Black Experiences that Shaped American Science & Culture

Looking back as we move forward

The Billion Oyster Project crew is busy preparing for another season of oyster restoration and STEM education. As we step back and strategize, several Billion Oyster Project team members are reading Carolyn Finney's Black Faces, White Spaces—as part of an internal book club led by Agata Poniatowski and our Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee. In her book, Finney offers this perspective:

"Our 'histories' are not separate at all, but are really just one big complicated, messy story of our beginnings on this soil. We may collectively or individually have separate ways of seeing and experiencing our history, and we can choose to claim some parts of that history and not others. But through our institutions, our policies, our changing social [norms], and beliefs, we continue to navigate, negotiate, revisit, and revise the legacy of our multiple experiences in the United States."

Join us as we revisit the legacies of three individuals who helped shape the marine, maritime, and shellfish industries.

Thomas Downing (1791-1866)

Today, oysters on the half shell are an epicurean delicacy brought in from outside the five boroughs. But before the 20th century, oysters were the quintessential food of the Big Apple.

Just a few hundred years ago, New York Harbor was home to bountiful oyster beds that fed all classes of New Yorkers. Thomas Downing, born a free black man to formally enslaved parents in Chincoteague, VA, moved north during the War of 1812. In 1819, he settled in New York, opening his Oyster House on Broad Street in 1825. Downing's Oyster House became recognized across the Atlantic. He shipped oysters to Paris and London—one if his clients being Queen Victoria! In addition to his great success as a businessman, Downing was a leading abolitionist and activist for African American civil rights in NYC. Along with his son, George T. Downing, he was part of the Underground Railroad in NYC, and founded the United Anti-Slavery Society of the City of New York in 1836. A year later, he began his tireless petitioning of New York State to pass equal suffrage for black men. Downing was responsible for helping found the first schools in the city to admit African American students. As his son described him, Thomas Downing was an “extremely active” man who “knew not tire.” Photo from New York Public Library.

Matthew Alexander Henson (1866-1955)

Born into a family of sharecroppers in Nanjemoy, MD—one year after the end of the Civil War—Matthew Alexander Henson was part of the first African-American generation to travel the world after the abolition of slavery. Henson led a singular life of exploration and discovery that would usher in the modern era of adventure that continues today. On August 18, 1909, Admiral Robert E. Peary, Henson, and four Inuit tribesmen left Greenland by ship in an effort to reach the North Pole. Experts believe that the group was slightly short of 90 degrees North Latitude, however, Henson is widely accepted as the first person to reach the North Pole, where he placed the American flag. According to Duke University, Peary emphasized that reaching the North Pole was the result not of "alone individuals, but races," suggesting that the success of the mission was the result of racial cooperation. Henson was originally buried in NYC, but was re-interred in Arlington National Cemetery near Peary’s monument in 1988. Photo from Wikipedia (CC).

Joan Murrell Owens (1933-2011)

English teacher and marine biologist Joan Murrell Owens was born in Miami, FL. Living close to the ocean, she spent much of her childhood exploring the shoreline. Murrell Owens left for Fisk University hoping to study marine biology, but historically black colleges didn't offer such a program because marine science careers were off-limits to African Americans at the time. After delaying her dream with studies in fine arts and guidance counseling, she attended George Washington University where she received her B.S. (1973), her M.S. (1976), and her Ph.D. (1984)— all in Geology. Two years later, while working with coral samples at the Smithsonian, she described the new genus Rhombopsammia and its two species. She also added a new species to the genus Letepsammia in 1994, naming it L. franki for her husband, Frank A. Owens.