This helped to fund the purchase of the company's first ship – the 1,452grt British-built passenger/cargoship Yarmouth – in June 1919. Through his leadership of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), Garvey raised more than US$800,000 to set up and run the BSL by selling shares at $5 a time. As one of his supporters noted: 'Nations and people never rose to power without ships.'Ī leaflet encouraging investment in a new Black Star Line ship led to the prosecution of the company’s founder, Marcus Garvey.

In launching the BSL, Garvey hoped it would not only provide good jobs for black seafarers and discrimination-free travel for black passengers, but also lay the foundations for a global black economy, based on fair trade to and from Africa, North and South America, the Caribbean and the rest of the world. This year marks the centenary of the sad collapse of the original Black Star Line (BSL) – an ambitious attempt to establish a shipping company collectively owned, operated, crewed and funded by people of African descent.įounded in 1919 by the civil rights leader Marcus Garvey, with a carefully chosen name echoing the British transatlantic shipping operator White Star Line, BSL was intended to serve as an integral part of the pan-African movement to end colonial oppression and economic exploitation of black people.

100 years after it founded, a shipping company founded by a civil rights leader to provide jobs for black seafarers continues to fascinate.

Black star of india