Instruments of Identity: Alton Augustus Adams Sr., the Navy Band of the Virgin Islands, and the Sounds of Social Change

Abstract

There must have been a moment during the transfer ceremony when no flag waved over the Virgin Islands. A moment that captured, on one hand, the uncertainty, ambiguity, and fear created by the exchange and, on the other, the economic opportunity and social potential it presented. colonial flag, Denmark's Dannebrog, was lowered slowly--reluctantly for some, who saw its departure as a signal of danger. Since July 3, 1848, when the islands' slaves were freed by gubernatorial decree, a precarious social truce had preserved the status quo. Denmark may not have had the financial resources to bring new industry or schools to the islands or even to offer relief after the hurricane of 1916, but they had demonstrated what one observer of the ceremony, Bandmaster Alton Augustus Adams (see Fig. 1), called atmosphere of racial tolerance (Adams 1970-, preface). Tolerance in this case did not mean the absence of racism but a racism that was a known, stable quantity. [Figure 1 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Any moment of symbolic freedom from the banner of an external authority was short-lived, however. In practical terms, it was purely imaginary. It was now March 31, 1917--one week before the U.S. entrance into World War I. United States had purchased the islands of St. John, St. Croix, and St. Thomas for $25 million in order to deny Germany a potential submarine base within easy striking distance of the American mainland and was now taking possession. According to Adams, who was twenty-seven years old at the time, immediately following the Dannebrog's descent, The band of the U.S.S. Olympia struck up `The Star-Spangled Banner,' the guns again boomed out their salute of twenty-one guns and the Stars and Stripes mounted swiftly up the staff to remain there (Adams 1917, 66). rules of the colonial game had changed. One set of foreign and exclusively white administrators had been exchanged for another. Law was in a state of flux, suspended between two systems. Local identity had been destabilized, creating a moment of powerful ambiguity. A fair question for the islands' inhabitants would have been, Who are we now? Many assumed that this question was unnecessary and that the terms of the sales treaty clarified the islanders' political status, but, in fact, the crux of an answer lay in yet another series of questions: who would respond to the question of local identity; who would gain the authority to speak; what situations might arise that would direct the interpretation of the sales treaty; what tactics could be employed to navigate through the perilous uncertainty of such a new social circumstance? United States government did not address the issue, possibly distracted by the country's entrance into World War I on April 6, 1917. Although the local inhabitants assumed differently, four years later it would be revealed that the articles of transfer did not include a provision making the islanders U.S. citizens--the United States Constitution did not follow the flag. Danish colonial law continued, now enforced by a United States naval governor rather than a representative of Denmark's king. Living under but not truly within the purview of the American flag, the islanders inhabited a social limbo created by a strategic real estate sale. United States government's relative silence on the issue of citizenship created the opportunity for local black leaders, such as Adams, Rothschild Francis, Caspar Holstein, D. Hamilton Jackson, and Lionel Roberts, to begin to answer the question of identity themselves. Francis, Holstein, Jackson, and Roberts took a stance of active resistance and demanded political change--a strategy that would prove increasingly successful as the islanders finally became U.S. citizens in 1927, as the naval administration was removed and a civilian governor appointed in 1931, and as most aspects of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were finally brought to the Virgin Islands by the Organic Act of 1936. …