Black Whalers

FAIN: ZED-283940-22

Whaling Museum Society, Inc. (Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11724-1438)
Nomi Dayan (Project Director: May 2021 to October 2025)

Retention of four staff and four consultant positions and implementation of a two-year exhibition and education programming on the role of Black mariners in the whaling industry.

The Whaling Museum requests support from the NEH to support a new public-facing humanities project, Black Whalers. Support of the project will enable the museum to sustain its exhibition plan and execute a new special exhibit and programming project to explore the deep significance of whaling in African American history, a topic largely unknown by the general public. For the first time in 39 years at the Museum, the Museum will research, design, install, and evaluate a 2-year exhibition exploring and expounding on the role of Black mariners in whaling history, highlighting and bringing into perspective a significant but largely hidden time in American history for the general public. As the first integrated industry and meritocracy in US history, the whaling industry was the largest employer of African Americans, with estimates that between one-quarter and one-third of all the American whaling crews were people of color.