Oct. 10, 2005 – Taking the ferry from St. Thomas to St. John has always been one of my favorite Virgin Islands activities. It is the multitude of little islands that we pass that makes me wonder whether they ever hid people trying to run away from slavery. As the boat eases over the water, I try to visualize what it was like in the nineteenth century when people like me did not even own our bodies. However, because of St.Croix's legends of labor struggle that included respected women leaders like Queen Mary, Queen Agnes and Queen Matilda, that is the place that has captured my imagination more.
So I went to St. John on Saturday, Oct. 1 to participate in the Virgin Islands Unity Rally and Peace March. The very idea of people arriving from St. Croix to give support to a beleaguered community on another island appealed to me. As a black feminist and cultural anthropologist, the possibility of learning and sharing with others in a context that engaged sensitive subjects like rape was crucial. As more and more information became available about the event, its unique importance suggested a lasting impact and lingering questions.
The more I learned about the reasons for the day's gathering, the more complicated it became. I arrived in Cruz Bay with two friends from New Orleans, and by the end of the day, I was tempted to see a certain "coming together" of many issues. For example, the fear that some St. Johnians express about being forced from their island homes and businesses is reproduced by those New Orleansians who suspect they too, have no "right to return" to their pre-Katrina homes and livelihoods. And indeed, I wondered whether the good-intentioned whites living on St. John question the benefits they receive from the structure of separateness that has developed there. (For more facts concerning the painful reality about the demographic changes on the island, I recommend everyone read "Correlates of Race, Ethnicity and National Origin in the United States Virgin Islands" by Klaus de Albuquerque and Jerome L. McElroy.)
In addition, certain clues as to how some St. John business interests viewed the gathering were telling. Many of the boutiques and restaurants that give Cruz Bay its flavor were closed. Moreover, the Visitors Center run by the National Park Service had closed its restrooms and Parks Department personnel refused to open the Women's restroom for me. Armed officers from various agencies were out in force, presumably to discourage violence. Those I approached for information were polite and informed. But all of this reminded me that I was in what United Nations terminology refers to as a non-self-governing territory, and that many of the participants in the march saw themselves as resisting increasing dispossession.
As I listened to the speakers on Saturday, I thought of places I had been to like New Caledonia in the South Pacific where indigenous Melanesian islanders feared that they were now fewer in number than the French working class "pieds noirs" who had steadily taken control of the country's commerce and who were against independence from France. It didn't help that New Caledonia was seen as a sunlit paradise for those seeking relief from harsh European winters.
In many of the former colonial plantation systems of the Americas, a joyful recognition of the shared African past and a calling forth of ancestral spirits often begin an event like Saturday's, and St. John was no exception. These ceremonies and pouring of libations prepared the hearts and minds of listeners for Mario Moorhead's forceful analysis and penetrating synthesis of the situation on St. John. After describing how difficult it was for him and the Crucians to get to St. John, given the lack of cooperation from some of the charter boat companies, Moorhead made three main points. The first was to not only voice support for "sister" Esther Frett as a victim of sexual assault, but to make her case a metaphor for the little sister island of St. John that is in trouble and thus needs help from big sister, St. Croix. In so doing, he went beyond the fact that St. Croix is the largest of the Virgin Islands, but he also enabled the Crucians to represent a heritage of historical struggle. Thus, he gave a broader context to St. Croix as the "big sister island" arriving with support.
Secondly, Moorhead assured the black and white listeners at Winston Wells Ballpark—many of whom, like I, relished his delivery of wit and bite–that "this is about the loss of cultural integrity" on St. John.
Moorhead's final and perhaps most salient point was this: We will not allow you to push us back to any state of servitude. In these three points, Moorhead seemed to me to place the concerns of the day into the context of universal human rights. Central to these rights is the notion that peace, development and equality are intertwined, and it has been these concepts especially that have enabled those whose land, resources and culture had been appropriated from feeling mentally and spiritually whipped. Like the North Star that guided slaves in the United States toward freedom, the principle of equality can be a guidepost that helps people to talk to each other and to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Though it rained during the time that speakers were addressing their issues, my friends from New Orleans and I left St. John feeling renewed. We had run into friends who welcomed us, and had enjoyed good food and good spirits. I returned to St. Thomas committed anew to the struggle for equality, in large part because Mario Moorhead gave voice to my own discontent about "good-for-nothing misleaders" in my homeland.
Editor's note:Angela Gilliam is a recently retired cultural anthropologist and college professor. She is on an extended voyage to the Virgin Islands visiting her daughter and family.
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