‘Our monuments’: Reclaiming St Croix's elite heritage for descendants of the enslaved

Abstract

Sites of plantation slavery that are now interpreted as heritage frequently spatialize their narratives by emphasizing White elites in monumental spaces and associating the Black enslaved with smaller, less-imposing and frequently worse-preserved elements. In the contemporary present, as heritage spaces increasingly push to focus on the enslaved instead of the elite, the preservation of elite monumentality can be viewed as honouring enslavers. This article explores the position of heritage professionals on St Croix, US Virgin Islands, who advocate instead for a respatialization of slavery's heritage: a resignification of these ‘elite’ monuments as monuments to – and created by – the enslaved themselves. Their emphasis on the resilience and ingenuity of the enslaved challenges the spatial foregrounding of White supremacy in monumental heritage and allows the persistent materiality of plantations to be reclaimed in order to elevate Black history and identity.