Black Star Line

CTL-E-6039 · Organization · other · 1919-1922

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07263 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6039.

The Black Star Line was the steamship company Marcus Garvey and fellow members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association incorporated in Delaware in 1919, naming it in deliberate counterpoint to the White Star Line. Financed by five-dollar shares sold at UNIA meetings and through the movement press, it was meant to carry goods and passengers between Black communities in North America, the Caribbean, and Africa, and to stand as visible proof of Black commercial capacity. Its first ship, the Yarmouth, intended for renaming as the Frederick Douglass, sailed with a Black captain and crew, and two further vessels followed in 1920. The enterprise was undermined by overpriced, worn ships, costly repairs, inexperienced management, and federal investigation; operations were suspended in 1922, and Garvey's later mail-fraud conviction grew out of its stock promotion. As a business it failed, but as a symbol of Black economic self-determination it endured far beyond its short operating life.

The record

• Also known as: Black Star Line, Inc., The Oceanic Steam Navigation Company (Black Star Line)

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 3 — 747 Program, Wave 10; third Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Black Star Line entity in the live graph at 3,683 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-6039 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — corpus scan tail tranche, ranks #1401–#2050 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #1600). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — The UNIA's flagship commercial venture and the economic engine of Garveyism; the Chicago UNIA divisions already in the graph (CTL-E-0359, CTL-E-0419, CTL-E-0496) sold and promoted the movement this line embodied. National and diasporic scope, homed through Garvey CTL-E-0339. Vital status: Not a person. Organization defunct: operations suspended 1922; a successor, Black Cross Navigation and Trading Company, operated into the mid-1920s (Wikipedia). STATISTICS (sourced, dated): CONFLICT SHOWN, NOT BLENDED: incorporation date is June 26, 1919 in the Smithsonian broadside text, but June 27, 1919 in Wikipedia. Capitalization is likewise two figures at two dates: a $500,000 maximum at incorporation (Wikipedia), against $10,000,000 capital stock printed on the ca. 1921 Smithsonian broadside, after a board vote to raise capitalization (Wikipedia). Shares were $5 each in both accounts. MEDIA: photo HELD (Smithsonian NMAAHC broadside for the Black Star Line, object 2009.9.9 (ca. 1921; No Known Copyright Restrictions per the Smithsonian record) — clearance per CTL-PHOTO-001 still required at file level before publication named as candidate; no file-page verification in this pass); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-6039-black-star-line.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Non-place record; no map attaches at the entity layer.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map catalog (checked by name and variants), and no official/em) | audio = HELD (No audiobook excerpt or author recording with a CTL rights basis was staged in this pass.)

Relationships

• Marcus Garvey — founded by
  The Black Star Line was incorporated by Marcus Garvey, the organizer of the UNIA, and other UNIA members in 1919; Garvey was the corporation's president.
• Marcus Garvey — led by
  Marcus Garvey served as president of the Black Star Line, the chief executive office, per the corporation's officer list.

Sources

• Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Broadside for the Black Star Line, object 2009.9.9 (accessed 2026-10-16) — Black Star Line, Inc., American, 1919-1922; broadside text giving incorporation under Delaware law on June 26, 1919, Harlem address, and five-dollar shares — https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2009.9.9 (primary source · build store)
• Wikipedia, Black Star Line (accessed 2026-10-16) — incorporated by Garvey and other UNIA members, purpose of moving goods and people through the African global economy, name derived from the White Star Line, Yarmouth as first ship, suspension in February 1922, and the successor Black Cross Navigation and Trading Company — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Star_Line (build store)
• The Mariners' Museum and Park, Marcus Garvey's Black Star Line (February 27, 2021; updated 2025) — museum account of the five-dollar stock drive, the three ships Yarmouth, Shady Side and Kanawha, their poor condition, the line's practical collapse by 1922, and the mail-fraud case — https://www.marinersmuseum.org/2021/02/marcus-garveys-black-star-line/ (primary source · build store)

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Record CTL-E-6039 · Combined Graph record U-07263 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 2 mapped relationships.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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