Dorothy Jenkins Fields in Miami By DOROTHY JENKINS FIELDS/Special To The V.I. Free Press If you want excitement, mystery and surprise look no further. It is not a video game and or on YouTube. According to three genealogists — photographer and visual documentarian Marvin Elliott Ellis; preservationist Sonia Jacobs Dow

Historian George Tyson CHRISTIANSTED – A collection of slavery records available over the Internet could help thousands of people trace their families back to Africa through St. Croix, which is a former slave-trading hub in the Caribbean. The records, which went online at ancestry.com, already have helped Susan Samuel of

“Land of Love and Drowning” (Riverhead Books), by Tiphanie Yanique CHARLOTTE AMALIE – For the people on the U.S. mainland, if they think about the U.S. Virgin Islands at all, they think of rum punches, tropical resorts and hurricanes. Tiphanie Yanique’s debut novel, “Land of Love and Drowning,” is a

  A trailblazer for black women and minority rights, Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm broke many barriers. She was the first black woman elected to Congress and the very first black person to run for the United States Presidency. As the firstborn of four daughters to Caribbean immigrants in Brooklyn,

  The Promise of Heaven The most important aspect of Christianity for the enslaved was the promise of heaven – a promise made by plantation owners. This idea preached the notion that for all the suffering that is done in the physical world, your soul will be preserved and you

France’s President François Hollande inaugurated the largest slavery memorial in the world on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe this summer. The opening of the ACTe memorial on the site of a former sugar refinery that processed the products of slave plantations “will allow Guadeloupe and the whole of the

  Speaking at the inauguration of a memorial and cultural center in Guadeloupe devoted to the history of slavery, French President François Hollande evoked France’s “debt” toward its former slaveholding colony of Haiti but also appeared to reject the idea of monetary reparations. “When I go to Haiti, I will,

  France’s President François Hollande hit out recently against Europe’s migrant crisis, comparing people smugglers in the Mediterranean to “slave drivers.” It was during a state visit to French Caribbean island Guadeloupe on Sunday that François Hollande added his voice to other European leaders, to say that the migrant crisis had

The following editorial about St. Croix’s Alexander Hamilton appeared in the Chicago Tribune: ——— Political decisions often are about standing on the right side of history, which is why South Carolina is confronting its treatment of the Confederate battle flag. So here’s a related choice: Should America stand with a