Honoring Global Ladies’ Go out and VI Records Month, we have been highlighting three brave women to who the brand new Region owes a good high obligations. There was continue to work becoming over, this is why we look back to get motivation and you will support about Virgin Islanders with moved in advance of you.
King Mary
Mary Thomas, also known as Queen Mary, (ca. 1848–1905) was among the leadership of your 1878 “Fireburn” work riot, or uprising, with the isle off St. Croix.
Mary Thomas are out-of Antigua and you may found its way to St. Croix regarding 1860s to take work at the fresh plantations during the the area. Following 1848 emancipation away from enslaved Africans on the Danish Western Indies, an 1849 work legislation repaired salaries and you can work conditions for everyone plantation workers and you may prohibited bargaining having better earnings or performs requirements. So it generated plantation work ugly and some gurus registered to exit the fresh new plantations and also the countries, to get greatest criteria elsewhere. Government entities responded on the labor lack by making they more difficult in order to having gurus to leave the hawaiian islands, demanding fitness licenses and charging costs to have passports. Whenever wages were to getting discussed throughout the slip regarding 1878, brand new workers’ means was indeed denied, and you can this new severe standards for traveling was in fact enforced. That it stimulated the new so-named Fireburn riots, that have been known as largest labor riot from inside the Danish background, and you may when over fifty ranches was basically burned.
Due to her character once the a chief when you look at the uprising age are called “Queen Mary”. The workers picked their and two other women, “King Agnes” and “Queen Matilda”, since the “queens” to execute routine and you can celebratory functions during the uprising. Queen Mary is arrested and you can experimented with with other frontrunners of your work uprising. On demo of labor leadership Thomas is sentenced to death for arson and you may looting but had her sentence commuted to lives imprisonment, and you will try transferred to Copenhagen and you will placed on Ladies Jail, Christianshavn during the 1882, in 1887 was repaid to help you Christiansted, St. Croix so you can serve the remainder of their sentence.
Anna Heegaard
Anna Heegaard remains an intriguing shape for the Virgin Countries background. She is paid that have boosting requirements into https://kissbrides.com/hot-kazakhstan-women/ the enslaved African and you will “Free Coloured” population of your own Danish Western Indies from the nineteenth century given that due to their own 20 season relationship with brand new islands’ Governor General, Peter von Scholten.
According to the Encyclopedia off Antislavery & Abolition, “Heegard indeed influenced the fresh new movement to possess courtroom and personal equivalence getting totally free black folks throughout the Danish West Indies.” Heegaard grew up in St. Croix in the January out-of 1790 in order to unmarried moms and dads called a good “free mulatto woman” and you may good Danish Bodies clerk. She was raised along with her mother and you can half siblings when you look at the Christiansted. Heegard made use of their unique wits and you will attraction to make liaisons that have St. Croix’s richest and effective dudes, at some point crossing pathways for the Governor-General shortly shortly after their arrival inside the 1827. Because of the the period, she got herself become a fairly successful woman.
Heegard and Governor-Standard first started meeting daily to go over the plight of Totally free Coloured population and you will she is believed to features helped your prepare yourself a summary of societal reforms which he presented to this new Danish King, who designated a commission to learn and you may would the brand new statutes getting public justice to possess low-whites regarding D.W.I. . Reforms to your “unfree” eventually provided – a regulated duration of workday, reduce from corporal abuse, banning out of public servant auctions, an effective reprieve to own expecting mothers, place of universities and houses advancements. Von Scholten along with spent some time working so you’re able to elevator traps at no cost black and coloured people – setting them publicly ranks and you can holding racially incorporated societal characteristics, to provide his or her own dinner people presided more than of the Heegard. It lived because guy and you will wife for most off a couple of ily inside Denmark, and finally the pair paid from the Bulows Minde House Household beyond Christiansted.