A Historic Fight for Freedom and Autonomy

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Speaker, I want to spend my 5 minutes to tell a story, a history story from the Virgin Islands.

This month and for the next 6 months in the Virgin Islands, we commemorate a historic fight for freedom and autonomy. On the small, 20-square-mile island of St. John, one of the earliest and longest lasting slave rebellions began on November 23, 1733. This rebellion was preceded by uncomparable conditions that slaves were living in on the island of St. John in the Virgin Islands.

Conditions were devastating. The life expectancy of slaves in the Virgin Islands never went above the age of 30 years old, and this rebellion was caused by a drought and a plague of insects that placed 1,000 enslaved people of St. John at risk of starvation.

This caused an unprecedented amount of slaves to run away, what we call on the island ``marooning,'' living in the bush. This led to the vicious and inhumane Slave Code of 1733. The new rules threatened amputation, breaking on the wheel, burning alive, and other brutal punishment for those who ran away.

This, then, led to 150 slaves, all of whom were part of the Akwamu tribe from Ghana, to begin an uprising. The Akwamu hoped to turn St. John into an Akwamu-controlled state.

On the evening of November 23, the slaves entered the fort on Coral Bay with cane knives concealed in bundles of wood. They proceeded to kill all of the soldiers at the fort. Others across the island, many who were able to escape, escaped to the island of St. Thomas, where they took word to the governor. The governor then, under pressure, sent troops, sent soldiers to St. John, who were then also destroyed.

The next 10 weeks saw guerilla-style warfare between the troops and the Akwamu rebels. Afraid that the rebellion would spread to the nearby island of Tortola, the British sent reinforcements. They were quickly dispatched and quickly rode back to Tortola.

Again, John Maddox, a privateer from the island of St. Kitts, made a deal with the Danish officials to aid the quelling of St. John. He, too, was not successful.

William Vessup, an owner of a plantation, who was in disrepute with the Danes, attempted to lure slaves onto a ship, the organizers of the rebellion, and told them that they would give them food and support if they would come on the ship. They did not fall for the trickery, and he also was dispatched.

It wasn't until the Spanish Armada and the French came that this rebellion was able to be quelled in 1734, almost 6 months later; and with it, many were jailed. Some were sent to St. Croix to work to death, which was what they decided to give to them, and many also decided not to go back into slavery and jumped off of a cliff on the island to their death--but to freedom.

These 150 Akwamu on the island of St. John were some of the first African people in the Americas to have a sense of freedom, as volatile and short-lived as it might have been.

It is important to acknowledge, however, that, for the majority of enslaved people on the islands of St. John, St. Thomas, and St. Croix, neither outcome would lead to freedom. The enslaved people on the island of St. John and the rest of the Danish West Indies would ultimately wait another 114 years for the next rebellion for their freedom to come.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source