Queen Mary (Mary Thomas)

Who is Queen Mary (Mary Thomas)?

Mary Thomas, remembered as "Queen Mary" or "Captain Mary," was one of the leaders of the 1878 Fireburn, the largest labor uprising in Danish West Indian history, which broke out on the Danish colony of St. Croix, now part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, on October 1, 1878. Thirty years after emancipation, formerly enslaved laborers on St. Croix's sugar plantations remained bound by a harsh annual labor contract system that kept them in near-total poverty with almost no freedom of movement. When workers in the town of Frederiksted rose up in protest, Mary Thomas emerged as one of several women, alongside Agnes Salomon and Mathilda McBean, who led crowds that burned plantation estates and cane fields across the western half of the island over several days. Danish colonial authorities eventually suppressed the revolt with troops; Thomas was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death, a sentence later commuted, and she was ultimately imprisoned and deported to Denmark. The Fireburn queens are commemorated across the Virgin Islands today, including in public housing communities and annual cultural events named in their honor, as enduring symbols of resistance to colonial labor exploitation.

Sources: Danish National Archives, records of the 1878 St. Croix labor riot ("Fireburn") trials · George F. Tyson, Bondmen and Freemen: The Emancipation of the Enslaved on St. Croix (Virgin Islands Humanities Council) · Government of the U.S. Virgin Islands, Fireburn Commemoration historical records