Labor+Revolt+of+1878

The history of the Virgin Islands is not all that unlike the history of the mainland United States. One of the instances where the history of the two collide involves slavery. Slavery occurred both on the mainland United States and in the Virgin Islands. In both instances, the emancipation of slaves did not mean complete freedom to operate as equal human beings in the society that both groups lived in. After the establishment of the 13th Amendment in the United States, blacks faced the Black Codes, a set of laws established in order to encode the racial hostilities of whites into law. This set of laws reinstated the slave-master relationship that had been established during slavery between blacks and whites. This is another point at which the history of the Virgin Islands is similar to that of the mainland United States. Before talking about this history, it is first important to give its background. The occupying of the Virgin Islands by Europeans initially started with the Danish. King Christian V created the Danish West India and Guinea company in order to facilitate colonization and slave trading. From this emerged the colonization of the Virgin Islands. The Virgin Islands was governed by the Colonial Council for Danish West Indian possessions. This council was made up of a "Governor-General, the Governor's secretary, planters (more representation than other), procurator, paletimester, commandoure captain, (and) pastors and judges" (Clifton, 1960). According to Clifton this council managed "all the affairs of the colony, i.e. immigration of labor, inter-island trade, maintenance and sanitation, disease control, general financial matters, taxation, medical attention, military expenditure, post office, transportation and maintenance of the "unfree"" (Clifton, 1960). This government moved to reestablish the "slave-master" relationship that existed during slavery. The Labor Act of 1849 made it so that blacks in the Virgin Islands were put at the lowest rungs of society. It determined wages, duration of employment, occupation, and work days and hours for workers. This Act established extreme skin color stratification and meant that whites had the best jobs (first class), mixed raced people had the second best jobs (second class), and dark-skinned blacks had the very worst jobs (third class). The dark-skinned blacks at the lowest jobs in society only earned five cents a day, which was subject to a five cent deduction per day for board and food cost. This effectively meant that blacks had no upward mobility in society. After emancipation many work stoppages, strikes, and acts of civil disobedience occurred throughout the years. Starting around 1867 there were waves of natural disasters and crop failures that caused plantation owners to lower wages for field workers, which were already nearly non-existent for blacks. The Labor Revolt of 1878 started on October 1st, Contract Day (a day of celebration on the hills of contract renewal), with the rumor of police brutality against blacks and the rumor that passport issuance for blacks would cease. The "Fireburn" Revolt was orchestrated by field workers who were revolting against plantation owners. The goal of the revolt was to secure better social conditions for blacks, and to challenge the authority of the white legal establishment on the island. The Labor Revolt of 1878 accomplished a couple of important feats: it improved the quality of life for working people, it made it so that work contracts were no longer enforced on an annual basis, blacks were able to by land at reasonable prices, and labor unions were formed. The Fireburn was arguably more important than the emancipation of blacks by the Virgin Island government, because it provided blacks with the freedom that was absent during the duration of the Labor Act.