PRESS RELEASE_Transfer Day 2011. CINH President & CARIDA Chairman Moorhead Note About Transfer 3.31.11

8/7/2019 PRESS RELEASE_Transfer Day 2011. CINH President & CARIDA Chairman Moorhead Note About Transfer 3.31.11

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FROM DENMARK TO THE USVI: THE TRUTH ABOUT TRANSFER

by Shelley Moorhead

Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 1:24pm

Note: Published on Facebook @https://www.facebook.com/notes/shelley-

moorhead/from-denmark-to-the-usvi-the-truth-about-transfer/10150135341827172

As a Virgin Islander, I am happy to be participating in the first commemoration of TransferDay to be held here in Denmark. On Thursday March 31st, 2011, Danes and U.S. Virgin

Islanders alike will for the first time ever commemorate in Denmark the anniversary of the

sale of the Danish West Indies to the United States of America. Taking place at 17:00 in the

Asiatic Square at the Foreign Ministry, this year will mark 94 years since the sale, but it will

an opportunity for the organizers of Transfer Day, the newly established NGO Carida, to

set a very important precedent here in Denmark.

I am further happy to have been chosen to serve as Carida's inaugural chairman. Carida is a

non-governmental organization representing the Danish Movement for U.S. Virgin Islands

Reconciliation. Through various initiatives, Carida advocates public awareness of as well as

governmental and corporate accountability for the 250 years of Danish colonial rule, andits effects upon Virgin Islanders. Carida focuses on education and awareness, arts and

entertainment, and cultural exchange, while promoting the right to self-determination and

the advancement of slavery-era repair.

Transfer in Mr. Websters Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language is

defined as; 1) to convey or remove from one place, person, etc., to another; 2) to cause to

pass from one person to another; 3) Law. To make over the possession or control of. If

Virgin Islanders were transferred... but werent they alreadyfree? ...Then what was July

3rd, 1848 all about? Im confused! Were African Virgin Islanders Danish? Wait,

conceptually there were no Virgin Islanders in 1917 but they were African werent

they or were they Danish citizens? Huh? Help!

Did a diplomatic team show up in the Danish West Indies prior to 1916 and hold meetings

with the local inhabitants and decide it was in their best interest to be sold to the United

States? I am honestly just curious. I dont recall historically the moment of consultation.

This African people, those who from 1673 to 1848 were ripped from lands, languages,

cultures, traditions, families, occupations, institutions of learning, dietary habits, standards

of health, God and spirituality; this people who were transported across the Atlantic Ocean

to the Danish West Indies through the horror of the middle passage and forced to endure

the remainder of their lives as chattel, governed by the 19 statutes of the 1733 Gardelin

Code and bound to the brutality of harsh plantation and estate labor with noaccompanying wages; this once enslaved African who over the years saw more than

100,000 friends, family, and/or cargo-mates perish during the dreadful journey across the

Atlantic Ocean; this people who with their first recorded expression of self-determination

in 1848 took the matter of their freedom from bondage into their own hands effectively

securing their emancipation... it was in the best interest - of who - to have this now free

African in the Danish West Indies transferred to the United States?
https://www.facebook.com/notes/shelley-moorhead/from-denmark-to-the-usvi-the-truth-about-transfer/10150135341827172https://www.facebook.com/notes/shelley-moorhead/from-denmark-to-the-usvi-the-truth-about-transfer/10150135341827172https://www.facebook.com/notes/shelley-moorhead/from-denmark-to-the-usvi-the-truth-about-transfer/10150135341827172https://www.facebook.com/notes/shelley-moorhead/from-denmark-to-the-usvi-the-truth-about-transfer/10150135341827172https://www.facebook.com/notes/shelley-moorhead/from-denmark-to-the-usvi-the-truth-about-transfer/10150135341827172https://www.facebook.com/notes/shelley-moorhead/from-denmark-to-the-usvi-the-truth-about-transfer/10150135341827172


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So, this people, who when consulted in 1916 (still not sure), just decades shy of the

Fireburn (1st October 1878) this African-Danish people agreed that being sold I mean

transferred to the United States would be in their better self-interest Really?

A United States of America where in the year 1917, Negroes in the U.S. were governed by

racists laws and policies such as the Plessy vs. Fergusson decision? A United States of

America where in 1917, the Negroe suffered daily under the Jim Crow segregation laws ofthe South? In the year 1917 Negroes in America were deemed 3/5 of a white man by the

U.S. Constitution. In 1917, there had been no Brown vs. the Board of Education, schools,

communities, and the workplace were still segregated. And, without a Rev. Dr. Martin

Luther King, Jr. having been born, I find it hard to accept that any independently thinking,

self-determined, ex-slave, free, African people outside the continental U.S. could have been

convinced by any party in 1917 to at-large be sold to a United States where the basic civil

liberties of blacks were denied and especially when the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s

and 60s and the resultant laws had yet to be even conceived.

There isnt a man, or magician for that matter, on earth, nor a god in heaven above that

could have, or would have, convinced this people - for no good, self-serving reason - tobecome an unincorporated territory and possession of the United States of America. Would

this people have willingly agreed to be subjected to an existence under U.S. Naval rule

where they would be unable to realize their civil liberties for decades to come? Would they

have agreed to accept a political status (or the lack thereof) that would offer no self-

determination, no self-identity at the United Nations, no representation in the U.S.

Congress, and no vote or say in the election for the U.S. President (their ultimate

sovereign) and go along with having to serve, fight, and die on the battlefields and in the

wars of a new colonial master?

Virgin Islanders got a bad deal... but Virgin Islanders never made a deal!

So what now? Today, un-repaired by the sale of the Danish West Indies in 1917 to the

United States of America, African Virgin Islanders are yet to recover from the cultural,

sociopolitical and socioeconomic underdevelopment imposed by the eras of Danish slavery

and colonization. The treaty between the U.S. and Denmark governing the cession of the

Danish West Indies distinguishes between citizens as Danes and inhabitants as African

descendants and demonstrates no consultation with the latter. This neglect of the

African/ex-slave population's inalienable right to self-determination during the transfer of

the islands remains an international human rights violation of the worst sort. With the

institution of slavery ending in the Danish colony in 1848 and in the United States in 1863,

how then are the sale, purchase, and/or cession of more than 100,000 free people

justified generations later? Which nation is responsible for repair? Who must bear theinevitable burden of decolonization? These questions and many other long-lasting

handicaps predominate and today impede the growth, development, and sustainability of

Virgin Islands society.

What obligation does the present owe the past? Who or what decides the nature of repair

for past wrongs? When historical knowledge, the obligation to remember, and the


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obligation to seek retrospective justice meet, how is this process of redressing historical

wrongs applicable in the modern-day relationship between former slaver and enslaved,

between Denmark and the U.S. Virgin Islands?

The answer which is quickly taking root in the minds of many, both Virgin Islanders and

Danes, is reparations. An acknowledgement between communities which share a common

past with the aim to heal the wounds from past human rights violations. The aim of

reparations is to heal consequences of inhumanity and to create bonds of equality betweencommunities divided by the historic roles carried out as offender and offended.

Reparations are the joint obligation to truth-telling, to ensure that the relevant historical

facts are uncovered, discussed and properly memorialized. Reparations, through initiatives

in education, restoration, and reconciliation will succeed in making some form of amends

in the present to give material substance to expressions of regret and responsibility.

Let me state outright that reparations is not about money: it is not even mostly about

money; in fact, money is not even one percent of what reparations is about. Reparations is

about making repairs. It is about the repair of people and damages done to their humanity:

mental repairs, psychological repairs, cultural repairs, organizational repairs, social

repairs, institutional repairs, technological repairs, economic repairs, political repairs,educational repairs, repairs of every type that Virgin Islanders need in order to recreate

and sustain the humanity impaired by 250 years of Danish colonization slavery.

For the African Virgin Islander, more important than any monies to be received; more

fundamental than any lands to be recovered, is the opportunity the reparations campaign

offers for the rehabilitation of people, by people, for people; opportunities for the

betterment of material conditions, repair of collective dignity, culture, memory, self-

respect, spirituality, political institutions and family traditions; but first and foremost for

the rehabilitation of minds.

We are here today, leaders, thinkers and activists who want to change the conditions of ourpeople and to better the relationship between Denmark and it enslaved and sold. What

things do we need to change, both in the world and in ourselves, if we are to accomplish

this? What changes must we make in structures, in politics, in our thinking, in historical

consciousness and much else?

While we commemorate the day, and as we celebrate our Virgin Islands/Danish friendship

revisit our shared history together, let us also remember that, together we have much to

repair.

Shelley Moorhead

Chairman, Carida (Danish Movement for Virgin Islands Reconciliation)Founder, African-Caribbean Reparations and Resettlement Alliance (ACRRA)

President, Caribbean Institute for a New Humanity

Leader, Virgin Islands Reparations Movement

Documents

PRESS RELEASE_Transfer Day 2011. CINH President & CARIDA Chairman Moorhead Note About Transfer 3.31.11