Kathleen Dowling’s debut book, “A Closer Look: At Emancipation 1848” brought the community out to a standing-room-only presence at the UVI Medical Simulation Center June 27.
As Dowling promised, the PowerPoint presentation was interactive. She shared information from her text on three screens, which gave the audience an uninterrupted vantage point and a preview of what to expect from her book.
Passed appetizers and beverages were a refreshing treat for the crowd.
Dowling presented the history of the event with the main characters of her research in fascinating detail. She coupled the information with personal and familial data, layered it all with photographs and incidents that augmented the events, and included each character’s story. This stimulating theme set up the discussion for “A Closer Look At Emancipation 1848.”
The questions were numerous and insightful. The answers revealed the depth of Dowling’s research and her ability to keep the audience engaged.
Question 1: What urged you to create such an awesome book of our history and culture and something that the children need now?
Question 2: Is there any way that you’re looking forward to making sure that somebody on the board gets this book to the Curriculum Center for our schools?
Answer: Question 2: “I would like to get it into the schools and I thought about even doing a workbook that would simplify the basic information for the younger children. Let us say you’re seven years old, and you just want to say General Buddhoe was born on March 19, 1820. So you make a song about that and you make a workbook about that…where the person was born, when the person died, and on what plantation, etc. That workbook could be created very easily from the work that I did.”
Answer: Question 1: “Curiosity inspired me. I was coming from that type of background where I was dealing with transcripts and records and research. That inspired me to go deeper to find out what they had to say. For example, the slaves may not have written their own information. They might not have taken a pen and paper to write, because some of them were not that literate. However, the closest I could get was their testimony, their actual voice saying what happened. When they spoke for themselves, that was just excellent for me. In many of the Danish records, you find that they read aloud the testimony after it was given. So that gave it authenticity.”
Question: “Why was he called Buddhoe? What was the spelling of his name? I read somewhere that Buddhoe was a term given to people who were leaders.
Answer: “In the Danish records there are different spellings of his name: Burdo, Buddo, Buddhue. We can also assume that General Buddhoe and Admiral Martin King came from royalty. Seriously – I’m not talking just to say that. Their DNA, their resistance to the slave thing…there has to be a royal kind of vibration going on within them – that they, themselves, couldn’t really control. And then it matured and expressed itself as they got older.”
Question: “Is there a connection in Denmark to sell the book in Denmark?”
Answer: “I was contacted by the Royal Library in Denmark. They’re very interested in receiving a copy of the book. Anything you do with Peter Von Scholten, they want it. [laughter from the audience] They’re more interested in him. We’re seeing how that can be worked out.”
Question: Which one of the La Grange’s did Buddhoe come from?
Answer: “The big La Grange. They would write the word ‘great’ meaning the big La Grange, where the old rum factory was located.”
Question: Was Anna Heegaard responsible for Peter Von Scholten freeing the slaves?
Answer: “Anna Heegaard had nothing to do with Peter Von Scholten’s decree of freeing the slaves. You’ll see in the book what really took place. She had 15 slaves. So free your own slaves and move on.”
Question: Did the Africans have access to gunpowder?
Answer: “I didn’t find that in my research. I did find that the gunpowder was in a vaulted room with the artillery. The fort was a military establishment. There could be other sources that proved otherwise.”
Dowling added, “They didn’t have any loss of life at all. St. Croix is the only place in the Caribbean that had a bloodless revolution – insurrection, whatever you want to call it. No white people passed during that time. The enslaved who were previously killed were for different reasons and on different plantations. The 17 who testified were also killed. General Buddhoe’s main intention was not to have any bloodshed. He was very adamant about that.”
Question: On both sides? [no bloodshed].
Answer: “On both sides. Yes!”
Comment: [from the audience] “Another myth…I read a story that the soldiers at the fort on St.Thomas sold the gunpowder. When there was the possibility of Court Martial, they said the roaches and bugs ate it. They had scientists in Denmark research that.” [laughter from the audience].
Question: The Africans would also be hesitant about being truthful?
Answer: “That’s why Ivan Van Sertima [Best-selling author of ‘They Came Before Columbus,’ known for pre-Columbian contact between Africa and the Americas] said, ‘ when you are putting out information, you have to check your information with three to four sources. It is critical. You must check to collaborate with someone who has something similar. I was very careful that I had more than one singular source to check my findings.”
Question: “Thank you for this beautiful work. There’s a treasure trove of information in the Danish Archives. I love the stories we’re sharing. So much of it has not been translated. What information can you share with us as to what efforts are being made by the Danish Government that would be accessible to us?”
Answer: “That’s a loaded question and a political one, too. It’s really government to government. Maybe if our government requested it, they may do it. They are doing it a little at a time. It’s been 20 years. I had to hire translators who can translate Danish to English, so I could put the information in the book. But, government to government, I wish it could be done. We have to have an archival system where we could store the information. It’s absolutely necessary. It’s a shared history; it’s ours and it’s theirs. I’m sure there are people – most of us in this room who have a bloodline connection to these people. We may not know it immediately, but when you look far enough, you’ll say, oh, yeah… my great, great grandmother…something like that. But we have bloodlines. It’s sort of a collective memory over the consciousness that we share. And that experience that they went through – it’s all a part of us.”
Question: “Are you going to write any more books?”
Answer: “I said so when I was on the show with Mario [Moorhead]. My second volume would definitely have to do with those 17 because they were executed immediately. I would want their testimony to at least be translated so I could see why the Danish Government called this a ‘Capital Crime’ and caused them to be executed immediately. So, Yes! I would at least do that.
Question: “Do you think that the Emancipation was a spark to the Fire Burn that happened 30 years later?”
Answer: “Possibly. It’s so important not to mix up the two. They are entirely two different events.”
Comment: [from the audience]. “Some people don’t know that they don’t know they’re two different events.”
“I believe that we should have a series. Look how we’re like a family here. I thought that we should have a series all along. We sit down and everyone shares their input. I think that’s a wonderful thing,” Dowling said.
Dowling invited the audience to go back a little to the history of a place off the coast of Ghana called Keta. They were also having an uprising in Ghana during that time, 1847-1848. Keta, Ghana was going through their Emancipation. Denmark owned the fort there, which was under their general possession. They locked one of the Danish soldiers under the fort. They didn’t kill him. Capt. Carl Ludvig Christian Irminger came in from the ocean on the Ornen ship. He fired on thousands of Ghanaians right on the ocean. They didn’t expect this and thousands died.
Question: “How long did it take to write the book?”
Answer: “It was about three months. I had to wait on the Danish translators to send me the information back and forth. The Danish Archives can be very complicated and very discouraging. You’re looking at a lot. I had a system. If I went to a page that had General Buddhoe more than three times, I wanted that page translated and the same with Admiral Martin King. At the same time, the translators were not free, so I had to be selective. It was an expensive project. I was on it every day.”
Question: “We appreciate what you put down there and what we can take from it.”
Answer: “We are all hungry for the information, especially the elder population. We just want to know and we have bloodlines to these people. Virgin Islanders should write Virgin Islands history, No offense. [applause] I couldn’t go to New York tomorrow and try to write New York history. I am not a New Yorker. We Virgin Islanders should be the ones who are actually putting in that time. I do a little piece…someone over there does the next piece…and another one does a piece…until we get it. It’s very, very important.”
Question: Was General Buddhoe buried in Denmark?
Answer: “No, Irminger took him out on the Ornen and assassinated him. He wasn’t buried.
Comment: [from the audience]. “They did the same thing with Osama Bin Laden, so people would not have a body.”
Answer: “They took our hero away from us. It’s sad. They questioned him for 25 days on the Ornen, tortured him and threw him overboard. He was an honest man. All of us would love him. He had that kind of energy. If you’d go to the plantations, the people would speak very highly. He was very highly respected.”
Question: “What were the facts that he [Buddhoe] was the organizer?”
Answer: “He had to deny that he was the organizer because he was on the witness stand. You have to read from his testimony that he was telling part of the truth, but not the entire thing. These were royal people…innate, if you want to call it that. They were born with this energy in them.I believe all the Caribbean heroes who rose up against slavery were born with it. So, eventually you’re going to mature and bust out with it.”
Question: “What was it that made them know he was the leader.”
Answer: “Because they knew. There were others who said he was the leader. He was very strategic. Buddhoe was a talented genius and a master strategist. He didn’t go to a plantation and say leh these people know there will be an insurrection. He was very strategic in who he gave instructions to. It wasn’t a simple thing to organize 8,000 people. Moses Robert was General Buddhoe’s friend and elder. The strategic planning respected slaves on plantations. It was not General Buddhoe alone.
The women were involved in organizing. The cane trash had to be gathered. That’s what they did. They stored it in a storeroom to be burned later. They had to keep that cane trash in secret to carry into Frederiksted on July 3. The women did that. They placed the cane trash in strategic places in Frederiksted town…on the porch, up the street, over there. All the cane trash ended up in Frederiksted by July 3, just in case we needed to burn, but we didn’t need to burn. It was a tumultuous time. It was strategic.”
“Martinique had just completed a very bloody revolution. We speak of 1733 on St. John. St. Croix? ‘No bloodshed.’ ‘We don’t want no bloodshed.’ ‘Not a drop of bloodshed.’ [Dowling sang those words, twirled around, and danced to them]. You think those songs ‘just make up?’ They even have a quelbe song about General Buddhoe.”
Winston Nugent entered the room. He had just left the DPNR Land and Water Plan Use meeting in the Great Hall at UVI. “She was the historian in the Legislature. We had to dress up for African History Month,” he said of Dowling.
“Your book is very timely,” said Nugent. “The commissioner of Education has no excuse that we have no history book. They just have to get off their lazy backsides and sit down and plan how we’re going to have this in our curriculum,” Nugent spoke to Dowling and the crowd.
Someone in the gathering suggested a standing ovation for Dowling. The audience rose to its feet in unison, applauding and cheering.
For more information:
dowlingkathleen@hotmail.com
Kathleen Dowling – 340-332-1601
