Aquatint depicting ship building scene with figures in lower left.

Dox Thrash was one of many American artists working for The Works Progress Administration (WPA)—a New Deal program established in 1935 to provide jobs during the Great Depression. The Federal Art Project was a component of the WPA, and ran from 1935 to 1943, employing up to 10,000 artists and craft workers to create art for public spaces. The FAP encouraged artists to create uplifting images for a nation struggling through WWII and economic challenges. Shipfitters was one of the patriotic images produced by Thrash to celebrate Black workers and dignify manual labor.

Shipfitters also connects Thrash to the time he spent working for the Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Company in Chester, PA. During World War II, it participated in the U.S. Government's Emergency Shipbuilding Program. At the height of its operation in the Second World War, the Sun campus was the largest shipyard in the world, employing some 40,000 workers. Thrash join the Sun Shipbuilding Company after beind denied an insignia painting job with the Civil Defense sector.