I am taking the liberty of posting with the committee chairperson's approval, as this category should not remain silent in the month of February.
William P. Powell, Champion of Black Sailors
William P. Powell is credited with exposing and denouncing vicious labor practices against black sailors in the 1800s. He was one of several thousand seaman who sailed regularly from the port of New York City.

Sailors were lower-class citizens and black sailors were treated even worse. When free Northern black sailors entered a southern port, Powell wrote that they were imprisoned "for no other crime than of having colored skin."

Powell launched the Colored Seaman's Home in 1839 and ran it for a quarter century. He was dedicated to anti-slavery causes and petitioned Congress and Northern state legislatures to expose the jailing of black sailors in the south.

In 1863, Powell helped found the American Seamen's Protective Union Association, the first seamen s organization in the United States.