Convergence of Empire: Race and Governance in the US Virgin Islands, 1917–31

With dreams of economic opportunity, working-class migrants from across the United States’ imperial reach converged in the U.S. Virgin Islands after the U.S. acquired the territory in 1917. This paper traces their encounters with “native” Virgin Islanders and each other during the first fourteen years under the governance of the U.S. Navy. It argues that this convergence was mediated through empire and, despite the naval administration’s intended-Jim Crow policy in the islands, these encounters subverted the Navy’s and mainland-U.S. racial ideologies.

At the time of acquisition, the three-island territory was flooded with enlisted Filipino, Puerto Rican, and white-U.S. mainland servicemen, mainland educators and bureaucrats, and contract laborers from neighboring Caribbean islands, particularly the British West Indies and Puerto Rico. This influx of new peoples coincided with heavy outward migration of Virgin Islanders to the U.S. mainland and other U.S. territories. The shifting population belied the supposedly straightforward racial policies of the U.S. Navy. The nominally segregated Navy did not welcome mainland African Americans, but did enlist other racially marginalized groups and colonized subjects including Filipinos, Puerto Ricans, and an all-“native” (i.e. black) Navy band. Furthermore, U.S. officials tried to construct an unshifting and homogenous native Virgin Island populace that obscured the complex and contested racial and ethnic makeup of the locals.  While trying to negotiate the gap between racial ideology and reality, military brass attempted to assuage civil unrest and arbitrate the intimate, and often contentious, relationships between the myriad parties in the territory.