Each year, the territory’s August Emancipation Festival commemorates Aug. 1, 1834 — the day the British Parliament’s Slavery Abolition Act, 1833, came into force.
But the actual history of emancipation in the Virgin Islands was much more complicated, according to VI historian Angel Smith.
To explore the nuances of that history this year, Mr. Smith delivered a virtual presentation on Aug. 1 titled “Emancipation without Freedom: The Experience of the Virgin Islands.”
During the session, which was hosted by the VI Public Service Learning Institute, Mr. Smith explained that the Slavery Abolition Act did not grant outright freedom to most enslaved people in the British Caribbean.
“The act was designed to then move towards freedom — not to give freedom,” he said.
To that end, the law established an apprenticeship programme for formerly enslaved people.
“What the act did was it changed the status of slaves — that is, we now have slavery by another name,” Mr. Smith said. “So instead of slaves, now we have apprentices.”
Apprentices were required to work for 45 hours a week for free, he said.
The act did, however, grant full freedom to two categories of enslaved people: children under 6, and the elderly and infirm, according to Mr. Smith.
Parents had the opportunity to apprentice children under 6 to estates if they wished, but there are no records of any parent doing so in the VI, he said.
“They would rather see their children die than to sign them back up into [any form of ] slavery,” Mr. Smith said.
The historian also explained a provision in the law that he called a “red flag.”
“The act also made allowance for any of the enslaved people, during the period of apprenticeship, … to purchase their own freedom,” he said. “Now this alone tells us that if there’s an act that talks about freedom but then makes provisions for you to purchase your own freedom — [that] means the act does not give you your freedom outright.”
VI reaction
Enslaved people in the VI, many of whom were skilled workers who knew how to operate the islands’ estates, responded negatively to the apprenticeship programme, according to Mr. Smith.
“In the Virgin Islands, it is said that the enslaved people vowed that they were not going to work for free,” he said. “They didn’t see themselves working for free because they could not become apprentices because they knew the job that they were now in. … They knew the business and they understood how to keep the estate going.”
Under the apprenticeship system, apprentices provided planters with free labour, and planters were required to provide customary allowances such as housing, clothing, medicine and provision land, according to Mr. Smith.
But he also gave some examples of what these allowances meant in practice.
“When we say, ‘Give them housing,’ in some cases the planters would say, ‘Well, you need a house: There’s material; you can go cut wood; you can do this; you can do that.’ The enslaved people were building the houses for themselves; they were maintaining the houses themselves,” he said.
The provision of clothing, he added, “meant that they gave them about two yards of cloth every year.”
Though such aspects of life were little different than conditions under slavery, the apprenticeship programme did make some changes, he said.
One was overtime pay.
“Any time the enslaved people worked overtime, the planters agreed to pay them a reasonable rate,” Mr. Smith explained.
But because this “reasonable rate” wasn’t universally agreed, he added, it sparked controversy.
In the VI, Mr. Smith said, the overtime pay was generally one pence per hour — equal to about 28 pence (or 38 United States cents) today, according to a currency converter operated by the United Kingdom’s National Archives.
Magistrates
The other difference involved paid magistrates who were sent from England to manage the apprenticeship programme.
“The magistrates were there now to mediate disputes between the apprentices and the plantation owners,” Mr. Smith said.
Such disputes, he added, sometimes ended with apprentices being convicted of crimes including collective resistance, theft, indecent language, disobedience and others.
“The level of punishment shows that, in fact, the same types of punishment that was meted out during enslavement was now meted out to the apprentices,” Mr. Smith said.
Freedom in 1838
Before obtaining their freedom, non-field workers were initially required to work as apprentices for four years and field workers had to work as apprentices for six years, according to Mr. Smith.
Because of the lengthier requirement for field workers, he added, planters tried to find ways to force all apprentices to work in the fields.
Lawmakers, however, eventually recognised that the disparity between the two groups posed problems, according to Mr. Smith.
“Based on the issues that surfaced, they determined that the apprenticeship system would end after four years in 1838,” Mr. Smith said. “August 1, 1838, everyone would get full freedom.”
Sunday Morning Well
During the virtual session, Mr. Smith also explained some of the common misconceptions surrounding the Sunday Morning Well near the Elmore Stoutt High School in Road Town.
One common myth, he said, holds that a crowd gathered at the well on Aug. 1, 1834, to hear a proclamation announcing the end of slavery.
“Even today, we talk about the proclamation that was issued, and it was read at the Sunday Morning Well,” Mr. Smith said. “And there was a big argument at one time that, ‘Oh, no, no: It wasn’t read at the Sunday Morning Well, but it was read in the churches.’ … And then there are those persons that said, ‘Oh, no, no, no, the proclamation was read down by Peebles Hospital, because that’s where the president of the Virgin Islands lived.’”
None of these accounts is true, he said, because there was no proclamation to end slavery in the British Caribbean.
“Slavery in the British Caribbean ended by an act of Parliament, not a proclamation,” Mr. Smith said.
Nevertheless, on Aug. 1, 1834, he said, “there was a proclamation that was issued, which is the proclamation that is read every year.”
But he encouraged people to listen to the words of this proclamation carefully.
“The proclamation that was read was a proclamation that declared August 1, 1834, as a day of solemn prayer and thanksgiving,” he said. “That’s what it was: In essence, [calling] a public holiday.”
The churches were thus open, and people filled them, he said.
Residents had Aug. 1-3 off for the occasion and went back to work on Monday, Aug. 4, 1834, according to Mr. Smith.
Emancipation Service on Aug. 3. (Photo: GIS)
‘Afraid’
He also cited other evidence contradicting the story of a mass gathering at the Sunday Morning Well in 1834.
At that time, the enslaved population was on high alert and “afraid” due to the heightened security the planters had brought in, according to the historian.
Not only that, he added, but the Sunday Morning Well of today did not exist in 1834.
“From oral tradition that was handed down through different sources and also now from records that I’m unearthing in the archives, the well did not exist there,” he said. “That well was dug in the 1900s.”
