The November commemorations of historical events in the Danish West Indies are lending a different perspective to the Thanksgiving holiday week. About 60 participants joined a walking tour of Charlotte Amalie and Savan for the annual observance of the St. Thomas Coal Carriers’ Strike.
Celebrations of the 1892 Dollar fo’ Dollar work stoppage took place on Nov. 23 — dubbed Virgin Islands Freedom Fighter’s Day. It’s a designation associated with a second historic event — the Fortsberg Slave Uprising on the island of St. John.
The 40th-anniversary Fortsberg Tour is set to take place on the Friday after Thanksgiving; participants will gather on Cruz Bay Beach before boarding safaris to view the places where the uprising spread across St. John on Nov. 23, 1733.
Organizers of the Coal Carriers’ Commemoration say this year’s tour marked the 19th observance of a strike that brought seaborne commerce of coal to a halt on Sept 12, 1892. Dollar fo’ Dollar co-founders Jahweh David and DaraMonifah Cooper are among those who have worked throughout the years to make local history a vibrant and engaging experience.
“The coal industry has a long history in the Virgin Islands; it goes back to slavery days and went up to the 1930s,” said Ayesha Morris, member of the Dollar fo’ Dollar Culture and History Committee, Inc. “The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company was one of the first to start its operation on St. Thomas in the 1840s.”
Now, in addition to traveling the streets of St. Thomas to visit the sites where labor activists brought fellow workers together to demand fair wages, participants have a new way to add to the historical narrative themselves, Morris said.
Since 2023, the Culture and History Committee has collaborated with a London-based museum — the Postal Museum — that displays artifacts tied to the coal industry. Some of the materials that made their way by ship to St. Thomas originated in the United Kingdom, organizers say.
Images of Caribbean coal carriers believed to be from the Danish West Indies are among the artifacts. Through the collaboration, reproductions of those images turned into postcards were distributed at the Saturday history tour.
“The intention is to have people reflect on the legacy of the coal workers and their lives,” Morris said. “There’s a space where they can write in a caption that describes the photograph, and then they can write about why it’s important to preserve Virgin Islands culture.
They are invited to do so by writing on the back of the postcards and sending them back to the London museum. Some will be selected to appear in an exhibit planned for spring 2025.
The rest, Morris said, will return to St. Thomas, where the Dollar fo’ Dollar Committee will set up a display of their own. About 60 postcards were distributed at Saturday’s event.
A special effort is underway to encourage the territory’s children to join the postcard campaign. In mid-November officials at the Virgin Islands Education Department distributed flyers encouraging students and personnel to join history tours on St. Thomas and St. John. “This Freedom Day, the Dollar fo’ Dollar Culture & History Tour in St. Thomas, and the 40th commemoration of the St. John Rebellion at Fortsberg will bring these stories to life,” the announcement said.
Efforts by organizers, tradition bearers, and scholars to stage living classrooms for V.I. history are acknowledged by the territory’s tourism leaders. Assistant Tourism Commissioner Alani Henneman suggests efforts like these augment the allure of sun, sand, and sea by adding the element: history.
“Promoting the territory is most efficient when the private sector supports our mandate to advertise our beautiful islands. Our department cannot do it alone, so we rely on our tourism peers to promote the rich history and culture of the U.S. Virgin Islands through strategic partnerships that showcase our islands’ offerings to the world,” Henneman said.
