By Vincent Leggett and Rhys Burns
Special to the AFRO
The Chesapeake Bay has long been a lifeline, nurturing the growth of Marylanders from the Piscataway people to European settlers, and continues to provide the seafood on dinner tables today. From the colonial era to the present, the Bay and its watersheds have offered beauty, sustenance, economic growth and employment, particularly to marginalized communities.
Historically, the seafood and maritime industry along the Chesapeake has been dominated by African-American watermen and waterwomen. These individuals endured grueling physical labor and low wages to build a legacy for themselves and their families.
Watermen worked the boats and skipjacks, dredging for oysters and setting traps for crabs, while waterwomen labored in factories, shucking oysters, picking crabs and canning the products. They also worked in the kitchens of many Black-owned seafood restaurants that emerged along the Bay’s watershed communities in the early 1900s.
There are numerous African American-owned seafood companies across Maryland, but one prominent example is Crisfield Seafood in Crisfield, Somerset County.
Crisfield proudly calls itself the “Crab Capital of the World.” At one point, the city had more than 20 crab packing houses. According to Pete Lesher, chief historian at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, “In 1938, Crisfield alone produced 13 percent of Maryland’s hard crab catch.” That year, the average catch was 25,949 barrels of crabs, each weighing about 100 pounds.
Local crab houses and restaurants relied on laborers to pick crab meat from the shell. Hundreds of crab pickers, mostly African-American women, worked long hours, often 12 to 16 hours a day. The work was demanding, with high quantities of meat expected to be picked quickly, and workers were paid by the gallon.
(Credit: AFRO Archives)
By April 1938, the people of Crisfield were in dire straits. The Great Depression had not yet lifted, and about 300 garment workers, mostly women, had lost their jobs two weeks earlier when two factories closed. A town official estimated that 90 percent of Crisfield’s workforce was unemployed.
On April 4, 1938, the town’s crab picking companies cut workers’ wages from 35 cents per gallon to 25 cents per gallon. Company officials assumed the pickers would be grateful to still have jobs. Instead, two days later, 600 predominantly African-American women crab pickers went on a five-week strike. They demanded the wages be restored to 35 cents and that the companies recognize the Congress of Industrial Organizations Cannery Union (CIO) as their union. This strike brought the crabbing industry to a halt and caused ripples along the Eastern Shore.
As the strike continued, a White crowd of 100 to 300 people gathered near a Black section of town on North Fourth Street. They broke into several homes, searching for strike leaders Michael Howard and Martina Cooper, threatening to “ruin” them if found. Unable to locate the leaders, the crowd turned to Shiloh Church, where they overturned Howard’s car and set it on fire in front of the church.
After weeks of violence and significant profit losses, the packing companies conceded, restoring wages to 35 cents a gallon and officially recognizing the CIO Cannery Union as the workers’ bargaining agent. This historic strike led to explosive growth for the National Cannery Union, particularly among African Americans in the South and migrant workers in the West.
More importantly, it ensured the continued success of African-American watermen and waterwomen. Through their efforts, today Maryland watermen like Lewis Carter can still work the Bay and provide fresh, local seafood that is exported worldwide, from Europe to Japan, and to local markets.
The post From the Bay to the table: Black crabbing history in Maryland appeared first on AFRO American Newspapers.
