Dan Snow's History Hit - Diving for Lost Slave Shipwrecks

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

From the 16th to the 19th centuries, European slave traders forcibly uprooted millions of African people and shipped them across the Atlantic in conditions of great cruelty. Today, on the bottom of the world’s oceans lies the lost wrecks of ships that carried enslaved people from Africa to the Americas.Justin Dunnavant is an Assistant Professor, archaeologist and National Geographic Explorer. Justin shares with Dan the incredible project that he is a part of - a group of specialist black divers who are dedicated to finding and documenting some of the thousands of slave ships wrecked in the Atlantic Ocean during the transatlantic slave trade. They also unearth the history of a former Danish slave colony in the Virgin Islands and discuss Justin’s research about the African Diaspora and Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line.Hey, Assistant Producer Hannah here! A little caveat for this episode, Dan was on his way to record some exciting things for History Hit with the Royal Mint, so you may hear some rain in the background.Produced by Hannah WardMixed and Mastered by Dougal PatmoreIf you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. I talked to a brilliant archaeologist and historian on this podcast. He's called Justin Dunavant. He's a Nat Geo explorer. He's part of a specialist group of black divers dedicated to finding and documenting lost shipwrecks across the world. And he is taking part in a National Geographic project to map some of the thousands of slave ships wrecked in the Atlantic Ocean during the transatlantic slave trade. We talked about the wrecks he's uncovering. We talked about some of the other bits of history he's doing. He jumps around this guy. We talked about the Black Star lines. You're going to love that. The lost slave ships. It is exciting stuff. It's maritime history, folks, but not as you know it. The's all over the national geographic channel and website

and everything so i'm sure you've seen that but if you want to go and check out the podcast series called into the depths we can listen more about the entire journey i should say justin is an assistant professor at ucla he teaches about the african diaspora that's a wide remit so we talked about as i say the black star lights amazing shipping company set up by black businessmen in North America. We also talked about slave colonies in Virginia, one of the last places that enslaved Africans were taken before the trade was banned, and looking at Danish colonies as well. He's the founder of the Black Archaeologist Society. He worked out that only 1% of archaeologists in the US are black, and he's working to change that fascinating stuff total legend great time on the podcast in this podcast we refer to the wreck in the great lakes from the tuskegee airman plane the black

american pilots who fought during the second world war you may remember that episode i talked to that wonderful tuskegee veteran all the most remarkable interviews done in the last year so please go and check that out best place to do it is history hit TV. It's our digital history channel. It's like a Netflix for history, but it's got audio and TV on it, and it's growing all the time. Sorry, Netflix, but that's how it is. So we've got more and more subscribers joining us, which is great. If you head to the link in the notes on this podcast, you click on that, you get taken there, you get two weeks free if you sign up today. So in the meantime, folks, here's the very brilliant Professor Justin Donovan. Enjoy.

Justin, thanks so much for coming on the show, buddy. Yeah, thanks for having me. This is an extraordinary piece of work you're working on with the physical artifacts, the physical wrecks of the slave trade. Give me a sense of how many enslaved African people, but also how many ships were applied that route over what, three, four hundred years? The transatlantic slave trade was probably one of the most extensive trades in human

history, and it can't be understated. Oftentimes, as historians, we often have to go off of historical documents to tell these stories, and the documents don't always tell the full picture. We know from archives and from data that at least 12 million enslaved Africans were transported back and forth across the Atlantic, although the numbers could be even more when we talk about illicit trades and all kinds of other things that were happening. Of that, there were literally thousands of voyages that crossed the Atlantic from the east and west coast of Africa, as well as the southern part of Africa into the Americas. And of those thousands of voyages, I would say roughly less than 10 ships have actually been located. So there's a great need to do more research and more work around identifying some of these ships associated with the slave trade,

getting more information about how they operated, how they developed over time. And again, accounting for the fact that the slave trade existed for hundreds of years. So what it looked like in the 1600s was very different from what it looked like in the 1800s. What's the archaeology angle here, like getting to grips with the physical wreckage of these ships? The physical wreckage of these ships tells us a different story and gives us a new narrative. It's not only the ability to actually locate evidences of the ship, we find ballast stones, we find ribs of the ship itself, but it's also that memory that gets reinstated back into these communities when they're located. Oftentimes, we don't think

about the slave trade on a daily basis because we don't see necessarily how it impacts our lives today. But when we find evidence and reminiscences of these slave ships off the coast of South Africa, for example, or off the coast of Mozambambique we begin to ask more questions then around how extensive was this trade what happened to those individuals that were on board how did this ship wreck and all of these other questions so for us it's an attempt to sort of recover memory as much as it is to recover some of these stories and presumably it's super useful to check whether the physical remnants, the archaeology, ties in with what we're being told in the manuscripts and the documents.

Definitely. I mean, of course, all documents have their biases. Oftentimes when we're dealing with the transatlantic slave trade, they're written by those who are actively trying to perpetuate the trade. So we get biases in those areas. And then, you know, we have illicit trades that are happening as people try to avoid taxation and other laws. So we get biases in those areas. And then, you know, we have illicit trades that are happening as people try to avoid taxation and other laws. So we get to learn more information about how individuals may have navigated or skirted around some of these colonial laws. Piracy and the slave trade went hand in hand.

And there's work being done now to reinterpret some pirate ships as slave ships as they used to be. I think diving on wooden wrecks on colonial era quote-unquote pirates or this kind of early modern shipwrecks you've got my dream job there. Can you tell me about some of the wrecks that you've dived on and what those experiences have taught you? Probably most of my diving is actually on more historic wrecks. A lot of the work I do is around training individuals to map shipwrecks and getting advanced training myself to go deeper, to map more extensive elements of the wreck, and then to use advanced technologies. So a lot of those wrecks aren't associated with

the slave trade. I've been involved in searches for a slave shipwreck off the coast of Mozambique, and I've also dove on and snorkeled two Danish shipwrecks off the coast of Costa Rica. Again, a lot of those, you have no idea what you're looking at if you didn't know the background around it. But we find ballast stone piles, which are usually the bricks or the rocks that were associated to counterbalance the weight of the ship. And from there, we find anchors and ribs of the ship, and we're able to tell this more complete, fuller picture. It's really eye-opening as an archaeologist. You know, we often read about history, but it's another thing to see it. And it's another thing to be one of the few

individuals that has seen it, and then to place it in the larger context of everything that you're reading and experiencing. And now Mozambique, that's Southeast Africa. Would that have been part of the Atlantic system? Or are we talking about Indian Ocean trade and enslaved people there as well? Correct. That would have been part of the Atlantic system, but they did have an Indian Ocean slave trade. They also had an Atlantic Ocean slave trade that came out as far as Mozambique. And part of that had to deal with all kinds of legal strictures around the British and the monopoly of the Royal Africa Company. So individuals had to go to non-Royal Africa Company territories in order to get people illegally, which led to a whole advanced trading

system from Madagascar to Mozambique to South Africa coming into the Americas. It gets complicated. Tell me about your journey into doing what you do. You didn't set out to be an archaeologist from being a kid, did you? Oh, no, not at all. I was one of those people who started out as a business major in college and realized very quickly I wanted to be sort of in the bush rather than in the trading floor. So I switched my major to history and anthropology, conducted excavations in Belize as an undergrad and fell in love with it. And from there, I just made it a point to every year go out on another dig. It paid for me to travel the world and to uncover these new aspects of history and then find a way where I can make a contribution. That's awesome, man. You're among friends here. Tell me, because when we talk

about representation in academia, the number of black professors that there are, I usually hear about that debate in the context of like angry white people screaming each other on Fox News. What does it mean to you as a young African American student, the fact that there were very, very few people of color in the departments that you were perhaps thinking about going into? What is your experience of that, you know, representation? You know, for me, it was almost like a sense of responsibility. When I talked to my professors, I went to a historically black college. I went to Howard University in Washington, D.C. So most of the students are black. Most of the professors are black.

But in the anthropology department, most of the professors were white. So when they saw that I had this interest in archaeology, they immediately tried to do everything they could to support me, which allowed me to, again, travel the world and go to all these places. Black archaeologists in the United States make up less than 1% of all archaeologists. I think the number is probably the same in Europe. There's an organization out there that's doing work to try to change some of that. And as a result of that, part of what we're trying to do is actively do research and actively train more people. We have a firm belief and understanding that as the demographics of archaeologists diversify, the questions they ask will diversify, and the types of research that will be conducted will be diversified as well. And that goes for all backgrounds. We will all be richer for that

widening of research and stories about the past. Definitely. We get a more complete history of the world and how we all fit into it. So I'm really interested in your organization, well, the organization that you've worked with, Diving with a Purpose. We were lucky enough to talk to an archaeologist there about the Tuskegee aircraft that wasiving With A Purpose. We were lucky enough to talk to an archaeologist there about the Tuskegee aircraft that was crashing on the Great Lakes. We talked to a legendary African-American pilot as well. So it's nice to connect with that organization again. Tell me what they do and your role with them. So I am a diving instructor with an organization called Diving With A Purpose. And Diving with a Purpose is a nonprofit organization based here in the U.S. that goes around and teaches underwater

archaeology skills, as well as coral restoration. And they've been working very closely with the Smithsonian Slave Wrecks Project, as well as the National Park Service and a number of other organizations in the U.S. that are tasked with this history. They've also been assisting with projects abroad in Africa as well, and really trying to get a grapple on understanding the slave trade and understanding Black history underwater. I tell people that I see Diving with a Purpose as a sort of revolutionary organization because they were founded by everyday people that were just recreational scuba divers that saw that they could make a contribution to history and then made it a point to get trained up to get the skills

and then to assist on all of these projects. So you've literally got everybody from retired salespeople to architects to literally NASA engineers that are all contributing to this project to bring this history alive. And is that the organization currently working with the Clotilda off the coast of Alabama? The Clotilda is the last slave ship to enter the United States. It arrived in 1860 when this transatlantic slave trade was outlawed and ended up in the Mobile River in Alabama. It was located

in 2019. And since then, there's been conversations and discussions about excavating it, as well as getting more information about the community of individuals who descended from people who came from that ship. The Catilda is a very unique story in the sense that it arrived in 1860, 1865, the slave trade ends in the United States, and those individuals are now free. So you have individuals who are born and raised in Africa, are only in the States for roughly five years and are now setting up their own community in Alabama, which they called Africatown. And so there's work being done in Africatown and on the ship itself. This would be the first time that an excavation would actually reveal the hull of a slave ship. Because of the way in which it is buried in the sediment,

we actually have it relatively intact. And as a result of that, this would be one of the first cases where we'd actually be able to see a large piece of the ship. That's really, really important and exciting, isn't it? Because listeners to the podcast will be aware that I was on the endurance expedition where the temperature is minus one and a half degrees centigrade. So for various reasons, the hull was an extraordinary condition. Most of the wrecks you're talking about are in warm central latitudes, if that's the right word. So wood doesn't survive that long, right, in your game? Correct. Yeah, wood doesn't survive that long.

It's not as cold as the Endurance. We do have our other challenges. It is in the Mobile River, and as a river, it is a constantly flowing river, and the visibility is very bad. So we have to find ways to navigate all these other challenges in doing this work. So you're doing zero-vis diving in the river. That's tough. Yeah, you can't see a hand in front of your face.

And when you say the ship's hold, might that extend to the area in which the enslaved people were shackled for the Middle Passage? We hear so many accounts of that, but to actually see evidence of that would be extraordinary. Exactly, that's correct. And it could be that we do find evidences of shackles and chains and other things that would have been fixated to the boat. And the lack of headroom, I'm always reading about the fact that it was a crawl space, that the people were kept in. Right, it was very tight quarters. And Africatown is still a settlement, a community? Yeah, Africatown is still a community. A lot of

the individuals who set it up, their descendants still is still a community. A lot of the individuals who set it up, their descendants still live there. It's just outside of Mobile, Alabama. So you can go there and visit. They have a cemetery. They have a welcome center that they're building. So you can really get a full picture of what the community used to be. There's also a paper mill and other factories in the area, which causes another environmental issue that they're trying to address now. Somehow you seem to have time for lots of different projects. You're obviously like superhuman. But tell me, I'm really interested in your environmental impact of slavery. It's something I'd never really thought too much about. Can you talk a bit about that?

I got into this question about slavery and the slave trade in part because of these conversations about reparations and trying to understand questions of what reparations would look like and who's asking and to what extent it would be delivered. In this process and doing archaeological work in these areas, I realized that there's a whole other environmental angle that nobody was talking about. Working in the Virgin Islands specifically, I'm excavating a plantation and a rum distillery with some colleagues of mine, and we're actively seeing some of the environmental impacts of rum production today. In addition to the fact that these islands used to be forested and they're now clear-cut. So when these hurricanes come through, they're doing much more extensive damage on these former plantation sites than they would have been if

there was a fully wooded rainforest. All of this also leads to shoreline erosion when you talk about the ways in which coral was mined, which leads to increased wave turbidity. All of this also leads to shoreline erosion when you talk about the ways in which coral was mined, which leads to increased wave turbidity. All these different environmental elements that resulted from the slave trade, from building plantations, and from the wood that was needed to actually build the boats for the trade, all contributed to this environmental issue that many people are facing today in the Caribbean and the southern United States and all over the world. And we're just now starting to have this conversation of picking out those details so that we can begin to ask what does an environmental restorative work look like

and how can we move forward in that way? The issue of reparations we've talked about in this podcast a lot, that's another angle that I hadn't thought of. So we're talking about environmental reparations as well as reparations to descendants of people caught up in this trade. That's key. It's like this wasn't just negatively impacting humans. It was also negatively impacting environments. And we're going to need a lot of research done to actually understand the extent to which that occurred. Talk to me also about Buffalo Soldiers, because this is something, I guess, because of the song people have heard about, but I don't think too many people understand it.

What were Buffalo Soldiers and how did they get that name? Buffalo Soldiers were African-American soldiers in the U.S. Army. There's sort of contentious ideas as to how they received the name. People argued that their hair reminded them of the buffalo, and so they received the name from Native Americans. Other people have argued that it was a testament of their sort of fierce role in the military. But Buffalo soldiers were a series of regiments in the military. Of course, the military was segregated back then. And as a result of that, the African American soldiers went off and did specific tasks, one being pushing westward into what is now the

United States. And the other is actually working with Teddy Roosevelt to fight in Spanish-American War in Cuba. And you have done quite a lot of research on this as well. So can you talk me through that quickly? Yeah, you know, I've done a little bit of work with Buffalo Soldiers. Part of the work I'm trying to do is just trying to do archaeology of the Black experience, any and everywhere I can find it. So when I was a student, part of the work we did was excavating a Buffalo Soldier campsite in what is now Texas. And that was an eye-opening experience because you get to learn the role of the Buffalo Soldiers in the U.S. project of expanding territory and of literally committing genocide against Indigenous people, while at the same time learning the complicated natures that Black and Indigenous people had with each other in that area. So I excavated a campsite and it was just interesting to see the ways in which at one

point it was occupied by Apache and then in other instances it was occupied by Buffalo Soldiers and the ways in which they reuse each other's materials and the ways that they have reused that infrastructure is amazing. I was struck when I was reading about your work what the relationship between these Buffalo Soldiers and the Apache would have been like. You imply there was some material exchange. What do you think you learned about their relationship with these indigenous tribes that they were there to fight?

It's a complex history in many of these ways. I think for sure we know that there was an antagonism amongst Buffalo Soldiers and indigenous people in this context. It's interesting because then when we look at history, we find ways in which Black and indigenous communities come together in cases like the Seminoles of Florida. So on the one hand, we see points where they escape slavery together, they work together, they're collaborative. On the other hand, we see how they're employed to fight against each other and literally to commit genocide. In this case of the Apache, it's very critical to understand that a lot of the infrastructure that Buffalo soldiers are using as they're moving westward are actively Apache sites.

And so as a result of that, we're looking at the ways in which the genocide is also tied to this idea of reuse and repurpose. So there was this sort of give and take that happens in that period of time. Here's the Dan Snow's history hit, folks. I'm talking to Justin Dunavant about lost slave ships and much more besides, more coming up. Did you know that the earliest condoms were made of animal guts and they were designed to be reused?

Or that beans were once considered to be an aphrodisiac? Join me, Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex, scandal and society. A new podcast from History Hit, where I, Kate Lister, ask the questions about the stuff we didn't learn in history lessons or sex ed. about the stuff we didn't learn in history lessons, or sex ed. We'll be bed-hopping around different time periods, from ancient civilisations to the Middle Ages, to Renaissance and early modern, right up to now. Listen and subscribe to Betwixt the Sheet now,

wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr Eleanor Yonaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes.

Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. So tell me about who is Marcus Garvey?

Marcus Garvey is probably one of the most central figures in the African diaspora of the 20th century. He was the founder and leader of an organization called the UNIA, or the Universal Negro Improvement Association. And he was the founder of the Black Star Line shipping company, which was in operation in the early 1900s. The UNIA had a membership of over 6 million people all over the world. And what was its aim? Marcus Garvey had this aim to really perpetuate a pride amongst people of African descent around the world. He was born and raised in Jamaica in the 1800s. And coming up in the early 1900s and late 1800s, he was witnessing and experiencing racism on the global level.

He knew that there were black people that had very little knowledge of themselves, very little interest in their history, and were constantly being told that there was no history. In addition to that, he saw a lot of the economic struggles that people of African descent were going through in the Americas and in Europe and sought to engage in some business ventures to try to remediate that. And his dream would be that to facilitate exchange within that African diaspora. Yeah, it was to link up people throughout the diaspora. He had a very clear aim that he wanted economic sustainability and independence, as well as just a better idea of self-love and self-respect for each other. And then later in his life, he had aims to actually take people back to Africa so that people could go back if they chose to. Was there a particular part of Africa? Like, was it the Sierra Leone thing? Or was it just

facilitating people to travel back to Africa in general? It was just back to Africa in general. There was going to be an attempt to get back to West Africa, although it was thwarted before it actually got off the ground. going to be an attempt to get back to West Africa, although it was thwarted before it actually got off the ground. I love the fact he sets up a steamship line, calls it the Black Star Line, I guess as a reference to the White Star Line, which ran the Titanic, of course. That's no small undertaking. How did that go? Definitely not a small undertaking. Marcus Garvey and the UNIA, they had a series of businesses. They had their own doll company because they wanted to make black dolls for black children. They had a bread company. They had a sort of healthcare

service with the Black Cross nurses being trained. And then he started this Black Star Line shipping company. As you mentioned, the Black Star Line shipping company was named after or in response to the White Star Line, of which the Titanic was the hallmark ship. And he said, you know, we as black people need a shipping company as well to rival that of the white star line. And a lot of people assume that the black star line was meant to take people back to Africa, but really the black star line was supposed to be a separate shipping company. It was shipping goods back and forth between the U.S. and the Caribbean. One of the ships was actually a ship that did a cruise up the Hudson River in New York that was really just for wealthy black elites to engage in the sort of luxuries of the boat trip. And then he had this attempt to get this ship that he was going to call the SS Phyllis Wheatley

to actually take people from the Americas and the Caribbean back to Africa. It's an incredibly ambitious idea, right? Africa. It's an incredibly ambitious idea, right? Like it's trying to embrace capitalism, which for so long had been an enemy of pan-Afghanism and certainly kind of underpinning of the transatlantic slave trade. Like he's trying to mobilize capital here, isn't he? It's a critical debate, especially during this time period. And Marcus Garvey actually ends up in West Kensington, actually in the UK for a bit, and gets into some deep conversations and conflicts in some cases with individuals like C.L.R. James and George Padmore, who are very clear Marxists, because of his ideas and his ventures. But this, I mean, just shows the diversity of conversations and thought going on in the Black

community, where you have individuals who say, we are here in the Americas and the Caribbean under this capitalist system. We have to try to do the best we can in it. And there are others that say that we should not push forward with this and we need to create an alternative system and go in that direction. So it did lead to sort of debates and contention amongst groups. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings.

Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

You hear a lot of the, whether it's in Reconstruction or, of course, right to today, it's the struggle of black communities across the Atlantic world to gain economic power. And this is him trying to do this, right? It's trying to, in a way, mirroring the great magnates of the Gilded Age, right? It's like building steamship lines and factories and enterprises. It's such a interesting take on economic power. People say in a capitalist structure, power derives from economics and from politics. And so this was one attempt at getting at that. There was also accounts that these ships, many people had never seen a Black-owned shipping company before.

So as one of the first of its kind, when they would pull into port, especially in Black communities, people would flock from all over the island or all over the community to come and witness this Black shipping company with a black captain with black crew coming into port. So it was also this sort of attempt to, again, build better self-awareness and this idea that we can really be able to engage in anything that we all so choose. Now, this became very detrimental to the United States. And J. Edgar Hoover, who many people might know as association with the FBI here in the United States, really took it to task to try to take down this organization. And that's when you lead into a whole bunch of scandal and controversy.

Were there challenges around building those organizations? The skills required? Had these people been denied access to these kind of jobs before? Was there an element of training or whatever that had to take place? So this organization came about after World War I. So there were some individuals that were trained as boat captains through that experience. And some of these ships were actually decommissioned World War I ships as well. So all of those things factored into how this organization came about. In addition to that, you have, like I mentioned

earlier, there's conflicts that arise amongst people in terms of who has control over the shipping company, what they're going to ship, where they're going to go, finances. There was arguments that the ships that were purchased were not in the best condition. And so essentially they got ripped off. And so people were complaining about that as well. And then malfunctions were known to be typical. Some have argued that the malfunctions were actually sabotage as well. And attempts to

bring the Black Star Line shipping company down. There is this argument that the first Black FBI agent to be hired was hired to take down this organization. And that has been documented. So there's all sorts of interesting lines to follow in this story. How did it fare? Like, how did that, did these business interests work out? It's a very interesting story. Like I mentioned earlier, the FBI had an interest in taking the organization down. Marcus Garvey was financing these ships through selling bonds through the mail. And one of the bonds through the mail said that, you know, we are purchasing the largest and greatest ship of the fleet. It's going to be called the SS Phyllis Wheatley. Well, it turns out that the FBI found this as an opportunity to accuse him of mail fraud. And the argument was

that on the one hand, it made it appear as though they actually own the ship when they were fundraising to buy the ship. And then on the other hand, some of the accusations made about the ship itself, they said were not true and accurate. Now, the reason why they argued mail fraud was because he was selling these bonds through the mail and mail fraud is a federal crime, which means if you get arrested for mail fraud, you can get deported. So they accused him of mail fraud. It went to trial and then he was eventually deported from the United States and lived out the rest of his years between Jamaica and London predominantly. Why was this a threat to white America? You know, I think anytime you talk about a sort of autonomous black community in a country that at this time was openly segregationist and openly racist, it's considered a threat, especially when

you're talking about the amount of economic power that this could leverage. Because of that, it was also talking about the unification of people of African descent. So you had large migrant communities coming from the Caribbean into North America for the first time into the United States. And as they start to link up with African Americans and other groups from Africa, they start to build this sort of social cohesion. And I think that was seen and perceived as a real threat in many cases, because, you know, some people fly into New York City, they establish their communities. And the next thing you know, you end up in more rural spaces where they're not used to seeing Black people coming from other countries and Black people from other countries

are used to being able to do whatever they want, whenever they want, because they have some sort of social freedom. So dealing with U.S US segregation added another element and level to this whole process. I'm just astonished by this story. So there were signs of success. This could be a going economic concern. And the FBI just torpedoed the whole thing. Definitely. Yeah, they torpedoed the whole thing. And really, they did a lot of work to try to also disgrace the name of Marcus Garvey and the organization as well, which is part of the reason that the work we're trying to do now is trying to locate some of those ships and bring it back to the public memory. And this is where your marine archaeology side comes in.

Do you think these wrecks might be out there somewhere? Yeah, 100%. Somebody with lots of resources asked me the question of what would I do if I had unlimited sort of ability to do what I wanted. I said I would look for some of these Black Star Line ships. Turns out there were four ships in the fleet. One of them was actually owned by the Black Cross Nurses, which is this organization of mostly black women involved in health care. But two of the ships went down, one off the coast of Cuba and one off the coast of likely New Jersey. In addition to that, there's another anchor in New York,

which we recently relocated. So we're trying to see about documenting these ships, identifying these ships, and then bringing it back to public memory and public knowledge. It's an astonishing story. What about the ambition of returning diasporic Africans back to Africa? Many people have repatriated since. Some members who were in Marcus Garvey's organization

went on individually to go back to Africa. The individual was so influential, a lot of people don't realize it, but a lot of famous civil rights activists in the United States, like Malcolm X, had parents who were in the organization. And so a lot of them were influenced by this sort of greater grand narrative. And then today, there's a number of communities of individuals who go back. If you look at the flag of Ghana, there's a black star in the middle of that flag that is directly dedicated to Marcus Garvey and the Black Star Line and the work that they've been able to do there. No way, that's so cool. Did any of the Black Star Line and the work that they've been able to do there. No way, that's so cool.

Did any of the Black Star Line ships make it back? No, none of the Black Star Line ships made it to Africa, as far as we know. One of them, I believe, was sold for parts after the company fell, but none of them actually made that voyage back. So the company fell in the early 1920s and he was imprisoned and then deported. Correct, yep, imprisoned and deported. To. Yep. Imprisoned and deported. To what extent was this typical of African-American entrepreneurs? He's an interesting civil rights slash entrepreneur. Was he particularly threatening to the government or was this actually a typical experience across the black economy?

You know, I think this story is interesting because it took it on a national and international scale. We often hear about in the States, we hear about places like Tulsa and what was known as Black Wall Street because of all the wealth that had been accumulated in this black community and a number of black towns in North Carolina and other communities where you have wealthy communities and wealthy individuals living in these communities. And oftentimes you hear cases of racial violence occurring, whether it's through riots, through destruction of property, or in some cases, literally coming in and violently removing people from these areas. So in this case, I think Garvey's project and the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the Black Star Line were scary because it was taking this idea to a national and potential international level. Do you think it has required a generation of African-American scholars like you to uncover

these stories? Are these stories that were waiting for the people that were truly invested in them? And as you say, these were known about Malcolm X's parents were involved, but has it required people like you to really bring these stories to prominence? You know, that's a great question, Dan. I get into these sort of deeper philosophical understandings and debates around history and how we remember and when we need to remember. And as I get deeper into it, I start to learn that certain significant historical events will fall out of public memory, and then they'll resurge when they need to. We are coming up on the 100th anniversary of when the Black Star Line Company fell. It was 1922. And so now in 2022, it's 100 years later. I think

that is a significant number in the sense that we are now having to ask ourselves, what does the centennial look like in these cases? As a result of that, younger scholars like myself are beginning to explore some of these stories that we may have heard of tangentially, but now that we're coming up on the 100th anniversary, we're really actively trying to explore and dig deeper in. And what does it mean outside the ivory tower of academia? What do you think this research, these stories will mean to these communities? Why does it matter? One of the biggest things I say is the work that I do archaeologically and historically speaks to contemporary issues or contemporary moments.

After speaking with Marcus Garvey's son, he is actively on a campaign right now to get Marcus Garvey posthumously exonerated. Because he was charged with this crime and because he was deported, there is active attempts from lawyers today and Marcus Garvey's son to make sure that they clear Marcus Garvey's name and the name of the organization. That has a number of social implications, but it also then brings forth this idea

that there might be other crimes against individuals that may need to be reanalyzed. And then when we talk about issues like reparations, for example, what would it look like to give some sort of reparations to a family that was wrongfully deported in a situation that they know was stacked against them? I talked to a lot of African American, British, West Indian colleagues and friends, and they talk about the issue of kind of amassing intergenerational wealth. If you're going to take part in the capitalist economy, you have to have those

advantages. You have to, you know, get loans. People like friends and like, oh, I'm a startup guy, but my first round is going to be friends and family. Well, you know, surprise, surprise, like if your friends and family need capital. And I'm really struck now by how the conversation, of family need capital. And I'm really struck now by how the conversation, the work you historians are doing in this field makes this case almost unanswerable. 100%. And there's so many more questions that we need to ask. This is why training is so important in the work that we do in archaeology. We've got evidence and we know stories of prosperous black towns that are now underwater because city planners intentionally flooded Black communities to create artificial lakes. There's one in Georgia. There's another one in Alabama.

And again, it's this movement of displacement. Whenever there's a prosperous opportunity or a community comes up, they find ways to displace. We often have it too through gentrification, but also through this idea of building roads and highways. A lot of major highways in the United States cut through what used to be formerly black towns, from Miami to parts of Washington, D.C., and other areas as well. So we know that there are these structural things that have occurred way after slavery has ended. And I think as we go further in history and as we move along, those narratives no longer become things that happened 20 or 30 years ago. They become things that happened 50 or 100 years ago, which means we as historians and archaeologists can look at it with a new lens now.

Yeah, so that you deliberately impoverish and immiserate communities and then blame those communities for the inevitable consequences of that impoverishment. It's the oldest trick in the colonial book. of that impoverishment. It's the oldest trick in the colonial book. Wow. In years to come, you think we will be thinking about Marcus Garvey and his Black Star line, but many of his enterprises

in a completely different light. Well, you'll have rescued them from obscurity, certainly. Yeah, you know, that's the goal. Rescue it from obscurity and then see all the other names and stories and narratives that come out as a result of this. There were a lot of prominent women that were involved in the Universal Negro Improvement Association whose narratives are just now being told. The Black Cross nurses, the work that they did throughout Central America and the Caribbean needs to be highlighted. And then, as I

mentioned, there's so many other individuals and organizations that spun off of working with Marcus Garvey that I think will start to gain more international attention as we move forward. I think we'll be hearing more about Marcus Garvey and many of his comrades in the years to come. Thanks very much, dude. How can people find out more about what you're up to? Yeah, thank you. You can always log on to the Society of Black Archaeologists.

That's www.societyofblackarchaeologists.com. Some of the work I do with underwater archaeology is Diving With A Purpose. You can go to www.divingwithapurpose.org. And anything you can just Google and continue to look through as these things come up. We'll likely have more news events, more podcasts, and more radio interviews. Tell me, Justin, before I leave, what is the chance that one day you might dive or have a little search for one of these Black Star Line ships? Because that would be so cool.

Oh, it's going to happen. I anticipate the next year too. Well, stay in touch, buddy. We would love to follow up on that. That's great. So let us know how it goes. Alright, perfect. Thank you. Thanks, Justin. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of another episode hope you're still awake appreciate your

loyalty sticking through to the end if you fancied doing us a favor here at history here i would be incredibly grateful if you would go and wherever you get these pods give a little rating five stars or stars or its equivalent. A review would be great. Please head over there and do that. It really does make a huge difference. It's one of the funny things the algorithm loves to take into account. So please head over there and do that. Really, really appreciate it. you