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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm good. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm good. Sky is bright and sunny, and I've already had 24 ounces of coffee, and I'm about ready to start my second mug. Life is good. Heard some birds chirping this morning as I was coming outside my house. Hey.
N. Rodgers: Hey. All is well in Aughie world.
J. Aughenbaugh: I looked down and I saw all my toes.
N. Rodgers: Do you ever eat chocolate-covered espresso beans?
J. Aughenbaugh: No. I'm not a big fan of combining anything with my coffee.
N. Rodgers: You're a purist?
J. Aughenbaugh: That's the fact.
N. Rodgers: The choco mocha, waka waka, latte latte, frappe frappe from Starbucks isn't going to do it for you because you're like, that is too much stuff in my coffee.
J. Aughenbaugh: I want it black.
N. Rodgers: I have a colleague that says I want it blacker than Stalin's heart.
J. Aughenbaugh: I've used that expression.
N. Rodgers: That's pretty black coffee right there, I'm just saying. She worked for the Department of Defense for years. She was like, you don't know coffee until you have had Army coffee. She's like, it's not a substance that most people can tolerate.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, for those of you who are wondering, I grind my beans. Currently, I'm working my way through a rather large bag of Cuban roast beans. I grind my beans. I put it in my drip coffee maker with water. Five short minutes later, there is the nectar of the gods. I don't put sugar, sweetener. I don't put any milk or cream. It is black.
N. Rodgers: Awesome.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's where I fall.
N. Rodgers: Now listeners know the way to your heart. It is through dark coffee.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, you're assuming that I have one. But speaking of enthusiasms, listeners, it's becoming, Nia, one of my favorite of all of our series simply because of all the stuff that I am learning.
N. Rodgers: I was going to say you love to learn. You are that guy. You read books to learn from for fun in addition to reading fiction. It's not a super surprise to me that you're enjoying this. This is the last of the occupied territories.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then we're going to do an entire episode about the unoccupied US government territories. The last one today, listeners, is the US Virgin Islands.
N. Rodgers: Officially known as the Virgin Islands of the United States. Not to be confused with British Virgin Islands, the Spanish Virgin Islands, the Puerto Rican Virgin Islands, the Virgin Islands owned by Aughie and Nia, which don't get mentioned.
J. Aughenbaugh: There's a slew of them.
N. Rodgers: I know. There's about ten hundred thousand islands and they're all owned by different countries and spots. I'm aware that Puerto Rico is not a country, but anyway, I think that's fascinating. The Virgin Islands is an archipelago for anybody who's wondering. It's what we think of as a spread of islands as opposed to all of them being quite close together. They actually take up a fair bit of sea space because of the way they're arranged in the ocean.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because the total land mass of the US Virgin Islands or the Virgin Islands, we're just going to say the US Virgin Islands, the total land mass isn't all that much. It's only 133 and change square miles. The US Virgin Islands has three main islands, St. Croix, St. John, and St. Thomas.
N. Rodgers: Those are beautiful.
J. Aughenbaugh: But then they have, Nia, as you just pointed out, 50 other surrounding minor islands, and I actually had to look this up, cays.
N. Rodgers: Tiny little island. That's what a cay is. If anybody's wondering, C-A-Y, a cay is a tiny little island.
J. Aughenbaugh: I did not know this until I started doing the research. Of course, I was like, what's a cay? But for our non-western hemisphere listeners, the Virgin Islands are geographically located in the Caribbean. Not surprisingly, if you've never been to the Caribbean, the islands do have a tropical climb.
N. Rodgers: Those beautiful white sand beaches. They're gorgeous. Can I just side note for us here?
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure.
N. Rodgers: Listeners, you're going to hear us interchangeably say Caribbean and Caribbean. That is because the north part of the United States generally refers to something as the Caribbean and the south generally refers to that space as the Caribbean. Similarly, Appalachia and Appalachian. We say Appalachia here in the south, and in the north, they say Appalachia. Aughie is a transplant and the southern has worked on him over the years, so he will say it both ways. But either place we are talking about is the body of water south of Florida and east of the Gulf of Mexico.
J. Aughenbaugh: Mexico, America.
N. Rodgers: However you want to refer to that. We'll come back to that in another episode.
J. Aughenbaugh: As we are one to do, Listeners, we like to delve into the history because we find the history rather fascinating.
N. Rodgers: A billion years ago.
J. Aughenbaugh: A billion. No, not a billion, but as early as 1000 BC.
N. Rodgers: Which is a long time ago.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia, who inhabited the US Virgin Islands.
N. Rodgers: Is it the Kalinago? It's the original Caribs, the original Caribbean folks, or what we like to think of as first nation or the first native settlers.
J. Aughenbaugh: Native settlers. You had the Ciboney and the Arawaks.
N. Rodgers: Their tribes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then you had the Island Caribs.
N. Rodgers: They arrived later, hence giving it the name.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, but they didn't arrive until 15th century AD.
N. Rodgers: Way after. Now, again, we're talking about, we've marveled at before the Ciboney and the Arawaks got into tiny little boats and went out into the Atlantic and went south thinking that something magical would happen, and it did. They found a bunch of islands, but they could have just have easily missed them and died out in the Atlantic somewhere. The guts that it takes to do this thing, the guts that it takes for settlers to take off.
J. Aughenbaugh: Otherwise, they could be lazy like most of me and Nia's Generation X. They could have just been lazy and said, to hell with it, we ain't leaving home.
N. Rodgers: If I can't see it from here, I'm not going. If I can't walk there. Then fast forward to 1493.
J. Aughenbaugh: Christopher Columbus on his second voyage is thought to be the first European to see the islands and he's the one who gave them the current name Virgin Islands.
N. Rodgers: Untouched, as if the people who were there didn't count. Classic colonialism. The Europeans show up and they're like, there's nobody here. The natives are like, excuse me, are we invisible? We're standing right here. You can see us. They're like, this savage, untamed land, this virgin place. He also thought he was in the Indies. He thought he had discovered a way to India because that's what he was trying to do. He was trying to discover a cheap, fast way to India. Turns out there is no cheap fast way to India from Europe
J. Aughenbaugh: No, because there happens to be a couple of rather large land mass.
N. Rodgers: Big land masses between.
J. Aughenbaugh: He does this in 1493 the Spanish settled in 1555. Then you get the English, then you get the French. They pop up in 1625. Then you have this really complex period of time, basically throughout the 17th and 18th centuries where.
N. Rodgers: Is it owned by Spain? Is it owned by France? Is it owned by Britain? Is it owned by the Netherlands?
J. Aughenbaugh: Then you get the Dutch. Then you get Denmark and Norway taking interest. After a while, I was losing count. I needed a program like I was at a baseball game, number 25 is who? But one of the reasons why the colonies were so interested in these islands were they were ideal for sugar plantations.
N. Rodgers: I was going to say for commerce. You get the West India Company involved in there somehow because you always get the West India Company involved in there somewhere. Because the Dutch were looking to make money and a lot of what they wanted to make money from was sugarcane because I will be the first to leap in and tell you that white people of European descent, of which I am one are straight up addicted to sugar.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure, yes, we are.
N. Rodgers: If you put sugar on it, we will eat just about anything. Is that rocks, but does it have sugar on it? Well, give it here and let me try it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well tree bark? Yeah, just sprinkle a little bit of sugar on it.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. Then you, of course, get the enslavement of Africans to force sugarcane because sugarcane is hard to grow and hard to cut That is a labor intensive crop.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, it is.
N. Rodgers: If you're not going to do it, which I'm sure rich Danish dudes were not going to do it they purchased people to do it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, and what Nia is pointing to is particularly during the 18th and early 19th centuries, you had an explosion of enslaved Africans on the Virgin Islands.
N. Rodgers: And the other two crops they grew.
J. Aughenbaugh: Were also labor intensive. Cotton and indigo dye. Both of those, again, trust us when we tell you guys, both Nia and I come from farm stock.
N. Rodgers: I've tried to pick cotton once in my entire life, it is so hard on your hands.
J. Aughenbaugh: But what's really interesting since we're talking about the inclusion of the slave institution into the economy is that the Virgin Islands were the sites of some of the most prominent slave rebellions in the western hemisphere. I'm just going to mention a couple of these. In 1733, St. John, one of the islands of the Virgin Islands, was the site of the first significant slave rebellion in the western hemisphere when natives from what is today modern Ghana actually took over the island for six months. The Danish were eventually able to defeat them with the help of the French. But nevertheless.
N. Rodgers: Can I just say 1733 is way before the 1791 Haitian Revolution that actually freed Haiti from enslavement. This started early, early, early on St. John.
J. Aughenbaugh: Another example is a slave rebellion that occurred on St. Croix and eventually the Dutch governor in 1848, abolished slavery on St. Croix and it's still celebrated as Emancipation Day.
N. Rodgers: July 3rd.
J. Aughenbaugh: July 3rd, yeah. This is what becomes really fascinating and this is something to take note of for our listeners who want to explore slave economies. When the plantations were no longer profitable, Nia, who then left the islands.
N. Rodgers: The Dutch settlers.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Danish and Dutch.
N. Rodgers: They're like, Oh, we're not making any more money, we need to piece out of here. Side note I don't know if anybody has noticed. But listeners, if you've never noticed, there's a lot of hurricanes in the Caribbean. The Caribbean gets hit with hurricanes approximately every 10 minutes during hurricane season it's bad in some years. It's really bad. Probably the combination of, I'm not making money and everything that I own keeps getting knocked down and blown away made people say, You know what? I'm just going home. That's it. I'm not dealing with this anymore. I can make a better living in the Netherlands. I'm going back.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, and what Nia is describing listeners is something that a meteorologist here in Richmond once explained to me, which is, you get the warm waters on the western coast of Africa, and because of the ocean current in the Atlantic, goes from east to west. The storms just basically travel a direct route and if there's any warm water in the Gulf of Mexico or on the eastern side of the Atlantic pushing upwards, then that means the path of almost any tropical cyclone what we call hurricanes here in the western hemisphere. Any tropical cyclone is on a direct path to the Caribbean. It's not only just Puerto Rico.
N. Rodgers: All of them. I know that ABC, the ABC Islands Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao suffer the least because of their location. But it is sheerly a matter of location. Anyway. I'm assuming that once that happened, it crushed the local economy.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, yeah, after the Danes left, the islands were basically economically not all that viable.
N. Rodgers: Because the way US is, we were like, Hey, is that cheap? Can we pick that up cheap? Isn't that what we did? We basically said, once you're no longer viable, we might be able to buy you at a bargain rate.
J. Aughenbaugh: What's fascinating to me, Nia, is starting in 1867 and basically for about until World War I, the United States attempted multiple times,
N. Rodgers: That's like 50 years.
J. Aughenbaugh: To purchase the Virgin Islands from the Danish.
N. Rodgers: The Danes were like, We don't want it, but we don't want you to have it.
J. Aughenbaugh: It almost reminded me of negotiations in a divorce.
N. Rodgers: I don't want the house, but I'll burn it down before I give it to you.
J. Aughenbaugh: My favorite was there was a second draft treaty to sell the Islands to the United States in 1902, but it was defeated in the upper House of the Danish Parliament in a tie vote. One of the opposition to the Denmark government signing the treaty was a 97-year-old life member in the chamber, who, one of the descriptions I found was he was actually wheeled into the chamber to cast the tie making vote.
N. Rodgers: Because a tie in their parliament means no.
J. Aughenbaugh: No. I was just fascinated.
N. Rodgers: Hurry me over there so I can vote. How old are you? 97. I don't care. They're not getting it. Stupid US isn't getting it. But eventually, because the US is patient in some instances it prevailed
J. Aughenbaugh: You get World War I after World War I, the islands were basically isolated. During the submarine phase of the war, the United States was afraid that Germany would use their new submarine, if you will, boats. They would use the Virgin Islands as a launching pad to attack the United States.
N. Rodgers: Because it's pretty close. Virgin Islands are pretty close to the United States physically so I could see why that would be a fear.
J. Aughenbaugh: Basically what you had in 1916 was the Treaty of the Danish West Indies, and the deal was finalized in 1917. Nia, we paid $25 million in US gold coin, they didn't want any paper.
N. Rodgers: I like that, we don't want your paper money, we want gold. Which when you think about World War, if we had lost, our money would be worthless so the Danes were pretty smart to be like, if you have solid assets we could have? But how much is $25 million in today terms?
J. Aughenbaugh: In today's storms, Nia, that would be, well, I got the 2023 equivalent. Would be even more today simply because the value of the American dollar has gone up quite a bit.
N. Rodgers: We could just wait a few minutes and it might change, but, yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's about $700 million.
N. Rodgers: That's actually pretty cheap for the Virgin Islands.
J. Aughenbaugh: I thought that was extremely affordable.
N. Rodgers: That's a good deal considering how many of us go there on vacation.
J. Aughenbaugh: You think about all the things that the US government spends $700 million on, that's a great deal.
N. Rodgers: Considering some of the stupid stuff we buy. What is that? Four Department of Defense Hammers? That was unnecessary. I'm sorry.
J. Aughenbaugh: But for our listeners, later on this spring we're going to do an episode or two about federal government spending and examples of WFA waste fraud and abuse.
J. Aughenbaugh: Let's go back to the Virgin Islands. So we took possession in 1917, yes.
N. Rodgers: I like that we renamed it Virgin Islands of the United States.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because we want to go ahead and distinguish ourselves from what other two Virgin Islands?
N. Rodgers: From all other Virgin Islands.
N. Rodgers: From the British Virgin Islands, from Spanish Virgin, from the Puerto Rican Virgin Islands, which are probably technically also American.
J. Aughenbaugh: American.
N. Rodgers: 'Cause technically with Puerto Rico, see earlier episode. My guessing is that the first person that we put in charge of it would have been military.
J. Aughenbaugh: That is correct.
N. Rodgers: 1917, we're still in World War I.
J. Aughenbaugh: A rear admiral in the US Navy, James Oliver. He was the first American governor. The first civilian governor was appointed by Herbert Hoover in 1931, Paul Martin Pearson. Again, listeners, if you're not American, an American who goes by three names, their first, their middle, and their last name, generally, Nia, on what stratus of the socio economic scale do they fall?
N. Rodgers: The fall into one of two strati. See how I did that, with the stratis. They are either very wealthy people.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or they're from?
N. Rodgers: Or from the South where you get yelled at and used all three names.
J. Aughenbaugh: By the way, Nia, that is not just a Southern . phenomenon. I always knew I was really in trouble when my mom or grandmother said, John Mark Aughenbaugh, get your.
N. Rodgers: In this house. You're two stratuses. You're either the political class or you're the lower. Most people in the middle don't use three names.
J. Aughenbaugh: They don't use the middle name.
MALE_1: One of our recent examples. Do you remember which one?
N. Rodgers: The Northern Mariana.
MALE_1: You don't have citizenship.
N. Rodgers: The Northern Mariana don't have citizenship.
MALE_1: However, the US Virgin Islands, all the inhabitants of the Islands were granted US citizenship between 1927-1932.
N. Rodgers: Awesome.
MALE_1: The American dollar replaced the Danish. I'm going to mispronounce this daler, D-A-L-E-R. There's probably some emphasis there.
N. Rodgers: It's the daler, it's the daler, it's the daler. Who knows? Neither of us speak Danish, so sorry. We can't help with that. Is that Danish?
MALE_1: It is Danish. But what's really fascinating to me is this the Virgin Islands actually gets two laws passed by Congress, the 1936 Organic Act and the 1954 Revised Organic Act established the local government. This is a theme with the Virgin Islands. The inhabitants of the Virgin Islands, aren't necessarily shall we say happy?
N. Rodgers: They like doovers.
MALE_1: They like doovers.
N. Rodgers: They like doovers.
MALE_1: You're probably the person who when you play billiards and you hit a bad shot, you go ahead and grab.
N. Rodgers: Doover.
MALE_1: You grab the cue ball and you say,.
N. Rodgers: Just put it in a different place.
MALE_1: I want a doover.
N. Rodgers: I mean, really, Aughies's going to talk to you later about the number of conventions they've had to try to write a constitution. I'm just saying they like doovers. You partly get, I think, and I know I'm skipping forward a little bit, but I'm fascinated by this. In the late '50s, early '60s, you start to get a lot of people from the United States visiting the Virgin Islands because Cuba gets embargoed. People can't go to Cuba. Prior to that, a lot of people had gone to Cuba. In fact, my favorite musical of all time, Guys and Dolls, they go to Havana. They go to Cuba in that musical, and it's not treated as anything creepy or weird because at the time, that's what people did. They went to Cuba, then when Cuba got closed, they were like, but. They started going to the USVI. it became a much more popular tourist destination starting in the 1960s and '70s.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, what Nia's pointing to is tourism, particularly after World War II has generated a significant component of the US Virgin Islands economy. I also found out that, for instance, the Virgin Islands National Park was established in 1956, and Nia and I are both big fans of National Parks. There's actually a US National Park on the Virgin Islands, particularly the island.
N. Rodgers: I have a friend who that's his bucket list. No. Actually, he's been on this podcast, Eric Johnson. A fellow librarian who his life goal is to go to all of the national parks. No small undertaking in the United States.
J. Aughenbaugh: But a huge shift to the economy occurred Nia in 1966. I tried to hit the Mute button, and it just didn't happen. Apologies, listeners. What happened in the mid '60s on the US Virgin Islands?
N. Rodgers: You're asking me? Isn't that when the oil companies were let's build a refinery. It's a lovely place for a refinery.
J. Aughenbaugh: Hess Oil.
N. Rodgers: No, it is not that the Virgin Islands is sitting on a giant pocket of oil. That is not the case. It's the refining capacity not oil drilling. There's no drilling there. They're just refining.
J. Aughenbaugh: It is in many ways, the ideal location except.
N. Rodgers: For the hurricanes.
J. Aughenbaugh: For ships.
N. Rodgers: To pull up, unload crude and then reload refined oil or gas or whatever it is they're taking.
J. Aughenbaugh: From what I was able to gather in my research, Nia, what you would have are the big petroleum ships from the Middle East, would go to the US Virgin Islands to this refinery. They would drop their crude oil, and then their ships would head back to the Middle East. The Hess Oil refinery then would take the crude and put it into products that would be used on mainland United States. The ships with the crude oil pulled right out from the ground would go to the Virgin Islands, drop their loads, and then they would head back to the Middle East.
N. Rodgers: Hess would process 500,000 rather barrels per day.
J. Aughenbaugh: Barrels per day. ..
N. Rodgers: How much work is that? But it also, I assume, would be a huge part of the GDP of VI.
J. Aughenbaugh: It was one fifth of the territory's gross domestic product at its peak. Unfortunately, for the Natives, the refinery ceased operation in 2012. Two years later, it stopped exporting petroleum products completely and the refinery has been acquired by a hedge fund. They're hoping to go ahead and restart the refinery. But it had a huge impact.
N. Rodgers: Well, I imagine it was also a huge employer.
J. Aughenbaugh: It was a huge employer.
N. Rodgers: That would have an enormous effect on the islands as well.
J. Aughenbaugh: The other impact on the Virgin Islands economy, Nia has already pointed this, hurricanes.
J. Aughenbaugh: In particular, roughly in a 20 year period, the Virgin Islands got hit with at least six major hurricanes. You had Hugo in 89, Maryland in 1995. Then you also had Bertha Georges, Lennie, and Omar. That's six within a 20 year period. Billions of dollars.
N. Rodgers: Because they were '96,'98,'99 and 2000. That was a period there where for three years, bang, bang.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then after almost a decade.
N. Rodgers: Let me get a break, and they're like, no more hurricanes, this is love lovely.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then they got nailed with a category 5 Hurricane Irma, which just destroyed St. John and St. Thomas Islands. Then two weeks later, Hurricane Maria hit all three islands that comprise.
N. Rodgers: That's in 2017. That just flattened lots of. It must be hard in the islands because you rebuild and you basically rebuild for your main source of income, which is tourism and then when you have a big storm come through, the tourists don't come for a long time because they're waiting for the cleanup and all that other stuff. It's just a cycle that the islands go through. I would imagine it's hard to build wealth in the Virgin Islands because of that.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's extremely difficult. Listeners, if you think about it in terms of economics, if a hurricane comes in and damages one of the islands or two of the islands, then word gets out to mainland US citizens don't go visit there. But then how do the islands attract the necessary investment to rebuild? Because the tourism numbers just aren't there to justify investing in a rebuild.
N. Rodgers: Fortunately for the Virgin Islands, the US government helped somewhat with that. Side note for anybody who doesn't understand where islands come from, islands come from volcanoes. That is how you get an island. Is that there's a volcano somewhere close. If you're curious about this, go to Hawaii and look at Kilauea which is constantly spewing out lava. Similarly in the island chains that are the Virgin Islands of all the different countries were created through volcanic activity. If you go there, you will notice that while the beaches are white and beautiful, they almost immediately give way to hills because that's how that works. Volcanoes don't just pop up and make flat things, volcanoes pop up and make hilly things. They're often covered in trees or forest in this instance, tropical forest. They are utterly beautiful, I would recommend going. The water is beautiful, the beaches are beautiful. They have one of the most dangerous airports in the world, I think it's St. John, where you basically fly off a cliff and then sort of wing your way up from there. Tourists go out and watch planes try to take off and land, maybe St. Croix, but I think it's St. Thomas. Anyway.
J. Aughenbaugh: One of the islands, because it was actually in a lot of the books that I read they went ahead and mentioned it.
N. Rodgers: Landing there is sort of, we're just going to hold our breath and hope for the best.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, as we wind down this episode, we would be remiss if we did not talk about politics and government.
N. Rodgers: We would.
J. Aughenbaugh: Go ahead.
N. Rodgers: I think their constitutional history would be so much fun for you to teach in retirement. Once you retire from VCU, wouldn't you like to move to the Virgin Islands and just try to teach their constitutional history?
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, my goodness. It is just really fascinating. Again, listeners, the Virgin Islands, those who live there are US citizens. However much like the other territories we've covered, they do not have a vote at the United States Congress. They do have a delegate.
N. Rodgers: Sorry. House of Representative, representative in the House. Sorry I said that inevitably. They don't have a senator because none of the territories have a senator, but they have a rep, and that person can vote in committee they just can't vote on the floor. Which is true of all the other except Northern Mariana. I don't know why we're so mad at Northern Mariana.
J. Aughenbaugh: Both the Democratic and Republican Parties allow Virgin Islands citizens to vote in their presidential primary elections for delegates.
N. Rodgers: It's awesome to watch those election results come in. Because there'll be a tiny little mention off to the side. Virgin Islands then whichever presidential candidate carried their votes.
J. Aughenbaugh: The main political parties on the Virgin Islands are the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the Independent Citizens movement and you have the occasional candidate who will run as an independent.
N. Rodgers: We do need to note they can vote in the presidential election they are American citizens. They just don't get representation in Congress so they should take that up with DC.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, they should.
N. Rodgers: Because DC is crabby about that and has been for years.
J. Aughenbaugh: In terms of local government and politics.
N. Rodgers: Do they have a Senate and a House?
J. Aughenbaugh: No, they have a unicameral legislature. They have 15 total senators, seven from St. Croix, seven from St. Thomas and St. John, and then one senator at large who must be a resident of St. John.
N. Rodgers: Technically eight from St. John and St. Tom. Anyway.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, it could be all seven come from St. Thomas.
N. Rodgers: Except the one.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, there you go.
N. Rodgers: I see.
J. Aughenbaugh: St. John always knows they're going to have at least one. The most come from the largest district, which is St. Croix.
N. Rodgers: That's why.
J. Aughenbaugh: They have two year terms. They can serve unlimited numbers of terms.
N. Rodgers: Some people do.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Since 1970, they elect their own governor they serve four year terms. Before 1970, governors were appointed by presidents of the United States.
N. Rodgers: No, but it's good. They've got their own election now. That's how it should be.
J. Aughenbaugh: They also have their own court system. The Virgin Islands courts use both American common law, and they created their own Virgin Islands Code in 2019.
N. Rodgers: Is it super different or is it mostly similar?
J. Aughenbaugh: They have elements of American common law, their own code. They used to have elements of Danish law, but they repealed all of those with the exception of two customs laws, I'm like, okay.
N. Rodgers: We'll hold on to these customs.
J. Aughenbaugh: They even have a bar exam for the lawyers who want to practice law in the Virgin Islands. That's very American.
N. Rodgers: You know what, though? I can actually customs and duties are really important on island nations, very different than on the big Hanken United States. It's huge so it's not surprising to me that they held onto those if they were going to hold onto anything.
J. Aughenbaugh: The United States purchased.
N. Rodgers: I'm sorry, can I ask a question about the court system?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, go ahead.
N. Rodgers: Do they have criminal and civil?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, they do. In many ways, their court system is very American. Now, Nia, you mentioned a few minutes ago the constitutional history of the Virgin Islands. The United States remember, listeners, purchased the Virgin Islands from the Danes, basically during World War I.
N. Rodgers: 1917.
J. Aughenbaugh: Basically in 100 years, the Danes have had four constitutions.
N. Rodgers: No, be fair, Aughie, in 70 years before they were asked to make a constitution.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, they've had four constitutional conventions.
N. Rodgers: Oh, I see.
J. Aughenbaugh: They have considered a fifth since 2004. The fifth one caused a whole bunch of litigation. Because the legislature of the Virgin Islands called for a fifth Constitutional convention but the convention was rejected because the convention drafted a constitutional draft. The governor rejected the draft, saying that it would ''violate US federal law, fail to defer to federal sovereignty and disregard basic civil rights.'' The convention filed a lawsuit against the governor.
N. Rodgers: To send it forward anyway and he was like, okay.
N. Rodgers: I'm just saying that it's probably not a good idea, but okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: The governor forwarded the lawsuit to US President Obama.
N. Rodgers: Forwarded the lawsuit or the constitutional proposal?
J. Aughenbaugh: The lawsuit filed by members of the conventions was brought forward to President Obama. Obama forwarded the proposal to the United States Congress, raising concerns that the proposed constitution would exceed authority under their territorial status and also would not give or acknowledge basic constitutional and civil rights as recognized by the US government in the Geneva Conventions which created-
N. Rodgers: Basic civil rights.
J. Aughenbaugh: The United Nations. Congress disapproved of the proposed Constitution and requested that the Fifth Constitutional Convention reconvene to consider changes. Well, the Constitutional Convention was just like, well, this is BS. They filed a federal lawsuit in the Federal District Court of the Virgin Islands. Part of their claim was their territorial status was racial discrimination because the United States Congress that bought the Virgin Islands in 1917 were all white and segregated.
N. Rodgers: Wow.
J. Aughenbaugh: A very strange way to go ahead and get your United States government to sign off on your Constitution.
N. Rodgers: I'm going to sue you into doing this. I would be willing to bet that that did not work.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, it did not. A federal district court judge went ahead and dismissed the lawsuit in 2012.
N. Rodgers: Wait, I got our dates confused here, and I want to be clear. From 1917-1976, they didn't have a constitution. They didn't have the beginnings of a constitution, anything.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: They just had the laws of the United States imposed upon them. Then in 1976, Gerald Ford said, "You know what? Go ahead, make a constitution. It'll make you feel good." You'll feel empowered and it'll be fabulous because that's the person Gerald Ford was. Then from 1976-2004 is when you get four-and-a-half constitutions.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because I don't know that the Fifth Constitution counts, but that's what I mean by do over is they didn't do over in 100 years. They did the do overs in my lifetime.
J. Aughenbaugh: In a very compressed time frame.
N. Rodgers: 1976-2004.
J. Aughenbaugh: For our American listeners, they've had more constitutional conventions than the United States' has had.
N. Rodgers: It's 250 years. To say that it is contentious in the Virgin Islands to try to write a constitution is such an understatement.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's a gross understatement. For our non-American listeners, they've had as many constitutional conventions as the French have had in 230 years. It is just truly phenomenal.
N. Rodgers: They are struggling to do their constitution. Currently, they are still on four.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because their lawsuit was dismissed by US.
N. Rodgers: They didn't make the deadline that they were supposed to do. What's the racial makeup of the Virgin Islands?
J. Aughenbaugh: The Virgin Islands is comprised of Black or Afro-Caribbean, 71% of their population. 64% of that is non-Hispanic black.
N. Rodgers: Those are descendants of slaves?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Probably.
J. Aughenbaugh: Hispanic or Latino, almost 17 1/2%. The breakdown of that, the largest percentage is 8.9% of the population is Puerto Rican.
N. Rodgers: That makes sense, the proximity.
J. Aughenbaugh: Proximity, yes. Caucasians, 16.6. Mixed, 7.4.
N. Rodgers: That makes sense too. After years of people living together, you would naturally fall in love.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, according to census data, most of the residents can trace their ancestry to other Caribbean islands or African-Caribbean origin.
N. Rodgers: Are they religious?
J. Aughenbaugh: They are religious. Wow, you're jumping ahead here. You completely just ignored the language.
N. Rodgers: No, I'm coming back to the language.
J. Aughenbaugh: Christianity is the dominant religion. According to the Pew Research Center, almost 95% of the population is Christian, and the largest Christian denominations were Baptist, Catholic, and Episcopal. Yes.
N. Rodgers: Although there's a sizable Jewish population.
J. Aughenbaugh: There is. But a lot of their, if you will, Protestantism is a result of their Danish past and the American presence.
N. Rodgers: Martin Luther and the adoption in the German/Danish.
J. Aughenbaugh: But you have a strong Catholic presence. Rastafarians are also represented there. As Nia pointed out, one of the oldest Jewish communities in the western hemisphere is in St. Thomas.
N. Rodgers: These are Sephardic Jews, which are Jews that come from Spain and Portugal, so that part of Europe. The language, I assume, is English.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, it is, but they have a lot of other languages spoken on the US Virgin Islands. English is the dominant language. Then you got Spanish spoken by a little over 17%, which again is not a big surprise since you have so many former Puerto Ricans on the US Virgin Islands. But because of the colonial influence, you have French or French creole spoken by 8.6, and then you have other languages spoken by 2 1/2% of the population. These are native languages that go as far back as?
N. Rodgers: 1,000 BC.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. It is just absolutely phenomenal. The impact on, for instance, government documents and conversation patterns, according to one book, it's not unusual for you to start off speaking English, transition to Spanish, and then, depending on who you are speaking with, end up with French creole.
N. Rodgers: That makes sense because it exchanged hands so many times. As you were talking about in the early history, all the different colonial nations fought over different parts and pieces of the Virgin Islands. It's not a big surprise that people would maintain cultural ties to those languages and nations. But you know what I think is the best thing about the Virgin Islands?
J. Aughenbaugh: What's that?
N. Rodgers: I think that the people are exquisitely nice every time that I have been.
J. Aughenbaugh: You have actually gone there on cruises, right?
N. Rodgers: Right. I go out to see things because that's what cruise ships do. It was fabulous, this kindness and niceness of people, so I would encourage people to go. It's totally fabulous. I would encourage you, if you also want to serve in the government, you could write a constitution because apparently, they'll just adopt one randomly. Now that was just silly. But thank you, Aughie. This has been a wonderful series. I've learned a lot about the different territories of the United States.
J. Aughenbaugh: We have one more about the unoccupied.
N. Rodgers: Unoccupied until I get there, just saying.
J. Aughenbaugh: Until you become president.
N. Rodgers: Until a bunch of Gen Xers move in.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia will go ahead and relocate, what is it? What's the presidential retreat, Camp David?
N. Rodgers: That's right, to Jarvis Island.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, Camp Nia. Anyways, thanks, Nia. Talk to you soon.
N. Rodgers: Thank you, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Bye.
You've been listening to Civil Discourse brought to you by VCU Libraries. Opinions expressed are solely the speaker's own and do not reflect the views or opinions of VCU or VCU Libraries. Special thanks to the Workshop for technical assistance. Music by Isaak Hopson. Find more information at guides.library.vcu.edu/discourse. As always, no documents were harmed in the making of this podcast.