An examination of socioeconomic conditions and political status of the Black community in the Virgin Islands after emancipation supports the contention that the "Fireburn" uprising of 1878 was not a riot but a labor revolt. The revolt resulted in flexible labor contracts, land-buying terms, and unions for working-class Blacks. (ML)

Following the removal of the Freedman's Bureau and failure of labor recruitment efforts targeted to Chinese and European immigrants, the practices of sharecropping, tenant farming, and the hiring of convict labor replaced slave labor in the South's postbellum agricultural economy. Lack of minimal economic power among freed Blacks resulted in slave…