to the racial segregation that existed in the United States after the abolition of slavery.
    • The introduction famously proclaimed that "... the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line. "
    • Title page of The Souls of Black Folk.
    • This book by Du Bois infamously proclaimed the problem of "the color line. "
    • Du Bois and the NAACP in combatting racism and the segregation of the "color line" in the early 20th century.

  • The Harlem Renaissance

    • In France black soldiers experienced the kind of freedom they had never known in the United States, but returned to find that discrimination against blacks was just as active as it was before the war.
    • In 1916-17, Hubert Harrison and Negro League baseball star Matthew Kotleski founded the "New Negro" movement, which energized the African-American community with race- and class-conscious demands for political equality, an end to segregation and lynching, as well as calls for armed self-defense when appropriate.
    • A new way of playing the piano, called the Harlem Stride Style, emerged during the Harlem Renaissance and helped blur the lines between poor Negros and socially elite Negros.
    • During this time period, the musical style of blacks was becoming more and more attractive to whites.
    • The Harlem Renaissance rested on a support system of black patrons, black-owned businesses and publications.

  • The Human Toll

    • "Hoover leather" was cardboard used to line a shoe when the sole wore through, while a "Hoover wagon" was an automobile with horses hitched to it because the owner could not afford fuel.
    • These immense dust storms – given names such as "black blizzards" and "black rollers" – often reduced visibility to a few feet.
    • During black blizzards, normal activities such as breathing, eating and walking outside became very difficult tasks.
    • Film star Will Rogers, who had Oklahoma roots, jokingly remarked that Okies moving to California increased the average intelligence of both states.
    • Unemployment among black workers grew to almost 50% by 1932.

  • Black and White Abolitionism

    • Historians traditionally distinguish between moderate antislavery reformers or gradualists, who concentrated on stopping the spread of slavery, and radical abolitionists, whose demands for unconditional emancipation often merged with a concern for black civil rights.
    • The abolitionist movement was strengthened by the activities of free African-Americans, especially in the black church, who argued that the old Biblical justifications for slavery contradicted the New Testament.
    • African-American activists and their writings were rarely heard outside the black community; however, they were tremendously influential to some sympathetic white people, most prominently the first white activist to reach prominence, William Lloyd Garrison [], who was its most effective propagandist.
    • Eventually, Douglass would publish his own, widely distributed abolitionist newspaper, the North Star.

  • Roosevelt, Wilson, and Race

    • After the Brownsville Affair, blacks began to turn against Roosevelt.
    • A renewed investigation in the early 1970s exonerated the discharged black troops.
    • While president of Princeton University, Wilson discouraged blacks from applying for admission, preferring to keep the peace among white students than have black students admitted.
    • Wilson and his cabinet members fired many black Republican office holders in political-appointee positions, but also appointed a few black Democrats to such posts.
    • Wilson was also criticized by such hard-line segregationists as Georgia's Thomas E.

  • Television

    • CBS 's New York City station W2XAB began broadcasting its first regular seven days a week television schedule on July 21, 1931, with a 60-line electromechanical system.
    • On June 15, 1936, Don Lee Broadcasting began a one month-long demonstration of high definition (240+ line) television in Los Angeles on W6XAO (later KTSL) with a 300-line image from motion picture film.
    • The opera was performed live on or near Christmas Eve annually until the mid-sixties when a production starring Teresa Stratas was filmed and telecast for several years.
    • Comedy stars with their own shows included: Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Burns and Allen, Jack Benny,Bob Hope, Jackie Gleason, Red Skelton, Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis, and Groucho Marx who starred in his quiz show You Bet Your Life.
    • Dinah Shore, Perry Como, Eddie Fisher, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Lawrence Welk as well as other stars had popular weekly musical variety shows.

  • War of Black Liberation

    • The Civil War is sometimes referred to as The War of Black Liberation because the Civil War resulted in the end of slavery.
    • Blacks, both slave and free, were also heavily involved in assisting the Union in matters of intelligence, and their contributions were labeled Black Dispatches.
    • She became the first woman to lead U.S. soldiers into combat when, under the order of Colonel James Montgomery, she took a contingent of soldiers in South Carolina behind enemy lines, destroying plantations and freeing 750 slaves in the process.
    • Besides discrimination in pay, African American units were often disproportionately assigned laborer work, rather than the possibility of front-line combat assignments.
    • Explain why the Civil War is often referred to as the War of Black Liberation.