Racism and Civil Rights

In the Fall of 1972, I was working on a shrimp boat out of Marathon, on the Florida Keys. Suddenly the Keys are astir with the unofficial story that treasure hunter Mel Fisher had found, thirty miles off Key West, one of the Spanish treasure ships which had sunk in a hurricane in 1622! Early in 1973 the word became official that what Fisher had discovered was not Spanish treasure ship, but the wreck of a slave ship. Fisher returned the artifacts and temporarily abandoned the site. One day a fellow Black worker on the shrimp boat, with whom I had discussed my collecting to expose in speeches racial material, said to me, “Jim, you know the slave ship Fisher claimed he found…my cousin and I discovered it in 1969! At first like Fisher we thought we’d found one of the Spanish ships of treasure, but finding couple sets of slave shackles we knew it was slave ship wreck.

“Before leaving the site my cousin took a cutlass handle and shackles, and I took set of shackles (bilboes) and another item both of which I’d given to my grandfather. Jim, after hearing what you collect and how you use those things to fight racism, I went to my grandma and asked if I could have back that one item off the slave ship to give to you as part of your work to reveal the terrible truth of our African American history!” In the 1980s The Henrietta Marie, archaeologically uncovered by Taylor/Fisher teams, produced 7000 artifacts!

In 1973, day after fellow shrimp boat mate had offered to bring to me item he’d found in 1969 on wreck of The Henrietta Marie, I left Marathon shrimp boat for job at Marathon restaurant (able to save more money to travel and collect, with free board and free meals.) Week into working at restaurant, former Black shrimper mate came into the kitchen with a string-tied shoe box which contained the incredible bronze statue of African American figure (7 inches high statue figure and 5 inches wide at base.). I have had many emotionally moving moments in my life, but when I removed the lid from that box, the tears filled my eyes as I stared down at that African American figure kneeling on one knee with hands lifted toward Heaven in a weary, desperate gesture of spiritual beseechment for relief, rescue from the earthly misery of slavery! I believe all the items I have collected are permeated with the history they had witnessed, but this Black figural statue seems to be representing all victims of the slave trade, beseeching us all to never forget what so many for hundreds of years had endured!

My research of the statue (which when found had wood up inside bottom which had deteriorated with out of water exposure) had finally determined the figure’s raised hands had possibly once held a wood mounted, rotating ship’s compass. Ironically, what ever the Black figure had held over years in the sea had become detached, and transformed the slave figure’s gesture into longing for freedom from misery of slavery!