Imperial Education – Schools on Plantation Landscapes in the U.S. Virgin Islands

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Global Archaeologies of the Long Emancipation", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Structures built by Black hands to withstand hurricane-force winds and the brutalities of African enslavement are still standing, scattered across rolling hills, valleys, and urban centers on the island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. On these landscapes, many structures are either left in ruins or renovated over time for continual use, making encounters with the colonial past a quotidian experience for residents. As a result, linear temporal distinctions of past, present, and future are called into question on St. Croix, where colonial structures act as ruptures in conceptualizations of time and serve as palimpsestual reminders of the past. Highlighting schools where classrooms, libraries, and playgrounds were built into historic windmills and sugar factories – the most labor-intensive and dangerous areas for Black bodies in the past – this presentation looks at the construction of present-day schools on plantations as sites of rupture during the Long Emancipation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• Global Archaeologies of the Long Emancipation

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow