Mr. Charles Murray grew up in Savannah, Georgia surrounded by a fishing community his entire life. He learned the trade, which he found easy, from his father who was a commercial shrimper and was the first African American in Thunderbolt to own his own boat. Coastal Georgia was the epicenter for shrimping and was where he, his father, and two brothers made their living. Mr. Murray was one of 10 children and joined his father’s business at the age of 16; he married twice and had children and lived his entire life in Savannah.

Scope and Content Note
Mr. Murray provides a glimpse into his life as a shrimper and recalls the changes to fuel prices, foreign imports, and regulations that caused him and many other African Americans to leave the fishing industry. During his fishing years, Mr. Murray traveled from Savannah, Georgia to Apalachicola and Key West, Florida each year to harvest seasonal catches of shrimp, spot, croakers, and whiting. He equated the process to sharecropping the ocean and shared his techniques of using the tides, wind, and the moon to increase yield. Mr. Murray recalls stopping into Cape Canaveral, Florida to watch the first space launch by John Glenn on February 20, 1962. Also in early 1960s, while in the Florida Keys, Mr. Murray traveled to Cuba in his shrimp boat to help people escape the communist country. The family’s legacy in the commercialfishing industry ends with Mr. Murray. He encouraged his children to get an education and prevented them from fishing because he knew the fishing industry was a “dead industry.”