Garvey founded the shipping company Black Star Line
UNIA also began selling shares for a new company, the Black Star Line, from 56 West 135th. The Black Star Line took its name from the White Star Line to challenge the white dominance of the maritime industry. Garvey envisioned a black-owned, black-staffed, and black-consumer shipping and passenger line sailing between Africa and the Americas. He believed the project could be launched by obtaining $2 million from African-American contributors and publicly announcing that any black person who did not purchase stock in the company would be worse than a traitor to the cause of beleaguered Ethiopia.
Garvey founded the shipping company Black Star Line and then set about trying to buy a ship. Many African Americans felt tremendous delight in purchasing firm shares, viewing it as an investment in the future of their community; Garvey also guaranteed that once the company began producing a profit, they would receive considerable financial returns on their investment. To promote this stock, he proceeded to Virginia and subsequently to Chicago in September 1919, joined by seven other UNIA members. He was jailed and punished in Chicago for breaching the Blue Sky Laws, which prohibited the sale of stock in the city without a license.
With increasing amounts of money flowing in, a three-man auditing committee was formed, which discovered that UNIA's funds were improperly recorded and the company's books were not balanced. Following this, there was a breakdown in confidence among the Black Star Line's directors, with Garvey dismissing two of them, Richard E. Warner and Edgar M. Grey, and publicly humiliating them at the following UNIA meeting. People kept buying stock regardless, and by September 1919, the Black Star Line corporation had amassed $50,000 through stock sales. It could thus afford the SS Yarmouth, a thirty-year-old tramp ship. On October 31, the ship was formally launched in a ceremony on the Hudson River. Because the corporation couldn't locate enough experienced black seamen to man the ship, the ship's first chief engineer and chief officer were white.
