“Out of the Woodlands (Standing Cabinet)” by Dennis Esquivel (Grand Traverse Ottawa-Chippewa), 2019.

Installation photo at the Detroit Institute of Arts “Contemporary Anishinaabe Art: A Continuation” with 19th c. Odawa War Clubs.

Bird’s eye maple, cherry, quilted cherry veneer, stainless steel, porcupine quills. 66 x 27 x 12 in.

approximately one third of Antigua's ships were manned by mariners of African descent (Foy 2006). this claim is largely true when extended to pirate crews in the atlantic writ large--about thirty percent were of non-english descent (though this percentile can include Indigenous Americans alongside enslaved Africans, formerly enslaved Africans, and Black Americans).

many men who voluntarily turned pirate had previously held positions as fishermen, merchant seamen, or royal navy soldiers (rediker 2004) but left due to the harsh conditions under the navy or for the desire to perhaps make more money. a theory for the large percentage of racial diversity posited by an economist is that "criminal self interest seeking produced a socially desirable outcome in the form of racial tolerance" (leeson 2009).

though piracy had a higher percentage of Black laborers than any other maritime industry, this does not mean that they had the equal treatment or respect of white sailors. they were victim to the prevailing racist social thought of the time.

we cannot know for certain how non-white pirates were treated due to the lack of written accounts of these endeavors. my research on piracy was centered on the material goods left by pirates as a way to trace stories from those who were unable or unwilling to leave written testimony

i would recommend Arne Bialuschewski's 2008 article "Black People under the Black Flag" for more on the social hierarchy of Black pirates--i would love an updated version of this article or topic (especially from a Black perspective..) but this is what I have atm.

other reading is from

Linebaugh and Rediker, "The Many Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic" 2013.

Harris and Johnson's "Excavating the Histories of Slave-Trade and Pirate Ships; Property, Plunder and Loss" 2022. This one I really recommend and includes writing from Black archaeologists and historians.