Biography

Rock Ethics Institute Faculty Fellowship Project

An Unintended Modality: Whaling and a Black Place-Making in New Bedford, Massachusetts

ABSTRACT

In the late nineteenth century, the American whaling ship served as an unintended modality of Black migration. Black immigrant seamen transformed their work in the dying whaling industry to imbue its ships with new meanings as a passport to new opportunities, identities, and communities. 

West Indians from St. Eustatius, Bequia, and Barbados bypassed New York’s Ellis Island and made New Bedford, the Whaling City, their home. This study uses Black geographies to examine their community dynamics and practices in the neighborhood enclave they lovingly named “The Lane.” The article "Black New Bedford: a Black Geographic Perspective of the Whaling City" focuses on the homemaking and placemaking strategies of Afro-Caribbean immigrants from 1890 to 1930. 

J. Marlena Edwards is an assistant professor of history and African American studies. She specializes in African diasporic histories, Black (im)migration, and the history of race in New England. She is completing her first book, Oceans Away from My Soul: African American, Cape Verdean, and West Indian Community Networks in Early Twentieth Century.

Edwards' work has appeared in the Journal of American Ethnic History and Journal of African American History. At Penn State, she is also affiliated with Africana Research Center, George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center, and was a 2021–22 fellow for the Center for Humanities and Information.

During this Rock Ethics Institute fellowship period, she will be completing final revisions on Oceans Away from My Soul and working on the article, "Black New Bedford: a Black Geographic Perspective of the Whaling City," which primarily focuses on the West Indian enclave, “The Lane.”