Racing the Islands: Blackness, Intimacy and the Convergence of Empire in the U.S. Virgin Islands, 1917-1931

Working-class migrants from varied backgrounds converged in the U.S. Virgin Islands after the U.S. acquired the territory in 1917. Migrants formed intimate relationships with each other and island residents. This paper argues that, despite the naval government’s intended-Jim Crow policy in the territory, these relationships subverted those policies and mainland-U.S. racial ideologies. It expands on scholarship about U.S. imperial racial formation in the early-twentieth century by focusing specifically on the very malleable nature of blackness.

This paper uses the case of Beulah Santos to highlight the imperial ambiguity of blackness in the early twentieth century. In the territory’s first census, officials demarcated the population as overwhelmingly “Negro,” yet Santo’s case shows race in the Virgin Islands was neither self-evident nor unchanging. In the records, Santos’ and her seven children’s races changed over time and were inconsistent in the same family. U.S. civil agencies worked in concert with the U.S. Navy to investigate the “home and domestic relations” of Santos, a working-class Puerto Rican migrant. The investigating agents sought financial support from the children’s three fathers, who were naval mess attendants, two Filipino and one Puerto Rican. The presence of Santos, her children, and her lovers in the territory was mediated through empire. The nominally segregated Navy did not welcome African Americans, but did enlist other marginalized groups including an all-“native” (i.e. black) Navy Band. These servicemen and enlisted white mainlanders generated much anxiety amongst the naval brass who tried to arbitrate the relationships between servicemen and locals.