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Charlotte Amalie Streets Ring with Century-Old Protest

Sept. 27, 2008 — With arms akimbo, three women, clad in white, twirled and swooped to the music of their African roots on Saturday in Charlotte Amalie, as nearly 100 people looked on.
Their performance was among the highlights of a three-hour, Dollar fo' Dollar Culture and History Tour commemorating an 1892 St. Thomas labor uprising. Hundreds of coal workers, mostly women, marched through the streets then, demanding pay in Danish currency, not Mexican silver, whose value had plummeted.
The third annual tour attracted nearly 100 participants, who gathered in Roosevelt Park at 9 a.m. and made their way up Government Hill, then down to the Waterfront and across Main Street, ultimately winding up at Market Square, once home of the steamship offices and among the stops on the protest march which culminated peacefully and successfully.
A local newspaper account from the time, re-printed and distributed to Saturday's participants, described how "the mob had reached enormous proportions, and its attitude became menacing." It wrote of men and women "wildly" brandishing sticks, then "very sensibly" desisting when they heard they would be paid "dollar for dollar Danish money as their day's wage."
Leading the parade along Main Street, and dazzling locals and tourists alike with her re-enactment of the famous leader of the coal protest, labor activist Queen Coziah, Mary Ann Golden-Christopher balanced a basket on her head, evoking the image of women who, long ago, earned a penny a load for carrying 100 pounds of coal in those baskets, hiking them up the gangplanks of cargo ships moored in the harbor.
A veteran teacher of 42 years, Christopher learned from her grandmother how to carry loads on her head. As a child she hauled well water in a pail.
Jabbing her finger at on-lookers, Christopher pranced rhythmically down the street, chanting, "I don't want no 65 cents on the dollar. I want dollar fo' dollar!" Behind her, drummers played bamboula, the West African drumming and dance that found its way to the Caribbean during the slave trade.
Saturday's tour was the inspiration of Ayesha Morris, who traces her roots to Trinidad and Tobago and who moved to St. Thomas from Washington, D.C., five years ago. Upon arriving here, she bought a guidebook and was struck by a photo it contained of a black woman, "straight-backed, firm and strong," said Morris, "balancing a big boulder on top of her head."
She began researching Queen Coziah, and after reading an account of the 1892 coal protest, "…that made me think I could make a tour out of this," Morris said.
She partnered with two friends, Dara Cooper and Jahweh David, and founded the tour, which is now supported by an assortment of local and national funders including the Virgin Islands Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Morris also took lessons in bamboula dancing from Christopher, head of the Joseph Gomez MACISLYN Bamboula Group.
Tour guide Myron Jackson, executive director of the V.I. Cultural Heritage Institute, offered glimpses into local history as marchers gathered at historic points along the way, including the Seven Arches Museum, once home to Fermin Corneiro, president of the then-St. Thomas Savings Bank.
Corneiro's financial practices made him a "controversial" figure in the late 1800s, according to Jackson. His bank was a repository for the failing Mexican currency.
Lessons from the tour resounded with some University of the Virgin Islands social science students who participated Saturday.
"I'm in the process of learning Virgin Islands culture," said Laura Valerio, a freshman who hails from the Dominican Republic. "And it reminds me of my own roots, from Africa. I found a link between their culture and mine."
Freshman Carmen Figueroa said she plans to revisit the stops she made along the way when she has more time to absorb them.
"We see these things every day and pass them every day, not knowing what they are about. It's really important to us," she said.
Figueroa, like most of those who joined the march Saturday, was wearing white, a sign of unity and purity in Africa, according to tour co-founder Cooper. "We wear white to pay respect to the elders," she said.
Saturday's march was dedicated to Ruthie Dean "Dino" Joseph, a holistic healer and owner of As a Matter of Fact Wellness Center on Education Street, who died earlier this year.
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