Honoring Around the globe Women’s Day and you may VI Background Week, the audience is highlighting three daring feminine to help you whom new Region owes a good great financial obligation. You will find still work getting done, this is exactly why we look back to get inspiration and you may support in the Virgin Islanders that have moved prior to you.

Queen Mary

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Mary Thomas, known as Queen Mary, (ca. 1848–1905) is actually one of the leaders of one’s 1878 “Fireburn” work riot, otherwise uprising, to the island from St. Croix.

Mary Thomas is out of Antigua and you can found its way to St. Croix throughout the 1860s when deciding to take work on the latest ranches inside this new island. Pursuing the 1848 emancipation off enslaved Africans on the Danish Western Indies, an enthusiastic 1849 labor laws fixed salaries and you will labor conditions for all plantation professionals and you will blocked bargaining to possess most readily useful earnings or work requirements. So it made plantation performs ugly and lots of workers registered to depart the new ranches additionally the countries, to find best requirements somewhere else. Government entities responded into work scarcity by creating it much harder in order to to possess experts to exit the islands, demanding health certificates and you will asking charges to own passports. Whenever earnings was to become negotiated on slide from 1878, brand new workers’ needs was indeed declined, and you may the severe standards to own traveling was basically implemented. This stimulated brand new therefore-entitled Fireburn riots, that happen to be called the prominent work riot into the Danish history, and you can where more 50 ranches was indeed burnt.

Because of their unique character because the a frontrunner inside uprising elizabeth is also known as “Queen Mary”. The staff selected their particular as well as 2 almost every other women, “King Agnes” and you can “King Matilda”, given that “queens” to execute ritual and you will celebratory attributes in uprising. Queen Mary is detained and you can experimented with with other frontrunners of your own work uprising. Within trial of one’s work frontrunners Thomas are sentenced so you can death to have arson and looting but had their own sentence commuted to help you lives imprisonment, and you will are moved to Copenhagen and you can put during the Ladies Prison, Christianshavn during the 1882, however in 1887 is repaid to help you Christiansted, St. Croix so you can suffice with the rest of her phrase.

Anna Heegaard

Anna Heegaard stays an intriguing profile in Virgin Islands records. This woman is paid that have improving standards towards enslaved African and you may “100 % free Coloured” people of one’s Danish West Indies regarding nineteenth century since the a result of their 20 season reference to brand new islands’ Governor General, Peter von Scholten.

With regards to the Encyclopedia of Antislavery & Abolition, “Heegard let me tell you influenced the new way to own court and you will societal equivalence for free black folks regarding the Danish West Indies.” Heegaard was born in St. Croix in the January out of 1790 to single parents named a beneficial “totally free mulatto woman” and you may a good Danish Bodies clerk. She spent my youth with her mother and you may half of sisters within the Christiansted. Heegard made use of her wits and you can appeal in order to create liaisons having St. Croix’s wealthiest and you may powerful men, ultimately crossing paths into Governor-Standard not long just after their arrival during the 1827. Because of the that point, she got by herself be a relatively prosperous lady.

Heegard while the Governor-General began appointment on a regular basis to talk about the fresh plight of the 100 % free Colored populace and you can she actually is said to keeps helped him prepare a summary of social reforms he made available to the fresh new Danish Queen, exactly who appointed a payment to review and you can would the brand new guidelines to possess societal justice to have low-whites on the D.W.I. . Reforms to your “unfree” sooner integrated – a regulated length of work-day, curtail regarding corporal discipline, forbidding of social slave deals, a reprieve getting expecting mothers, business from colleges and homes developments. Von Scholten together with worked in order to lift barriers free of charge black colored and you may coloured some body – placing them publicly positions and you will hosting racially provided public services, to provide his or her own dinner functions presided more by the Heegard. They existed as guy and you will wife for most out-of a couple of ily inside the Denmark, and finally the pair settled during the Bulows Minde House Household outside of Christiansted.