Exhibit highlights blacks in maritime history

This is the kind of history Bart Poindexter wants his students to learn.

"This is going beyond cotton fields, slavery, the Civil War," said Poindexter, a teacher at the Paul Robeson High School for Human Services. "This is something else. This is something they need to know."

Poindexter was part of a group of local teachers invited the other day to Black Hands, Blue Seas (BHBS), an exhibit at the Independence Seaport Museum that chronicles the legacy of black seamen.

Billed as "the untold maritime stories of African Americans," the exhibit, which will be at the museum through March, looks beyond the familiar reference points of slavery and the Middle Passage to focus on tales of naval heroism, seafaring adventure and social activism.

Much of the content of the exhibit is not widely known. "Everyone will discover something they did not know before," said the museum president, Lori Dillard Rech.

BHBS, which is on loan from the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut, traces modern ship workers back to West African boatbuilders of the 18th century.

And the history of black mariners - from Arctic explorers to global travelers - is full of surprises.

In 1909, for example, Matthew Henson, a black explorer from Maryland, became the first known person to reach the North Pole.

During the slavery era, many fugitive slaves avoided perilous land routes and took to the water to escape to freedom.

Back then, the sight of black seamen was common enough that Frederick Douglass, the famous abolitionist, was able to walk to the North dressed as a sailor.

"The textbooks haven't always revealed the whole picture," museum curator Craig Bruns said. "This history seems important to reveal now."

For BHBS' tour stop in Philadelphia, the Seaport Museum added local elements and introduced the concept of the Delaware River as an "underwater railroad" that delivered runaway slaves to Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

The museum also solicited contributions from several local mariners. One of them is Rod Sadler, harbormaster of Wiggins Park Marina in Camden.

Sadler's family has been sailing for generations. During the Spanish-American War, Sadler's great-uncle worked on the cook staff of the Olympia. His father spent 35 years at Philadelphia's Navy Yard. His two sons are now merchant seamen.

"I don't know what it is," Sadler, a West Philadelphia native, said of his family's tradition of maritime work. "Just something about the water."

Sadler said blacks and other minorities are underrepresented in some maritime jobs.

"I'm hoping in my lifetime, we get to see some African Americans, some Native Americans get opportunities to do stuff," he said. "And I think we will."

Boise Butler, who also contributed to BHBS, got his start on the waterfront 30 years ago packing frozen meats into the hulls of cargo ships in temperatures 10 to 15 degrees below zero.

Today, Butler is the president of the International Longshoremen's Association, Local 1291, a union with 500 members.

"It's unbelievable when I think about it today," Butler said. "I never thought I'd work my way from the very bottom of the ship to the very top of the union."

Butler said he thinks black naval history isn't discussed enough, but it's the same with other aspects of black history.

"It's just like any other thing," he said. "Whether it's the maritime industry or whether it's in school, the history, I don't think, is talked about enough."

Butler is hopeful that BHBS can help change that.

For that reason, he said he was willing to contribute to the exhibit however he could.

"Whatever I needed to do," he said, "I was more than willing."