DOZENS OF BANNERS honoring the legacies of Black shipyard workers were recently unveiled in Marin City, marking 83 years since the first Black Americans arrived to start new lives in the town.
Marin City was founded as a ship-building community during World War II when thousands of Black Americans came for job opportunities at the Marinship waterfront shipyard.
But those who formed the community of Marin City have not really been given the recognition they deserve until now, according to the Marin City Historical and Preservation Society.
“Their story hasn’t been told,” said preservation society founder Felecia Gaston in an interview. “If you look at the narratives about World War II and the people who came to work in the shipyard, you hardly get the Black story.”
As shipyards expanded rapidly on the West Coast during World War II, so did the demand for labor. Millions of Black Americans bought one-way tickets during the Great Migration to West Coast cities like Oakland, Richmond, Alameda, and Marin City, where shipbuilding jobs were becoming available, according to the preservation society.
On Aug. 13, 1942, the first African Americans from the South arrived in Marin City, drawn by the opportunities to take up better-paying jobs at Marinship and escape Jim Crow segregation.
The names and faces of about 50 Black Americans who first came to Marin City are each visible on banners that have been placed on light posts along Donahue Street near the Marin Gateway Shopping Center. They have also been hung on light posts located along Drake Avenue and Cole Drive where wartime housing was rapidly built to house 6,000 Marinsip workers.
Artist James Shields illustrated the faces against blue, pink, green, and yellow backgrounds. A quote said by each person is also written on the banners, helping bring them to life.
A celebration of history
Wednesday’s unveiling was accompanied by a celebration with about 100 people. A historic bus from the 1940s, similar to the ones that the thousands of Black Americans would have taken to get to Marin City from the South, was also on display.
Pauline Offord attended the celebration to honor her father, Lincoln Simpson, who came to Marin City from Illinois to work at Marinship. She was overwhelmed with joy to see the banners because they represent the stories of the people who built the community where she was raised.
“Marin City has a long history of struggles. People have come and gone, but the emphasis has always been on community,” she said in an interview. “People were intent on staying here and being together, primarily because they weren’t able to go anywhere else in the county. They stayed and they were resilient in their efforts.”
While the unveiling of the banners was a celebratory day, getting the banners up has not gone without hiccups.
The size of the banners, Gaston said, are too small for the large lamp posts along Donahue Street. The small banners were placed high on the tall poles, making it difficult to read the them.
“For the banners in public housing, those poles are smaller,” Gaston said. “But when I got them, I realized that the poles here are bigger. So we’re going to raise some more money and order larger banners.”
Within the neighborhood of public housing, the vibrant banners stood out among the beige apartment housing projects built in the 1960s.
“Marin City has a long history of struggles. People have come and gone, but the emphasis has always been on community.” Pauline Offord, daughter of former Marinship worker Lincoln Simpson
One of the banners placed at the top of a rusted lamp post features the face of Austin Thompson, who came to Marin City to rebuild a new life working at Marinship.
His quote reads, “I wired ships by day and studied blueprints by night. At Marinship, I didn’t just run cables — I helped power a future.”
For Gaston, getting the commemorative banners erected throughout Marin City is one step in a larger effort to keep the history alive of the town’s creation.
“We want to tell the history, the Black history, because we don’t want their stories to be erased,” Gaston said.