The Unwanted Sailor: Exclusions of Black Sailors in the Pacific Northwest and the Atlantic Southeast

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Jacki Hedlund Tyler, a recipient of the 2014 Donald J. Sterling, Jr. Graduate Research Fellowship in Pacific Northwest History, documents little-known Pacific Northwest sailor laws and their role in racial oppression in Oregon. Beginning prior to the Civil War and continuing past statehood in 1859, Tyler compares Oregon's early black sailor laws and Negro Seaman Acts of slave-holding states in the Atlantic Southeast. On both coasts the laws helped “legitimize claims of authority and ownership made by white inhabitants over non-white populations,” and were “linked to debates over the institution of slavery; the desire to regulate maritime trade; and efforts to prohibit the spread of ‘contagion’ in the form of racial hostilities.” This research article is an important addition to the history of black American sailors during the nineteenth century.