Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm trade Bob Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. So I've been to a lot of museums. A lot of these museums, to be totally fair, have been in the United States. And one thing that I found, Holly, I don't know if this is your experience as well, but unless I'm in an exhibit but is specifically about slavery or race, there's a lot of weird sleight of hand that goes on with slavery. Absolutely, I think some museums don't want to turn off potential museum goers by engaging in a really difficult topics. Sometimes. Yeah, so yes, I've been to exhibits about the American Civil War that really focus on the battles and make almost no mention of the slaves that the war was pretty much bought over. Uh, there are descriptions of the horrors of slavery that are kind of weird late compartmentalized as this thing that happened in the past. We were much less enlightened, and it doesn't really explore how having built a nation on that practice continues to affect people of every race today. It's it's kind of odd. And I'm not just talking about the museums in the United States. Most of the other museums that I have been to are in the Caribbean, and they also just deflect the focus away from the roles that these islands played in slavery and vice versa, and instead onto things like beautiful shorelines and birds and like shipwrecks. So this is not the case at the St. Kitts National Museum and Basstaire Saint Kitts. The National Museum is in the old Treasury building, which was originally built in and it's an easy walk from the cruise port, which is how I got there. With so many other museums, there's this weird Jedi mind trick about just focusing your tension somewhere else besides slavery. That is not how they do it at the St. Kitts National Museum there. It is more like have a seat. The culture of St. Kitts comes from two places, the native peoples who used to live here and are enslaved African ancestors. It's literally the only time I've been to a museum that was just like the National Museum, not like a museum that was devoted specifically, UH, justice slavery or justice civil rights or just a race. H and had that up front of an approach about it. So naturally, even though I was there on vacation, I came away with things to talk about on the show today. So we are just going to jump right into that. Uh. St. Kitts, which is sometimes called St. Christopher, is part of the Leeward Islands, which is the northwest arm of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean Sea. Exactly which other islands are part of the Leeward Islands depends a little bit on who is drawing the map, what time period we're talking about, and whether they're looking at things from a glawgical or a cultural and historical perspective. Regardless, St. KITT's nearest neighbor is Nevis, and St. Kitts and Nevis together are one country as the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis, and this is the smallest country in the Western Hemisphere UH and Nevis has actually tried to separate into its own country a couple of times, and it's the smaller island of the two of them. If you're still having a hard time visualizing exactly where we're talking about. St. Kitts and Nevis is east of Puerto Rico and north of Venezuela. St. Kitts has been inhabited almost continually for about five thousand years that we know of when Christopher Columbus sighted the island on his second voyage in fourteen three. It's inhabitants where the carib and the Arawak people's. Unfortunately, we don't really know much about either of these cultures as they existed on St. Kitts. They were all killed through violence or disease or moved to other nearby islands as Europeans colonized St. Kitts in the sixteen hundreds. This is actually true of many other populations of the carib and the Arawak peoples. They did not fare at all well as Europeans moved in. St. Kitts is a volcanic island, and that meant that the soil was very good for growing sugar once the rainforest was cleared away to make way for the sugar plantations. So by the end of the seventeenth century, the sugar industry dominated the island and the overwhelming majority of the people living there were enslaved Africans. Although both France and Britain colonized Saint Kitts, it eventually became British territory. And today's story is about what happened after the British Empire abolished slavery, which is what we're going to talk about. After a brief break forward from a sponsor. Slavery was abolished in England in seventeen seventy two, and the British Parliament passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in eighteen oh seven. But while that act abolished the buying and selling of human beings, it didn't actually do anything about the people who are already enslaved elsewhere in the Empire. In August of eighteen thirty three, after decades of activity by Britain's abolitionist movement as well as by slaves themselves, Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act, which was which was going to free all slaves in the British Empire. There were some exceptions though that included, for example, the territories and possession of the East India Company. In most places, this law was going to free all enslaved people over the age of six on August first, eighteen thirty four. Here's how the act starts. Quote, Whereas diverse persons are holding in slavery within diverse of His Majesty's colonies, and it is just an expedient that all such persons should be manumented and set free, and that a reasonable compensation should be made to the persons hitherto entitled to the services of such slaves, for the loss which they will incur by being deprived of their right to such services. And whereas it is also expedient the provision should be made for promoting the industry and securing the good conduct of the persons so to be manumented for a limited period after such their manumission. And whereas it is necessary that the laws now in force in the said several colonies should forthwith be adapted to the new state and relations of society therein, which will follow upon such general manumission as aforesaid of the said slaves, And that, in order to afford the necessary time for such adaptation of the said laws, a short interval should elapse before such manumission should take effect. And then it goes on to outline all of the specific provisions in the Act and how this is going to happen. So what the Act basically says is that slaves should be set free, and that slave owners should be compensated for the loss of their slaves, and that there should be some kind of buffer in place that the people who relied on slave labor didn't imediately lose or have to start paying their laborers. The rationale behind all this was, for the most part, the industries that relied on slavery and we're still using slave labor needed a lot of labor to continue running. So if suddenly there were no more slaves, it would be a hindrance on the continuation of industry. So, in other words, when we say the word abolished, it really goes in the air quotes there. Emancipation was not immediate. In most places, slaves had to continue to work for a set amount of time without pay before they could be freed. The British West Indies enslaved people over the age of six were turned into apprentices, and apprentices would have to work forty five hours per week for between four and six years to earn their freedom. That forty five hours a week for between four and six years was also without pay. Meanwhile, the plantation owners and the British and the British West Indies and elsewhere were giving grants from the government as a compensation for the loss of their slave. The government actually earmarked twenty million pounds sterling for that purpose. Obviously, there are a number of problems with the idea of quote freeing slaves by making them continue to work for free, although this tactic was really not the least bit unique to the British Empire. But let's put that aside for just a second, because there were some other complications going on here as well. Because they were not going to be paid for their forty five hours of work per week, apprentices would have to do extra work to make any money to support themselves or to try to prepare for a life as an actual free person. They need to either hire themselves out as labor, or grow crops to sell on a personal plot, or make items that could be sold for money, or some other way of making a living, and their time to do any of that started after their forty five hours per week of work ended. At some plantations, this forty five hour schedule was doled out as nine hours a day or five days, so that people could go to the Saturday markets and sell the things that they'd made or grown in their spare time, and then be able to go to church on Sunday. But at other plantations it was to be six seven and a half hour days, and only Sundays were given off. There were no provisions for how that six day week would allow people to get to the market or buyer spell these things that they needed. There were also no provisions for the care or education of the children under the age of sex who were to be freed immediately. And on top of all of that was this very basic issue of food. Enslaved people in the British Caribbean Territory were allotted a certain amount of food. It was effectively rationed, but even before the abolition of slavery, many planters and their slave owners had trouble affording the food that they needed to supply that amount of food. This was also especially true after the price of sugar plummeted at the end of the Napoleonic Wars in eighteen fifteen, so there was some pretty serious doubt that plan station owners would be willing to or even able to provide enough food for all of these apprentices, and even if they were able to do so, those rational amounts really weren't enough to stay healthy, especially given how much manual labor was going to be involved for many of these slaves. And back to that big, ugly truth that we put aside just a minute ago, Emancipating people by requiring them to work for free for a bunch more years is not the same thing as actually emancipating them. And the slaves living on St. Kits understood that there was this huge, huge resistance to the idea that they were going to be quote free but still have to work for the same people in the same jobs without earning anything. Was obvious that this whole apprentice situation was bogus, and according to the accounts of a number of missionaries in St. Kitts at the time, the slaves were also really pretty justifiably suspicious of the idea that if they only worked without pay for several years, they would afterwards be free forever. In the words of Wesleyan missionary James Cox, quote, all my attempts to show that the apprenticeship was a part payment for absolute unconditional freedom were in some cases unsatisfactory. I am fully persuaded therefore, that that had the term slavery been retained with the modification of the present system, it would have been productive of far less confusion. Almost as soon as word reached the island of exactly when and how this so called emancipation was going to come, slave on slaves on St. Kitts started to resist, and their first tactic was basically to just slow down their production. That initial slowdown was kind of temporary, though The Lieutenant Governor of the island, John Nixon, commended the plantation owners afterward for their quote good management and getting production back on course quote without coercion. White abolitionists on St. Kitts started at cating resistance in the hope that true emancipation might come earlier. There was some precedent here after a very close vote on the nearby island of Antigua, so close in fact, that the deciding vote was cast by the Speaker of the House. All of the slaves there were freed immediately, but white abolitionists were by far not the only people encouraging these enslaved people to resist. At this point, about seven percent of the population on St. Kitts were white, but eleven percent were cast classified as free colored. Some of the most prominent of the free people of color started to vocally advocate for the abolition of slavery, now not after four or six years of so called apprenticeship. One of these was Ralph Cleghorn, who owned a store, and he was so vocal on the issue that planters actually started forbidding their employees to shop there. And at some point along the line, people got the idea that he was going to England to pick up papers from the kids that we're going to declare all of the enslaved persons on St. Kitts to be free. And while this trip really was because he was hoping to be appointed Provost Marshal of St. Kitts, Uh, the fact that people thought there was a different purpose to his visit continued to increase the tensions between the slaves, the government, and the planters who owned slaves. This also led to a rumor that the king really had freed all the slaves, but that the planters of St. Kitts specifically were just withholding their freedom. In addition to all of that, there were several prominent slave owners on St. Kitts who did decide to go ahead and emancipate their own slaves totally before the law went into effect. All of these things together really stoked the fires of resistance among the enslaved population. As the August first, eighteen thirty four date for emancipation drew closer, it was clear to everyone involved that the enslaved people of St. Kitts were not going to peacefully go from being slaves to being so called apprentices who were then required to work for free. Perhaps the last straw was when the Lieutenant Governor suggested that even if they were freed without being apprenticed first, the former slaves of St. Kitt would still be compelled to work thanks to other clauses of the law. Let's talk about exactly what happened when the August first date arrived after another brief word from a sponsor. So as the date of emancipation arrived on St. Kitts on the last day of July, so the last day they were technically still slaves. The slaves who did field work on about a dozen of St. Kitts's largest sugar plantations dropped their tools near the homes of the plantation managers and then walked away. The ones who worked with livestocks stopped their duties a couple of days later, on Saturday, August the second. Although not all the plantations were involved, there were more than one operations of various sizes on the island. For the ones that were virtually all of the apprentices stopped their work, and on many this wasn't just a work stoppage, it was also a full protest. In the words of William Wilson, quote on the five or six largest there is not a single apprentice at work. Grange, Woodley's and Bordeaux are very obstinate. On these estates there are nearly eight hundred people, and all in a riotous way. To again quote Wesleyan missionary James Cox quote, they only wanted perfect personal liberty and wages, and preposterously hoped that they may be obtained by passive disobedience and clamor. In the plantations that no longer had a workforce, planters and managers tried to figure out what to do. The sugar harvest was done for the season and it was time for the fields to be prepared for the next season, so taking care of the animals was a much bigger concern. These were working animals, and the sugar industry was going to suffer if these beasts of burdens starved or died of thirst. Some planters actually resorted to letting their cattle graze on sugar plots, but since sugarcane is a perennial grass, doing this pretty much destroyed that plot for the following season's harvest. On August four, the governor announced that martial law was going to be declared if the apprentices did not return to their posts by the sixth, so two days later. In the meantime, ring leaders of the strike were found, and they were publicly lashed as both a punishment and a threat to the people who had walked off of the plantations. But for about the next three weeks most of the striking apprentices did not go back to work. They hid in the remaining rainforests on the slopes of Mountain Misery, which is criss crossed by ravines, and these made for really good hiding places. Some of them found and joined up with a man known as Marcus, King of the Woods. He was a slave who had run away some years before, and who had been living in the woods for several years before the emancipation began, he became kind of a folk hero St. Kitts. As a side note, this is actually not the first time that Mount Misery, now now known as liam Wiga, was the site of an uprising. In sixteen thirty nine, slaves fled there and established a camp from which to conduct raids on the plantations. The governor of St. Kitts gathered five hundred armed men and went into the woods to put down the rebellion. That was an extremely bloody event, with many of the slaves killed in the fighting and others drawn and quartered once it was over. It was also the first documented slave rebellion in the Eastern Caribbean. So to get back to eighteen thirty four, to try and get the apprentices back to work, the government brought in troops, burned the apprentices huts as punishment, lashed people, and formed a skirmish line to work work their way through the woods to look for runaways. And it was really all of those threats combined that encouraged a lot of those who had joined the strike to eventually go back at the plantations. Martial law was ended on Monday, August eighteenth, with an amnesty for anyone who had not been sentenced for any crime related to the revolt. There weren't any casualties reported with this revolt, however, sixteen of the protesters were tried for sedition and mutiny as well as inciting a rebellion. Five of them were banished to Bermuda and six of them were lashed. Some of them were also jailed, and the other five were apparently not punished. The apprentices of St. Kitts were freed four Reel in eighteen thirty eight after four years of this working as apprentices with no pay, and afterwards, for the most part, the people in St. Kitts kept doing the same work as they were doing before, but this time four pay either in money or in kind compensation like housing and food. The sugar industry continued to be the major industry on the island until two thousand and five, and at that point beach sugar grown in Europe had become cheaper than cane sugar grown in the Caribbean, and increasingly processed foods were using corn syrups and other sweeteners instead of sugar, so the sugar industry in St. Kitts by that point just couldn't make ends. Meat anymore. Although the government of St. Kitts took a number of steps to try to diversify its economy in the face of shutting down this major industry, more than four percent of the population lost their jobs simultaneously. The last crop of sugarcane came in on July first, two thousand and five, and after that point the government shut down the whole industry. A train that was built in the nineteen twenties try to bring more efficiency to sugar production is still there, and now it's a tourist attraction that actually started two years before the sugar industry was shut down. Now agriculture, tourism, and manufacturing are the major industries on St. Kitts. Unemployment as of this recording on St. Kitts is six point three percent. However, nearly of the population actually live in poverty. Yeah, I had trouble finding the exact numbers of how that shutting down if the sugar industry affected the unemployment rate. I am under the impression that it basically jumped from five percent to nine and then over the last decade since then has dropped back down closer to where it was before. Uh the sugar industry was shut down. Uh. If you're ever in St. Kitts, go to the museum. It's pretty awesome. Do you, my dear, have a bit of listener to me and we can listen to as well? Why yes, I do. Uh. This is from a listener who signed his email as Mr Hernandez, so that's how I'm going to refer to him as Mr Hernandez and Mr Hernandez rights Deer, Holly and Tracy, thank you so much for doing a podcast on Park Mills and special education. It was awesome. The whole episode hit very close to home for me. I am a Hispanic man working in special education for young children with moderate to severe autism and behavioral issues for a large, low income school district, and YouTube brought up some points that I just wanted to talk about for my perspective as an educator. First, I wanted to thank Tracy's mom for getting into adult special education teachers and adult education get two little credit for the vital, impactful work. She must be a great person. I wanted to write about why I got into special education, maybe it would inspire other people to get into the field. Originally, I wanted to be a general and upper grades teacher because I wanted to change the world, but I got a chance to work in a classroom for students on the autism spectrum, and I was hooked. Everything about working in special education is amazing. We're encouraged to work creatively with innovative technologies and one on one with their students. All of my lessons are individualized to meet students needs so they will have the most success and develop the independence they deserve. No day is ever the same. I've had opportunities to work in gen ed classrooms with students who need help with inclusion, and mild to moderate classrooms for students who have learning disorders, and classrooms were moderate to severe students who give personal lot to give personalized attention to their own emerging voice, and even in a home care setting for a child who needed help developing positive behaviors. Each has been rewarding in itself and fascinating. But I have found by calling in special education for young children with moderate severe autism, this is because it focuses on working with helping the children and their families to plus you see the greatest growth and empowerment in a very short time. I love my job, but sometimes I am treated differently because of what I look like. I'm a big guy six ft three and what my wife affectionately calls barrel chested. Almost everyone has wide eyed alarm when I get introduced as someone who works with small children. Men usually dominate other lines of work, but this is one job that is, as you pointed out in the listener mail, overwhelmingly women. I found in my personal experience there are two main preconceptions that hold back men entering into preschool and lower grades teaching. One quote, men aren't nurturing. When I hear this, I feel disappointed that we have made so many strides strides to equalize the sexes, but are still hung up on one outdated cultural norm that men can't be nurturing because that would imply weakness, as if being patient and protecting someone makes you weak to men abused. This is terrifying that we so readily stereotype something so awful, and it's the reason I know many male educators get quietly encouraged to work in upper grades or high school where it is less divisive. Most decided to do just that. Those that are left are warned ominously that if someone even plot implies something inappropriate, our careers are over and reputations ruined. I'm sorry I had to bring into light harsh realities, but it is something that must be looked at with a critical eyes so we can better gender equality and help more qualified people enter into integral parts of education. It would be a detriment to our society if accomplished people felt unwelcome to any job based on their race or gender. What is great is when I see these people get over their misconceptions. Parents feel relieved when they know more about me and feel comfortable to collaborate in their child's needs and how we can address them best. A significant portion of people with autism or boys and many of them grow up without fathers. It makes me so proud and a parent says they're happy their child sees me as more than a teacher, but a role model. I would encourage anyone who feels like they, who feels like they like to see growth and work with people on a personal level, to pursue a career in special education in any of its many forms. Each is essential and rewarding. Thank you again for the informative podcast. Mr Hernandez p s. You two had more detail on the struggles that led to I d e a than any special education press I ever took. How that's that's Tracy's awesome research at works, so she gets all the kudos on that one. Oh, thank you and thank you Mr her name is for writing to us. If you would like to write to us, we are at history podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're also on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash miss in history and our Twitter at ms in history. Our tumbler is missed in History dot tumbler dot com, and are also on Pinterest at pinterest dot com slash miss in History. We have a spreadshirt store at miss in history dot spreadshirt dot com and that has lots of t shirts and phonecases and things like that. If you would like to learn more about what we talked about today, you can come to our website and the word sugar in the search bar. That is at how stuff works dot com. You will find how sugar works. You can also come to our website, which is miss in history dot com, and you will find an archive of all of our episode ever and show notes and blog posts and cool stuff like that. So you can do all that and a whole lot more at how stuff works dot com or missed in history dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it has to have works? Doffle

Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm trade Bob Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. So I've been to a lot of museums. A lot of these museums, to be totally fair, have been in the United States. And one thing that I found, Holly, I don't know if this is your experience as well, but unless I'm in an exhibit but is specifically about slavery or race, there's a lot of weird sleight of hand that goes on with slavery. Absolutely, I think some museums don't want to turn off potential museum goers by engaging in a really difficult topics. Sometimes. Yeah, so yes, I've been to exhibits about the American Civil War that really focus on the battles and make almost no mention of the slaves that the war was pretty much bought over. Uh, there are descriptions of the horrors of slavery that are kind of weird late compartmentalized as this thing that happened in the past. We were much less enlightened, and it doesn't really explore how having built a nation on that practice continues to affect people of every race today. It's it's kind of odd. And I'm not just talking about the museums in the United States. Most of the other museums that I have been to are in the Caribbean, and they also just deflect the focus away from the roles that these islands played in slavery and vice versa, and instead onto things like beautiful shorelines and birds and like shipwrecks. So this is not the case at the St. Kitts National Museum and Basstaire Saint Kitts. The National Museum is in the old Treasury building, which was originally built in and it's an easy walk from the cruise port, which is how I got there. With so many other museums, there's this weird Jedi mind trick about just focusing your tension somewhere else besides slavery. That is not how they do it at the St. Kitts National Museum there. It is more like have a seat. The culture of St. Kitts comes from two places, the native peoples who used to live here and are enslaved African ancestors. It's literally the only time I've been to a museum that was just like the National Museum, not like a museum that was devoted specifically, UH, justice slavery or justice civil rights or just a race. H and had that up front of an approach about it. So naturally, even though I was there on vacation, I came away with things to talk about on the show today. So we are just going to jump right into that. Uh. St. Kitts, which is sometimes called St. Christopher, is part of the Leeward Islands, which is the northwest arm of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean Sea. Exactly which other islands are part of the Leeward Islands depends a little bit on who is drawing the map, what time period we're talking about, and whether they're looking at things from a glawgical or a cultural and historical perspective. Regardless, St. KITT's nearest neighbor is Nevis, and St. Kitts and Nevis together are one country as the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis, and this is the smallest country in the Western Hemisphere UH and Nevis has actually tried to separate into its own country a couple of times, and it's the smaller island of the two of them. If you're still having a hard time visualizing exactly where we're talking about. St. Kitts and Nevis is east of Puerto Rico and north of Venezuela. St. Kitts has been inhabited almost continually for about five thousand years that we know of when Christopher Columbus sighted the island on his second voyage in fourteen three. It's inhabitants where the carib and the Arawak people's. Unfortunately, we don't really know much about either of these cultures as they existed on St. Kitts. They were all killed through violence or disease or moved to other nearby islands as Europeans colonized St. Kitts in the sixteen hundreds. This is actually true of many other populations of the carib and the Arawak peoples. They did not fare at all well as Europeans moved in. St. Kitts is a volcanic island, and that meant that the soil was very good for growing sugar once the rainforest was cleared away to make way for the sugar plantations. So by the end of the seventeenth century, the sugar industry dominated the island and the overwhelming majority of the people living there were enslaved Africans. Although both France and Britain colonized Saint Kitts, it eventually became British territory. And today's story is about what happened after the British Empire abolished slavery, which is what we're going to talk about. After a brief break forward from a sponsor. Slavery was abolished in England in seventeen seventy two, and the British Parliament passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in eighteen oh seven. But while that act abolished the buying and selling of human beings, it didn't actually do anything about the people who are already enslaved elsewhere in the Empire. In August of eighteen thirty three, after decades of activity by Britain's abolitionist movement as well as by slaves themselves, Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act, which was which was going to free all slaves in the British Empire. There were some exceptions though that included, for example, the territories and possession of the East India Company. In most places, this law was going to free all enslaved people over the age of six on August first, eighteen thirty four. Here's how the act starts. Quote, Whereas diverse persons are holding in slavery within diverse of His Majesty's colonies, and it is just an expedient that all such persons should be manumented and set free, and that a reasonable compensation should be made to the persons hitherto entitled to the services of such slaves, for the loss which they will incur by being deprived of their right to such services. And whereas it is also expedient the provision should be made for promoting the industry and securing the good conduct of the persons so to be manumented for a limited period after such their manumission. And whereas it is necessary that the laws now in force in the said several colonies should forthwith be adapted to the new state and relations of society therein, which will follow upon such general manumission as aforesaid of the said slaves, And that, in order to afford the necessary time for such adaptation of the said laws, a short interval should elapse before such manumission should take effect. And then it goes on to outline all of the specific provisions in the Act and how this is going to happen. So what the Act basically says is that slaves should be set free, and that slave owners should be compensated for the loss of their slaves, and that there should be some kind of buffer in place that the people who relied on slave labor didn't imediately lose or have to start paying their laborers. The rationale behind all this was, for the most part, the industries that relied on slavery and we're still using slave labor needed a lot of labor to continue running. So if suddenly there were no more slaves, it would be a hindrance on the continuation of industry. So, in other words, when we say the word abolished, it really goes in the air quotes there. Emancipation was not immediate. In most places, slaves had to continue to work for a set amount of time without pay before they could be freed. The British West Indies enslaved people over the age of six were turned into apprentices, and apprentices would have to work forty five hours per week for between four and six years to earn their freedom. That forty five hours a week for between four and six years was also without pay. Meanwhile, the plantation owners and the British and the British West Indies and elsewhere were giving grants from the government as a compensation for the loss of their slave. The government actually earmarked twenty million pounds sterling for that purpose. Obviously, there are a number of problems with the idea of quote freeing slaves by making them continue to work for free, although this tactic was really not the least bit unique to the British Empire. But let's put that aside for just a second, because there were some other complications going on here as well. Because they were not going to be paid for their forty five hours of work per week, apprentices would have to do extra work to make any money to support themselves or to try to prepare for a life as an actual free person. They need to either hire themselves out as labor, or grow crops to sell on a personal plot, or make items that could be sold for money, or some other way of making a living, and their time to do any of that started after their forty five hours per week of work ended. At some plantations, this forty five hour schedule was doled out as nine hours a day or five days, so that people could go to the Saturday markets and sell the things that they'd made or grown in their spare time, and then be able to go to church on Sunday. But at other plantations it was to be six seven and a half hour days, and only Sundays were given off. There were no provisions for how that six day week would allow people to get to the market or buyer spell these things that they needed. There were also no provisions for the care or education of the children under the age of sex who were to be freed immediately. And on top of all of that was this very basic issue of food. Enslaved people in the British Caribbean Territory were allotted a certain amount of food. It was effectively rationed, but even before the abolition of slavery, many planters and their slave owners had trouble affording the food that they needed to supply that amount of food. This was also especially true after the price of sugar plummeted at the end of the Napoleonic Wars in eighteen fifteen, so there was some pretty serious doubt that plan station owners would be willing to or even able to provide enough food for all of these apprentices, and even if they were able to do so, those rational amounts really weren't enough to stay healthy, especially given how much manual labor was going to be involved for many of these slaves. And back to that big, ugly truth that we put aside just a minute ago, Emancipating people by requiring them to work for free for a bunch more years is not the same thing as actually emancipating them. And the slaves living on St. Kits understood that there was this huge, huge resistance to the idea that they were going to be quote free but still have to work for the same people in the same jobs without earning anything. Was obvious that this whole apprentice situation was bogus, and according to the accounts of a number of missionaries in St. Kitts at the time, the slaves were also really pretty justifiably suspicious of the idea that if they only worked without pay for several years, they would afterwards be free forever. In the words of Wesleyan missionary James Cox, quote, all my attempts to show that the apprenticeship was a part payment for absolute unconditional freedom were in some cases unsatisfactory. I am fully persuaded therefore, that that had the term slavery been retained with the modification of the present system, it would have been productive of far less confusion. Almost as soon as word reached the island of exactly when and how this so called emancipation was going to come, slave on slaves on St. Kitts started to resist, and their first tactic was basically to just slow down their production. That initial slowdown was kind of temporary, though The Lieutenant Governor of the island, John Nixon, commended the plantation owners afterward for their quote good management and getting production back on course quote without coercion. White abolitionists on St. Kitts started at cating resistance in the hope that true emancipation might come earlier. There was some precedent here after a very close vote on the nearby island of Antigua, so close in fact, that the deciding vote was cast by the Speaker of the House. All of the slaves there were freed immediately, but white abolitionists were by far not the only people encouraging these enslaved people to resist. At this point, about seven percent of the population on St. Kitts were white, but eleven percent were cast classified as free colored. Some of the most prominent of the free people of color started to vocally advocate for the abolition of slavery, now not after four or six years of so called apprenticeship. One of these was Ralph Cleghorn, who owned a store, and he was so vocal on the issue that planters actually started forbidding their employees to shop there. And at some point along the line, people got the idea that he was going to England to pick up papers from the kids that we're going to declare all of the enslaved persons on St. Kitts to be free. And while this trip really was because he was hoping to be appointed Provost Marshal of St. Kitts, Uh, the fact that people thought there was a different purpose to his visit continued to increase the tensions between the slaves, the government, and the planters who owned slaves. This also led to a rumor that the king really had freed all the slaves, but that the planters of St. Kitts specifically were just withholding their freedom. In addition to all of that, there were several prominent slave owners on St. Kitts who did decide to go ahead and emancipate their own slaves totally before the law went into effect. All of these things together really stoked the fires of resistance among the enslaved population. As the August first, eighteen thirty four date for emancipation drew closer, it was clear to everyone involved that the enslaved people of St. Kitts were not going to peacefully go from being slaves to being so called apprentices who were then required to work for free. Perhaps the last straw was when the Lieutenant Governor suggested that even if they were freed without being apprenticed first, the former slaves of St. Kitt would still be compelled to work thanks to other clauses of the law. Let's talk about exactly what happened when the August first date arrived after another brief word from a sponsor. So as the date of emancipation arrived on St. Kitts on the last day of July, so the last day they were technically still slaves. The slaves who did field work on about a dozen of St. Kitts's largest sugar plantations dropped their tools near the homes of the plantation managers and then walked away. The ones who worked with livestocks stopped their duties a couple of days later, on Saturday, August the second. Although not all the plantations were involved, there were more than one operations of various sizes on the island. For the ones that were virtually all of the apprentices stopped their work, and on many this wasn't just a work stoppage, it was also a full protest. In the words of William Wilson, quote on the five or six largest there is not a single apprentice at work. Grange, Woodley's and Bordeaux are very obstinate. On these estates there are nearly eight hundred people, and all in a riotous way. To again quote Wesleyan missionary James Cox quote, they only wanted perfect personal liberty and wages, and preposterously hoped that they may be obtained by passive disobedience and clamor. In the plantations that no longer had a workforce, planters and managers tried to figure out what to do. The sugar harvest was done for the season and it was time for the fields to be prepared for the next season, so taking care of the animals was a much bigger concern. These were working animals, and the sugar industry was going to suffer if these beasts of burdens starved or died of thirst. Some planters actually resorted to letting their cattle graze on sugar plots, but since sugarcane is a perennial grass, doing this pretty much destroyed that plot for the following season's harvest. On August four, the governor announced that martial law was going to be declared if the apprentices did not return to their posts by the sixth, so two days later. In the meantime, ring leaders of the strike were found, and they were publicly lashed as both a punishment and a threat to the people who had walked off of the plantations. But for about the next three weeks most of the striking apprentices did not go back to work. They hid in the remaining rainforests on the slopes of Mountain Misery, which is criss crossed by ravines, and these made for really good hiding places. Some of them found and joined up with a man known as Marcus, King of the Woods. He was a slave who had run away some years before, and who had been living in the woods for several years before the emancipation began, he became kind of a folk hero St. Kitts. As a side note, this is actually not the first time that Mount Misery, now now known as liam Wiga, was the site of an uprising. In sixteen thirty nine, slaves fled there and established a camp from which to conduct raids on the plantations. The governor of St. Kitts gathered five hundred armed men and went into the woods to put down the rebellion. That was an extremely bloody event, with many of the slaves killed in the fighting and others drawn and quartered once it was over. It was also the first documented slave rebellion in the Eastern Caribbean. So to get back to eighteen thirty four, to try and get the apprentices back to work, the government brought in troops, burned the apprentices huts as punishment, lashed people, and formed a skirmish line to work work their way through the woods to look for runaways. And it was really all of those threats combined that encouraged a lot of those who had joined the strike to eventually go back at the plantations. Martial law was ended on Monday, August eighteenth, with an amnesty for anyone who had not been sentenced for any crime related to the revolt. There weren't any casualties reported with this revolt, however, sixteen of the protesters were tried for sedition and mutiny as well as inciting a rebellion. Five of them were banished to Bermuda and six of them were lashed. Some of them were also jailed, and the other five were apparently not punished. The apprentices of St. Kitts were freed four Reel in eighteen thirty eight after four years of this working as apprentices with no pay, and afterwards, for the most part, the people in St. Kitts kept doing the same work as they were doing before, but this time four pay either in money or in kind compensation like housing and food. The sugar industry continued to be the major industry on the island until two thousand and five, and at that point beach sugar grown in Europe had become cheaper than cane sugar grown in the Caribbean, and increasingly processed foods were using corn syrups and other sweeteners instead of sugar, so the sugar industry in St. Kitts by that point just couldn't make ends. Meat anymore. Although the government of St. Kitts took a number of steps to try to diversify its economy in the face of shutting down this major industry, more than four percent of the population lost their jobs simultaneously. The last crop of sugarcane came in on July first, two thousand and five, and after that point the government shut down the whole industry. A train that was built in the nineteen twenties try to bring more efficiency to sugar production is still there, and now it's a tourist attraction that actually started two years before the sugar industry was shut down. Now agriculture, tourism, and manufacturing are the major industries on St. Kitts. Unemployment as of this recording on St. Kitts is six point three percent. However, nearly of the population actually live in poverty. Yeah, I had trouble finding the exact numbers of how that shutting down if the sugar industry affected the unemployment rate. I am under the impression that it basically jumped from five percent to nine and then over the last decade since then has dropped back down closer to where it was before. Uh the sugar industry was shut down. Uh. If you're ever in St. Kitts, go to the museum. It's pretty awesome. Do you, my dear, have a bit of listener to me and we can listen to as well? Why yes, I do. Uh. This is from a listener who signed his email as Mr Hernandez, so that's how I'm going to refer to him as Mr Hernandez and Mr Hernandez rights Deer, Holly and Tracy, thank you so much for doing a podcast on Park Mills and special education. It was awesome. The whole episode hit very close to home for me. I am a Hispanic man working in special education for young children with moderate to severe autism and behavioral issues for a large, low income school district, and YouTube brought up some points that I just wanted to talk about for my perspective as an educator. First, I wanted to thank Tracy's mom for getting into adult special education teachers and adult education get two little credit for the vital, impactful work. She must be a great person. I wanted to write about why I got into special education, maybe it would inspire other people to get into the field. Originally, I wanted to be a general and upper grades teacher because I wanted to change the world, but I got a chance to work in a classroom for students on the autism spectrum, and I was hooked. Everything about working in special education is amazing. We're encouraged to work creatively with innovative technologies and one on one with their students. All of my lessons are individualized to meet students needs so they will have the most success and develop the independence they deserve. No day is ever the same. I've had opportunities to work in gen ed classrooms with students who need help with inclusion, and mild to moderate classrooms for students who have learning disorders, and classrooms were moderate to severe students who give personal lot to give personalized attention to their own emerging voice, and even in a home care setting for a child who needed help developing positive behaviors. Each has been rewarding in itself and fascinating. But I have found by calling in special education for young children with moderate severe autism, this is because it focuses on working with helping the children and their families to plus you see the greatest growth and empowerment in a very short time. I love my job, but sometimes I am treated differently because of what I look like. I'm a big guy six ft three and what my wife affectionately calls barrel chested. Almost everyone has wide eyed alarm when I get introduced as someone who works with small children. Men usually dominate other lines of work, but this is one job that is, as you pointed out in the listener mail, overwhelmingly women. I found in my personal experience there are two main preconceptions that hold back men entering into preschool and lower grades teaching. One quote, men aren't nurturing. When I hear this, I feel disappointed that we have made so many strides strides to equalize the sexes, but are still hung up on one outdated cultural norm that men can't be nurturing because that would imply weakness, as if being patient and protecting someone makes you weak to men abused. This is terrifying that we so readily stereotype something so awful, and it's the reason I know many male educators get quietly encouraged to work in upper grades or high school where it is less divisive. Most decided to do just that. Those that are left are warned ominously that if someone even plot implies something inappropriate, our careers are over and reputations ruined. I'm sorry I had to bring into light harsh realities, but it is something that must be looked at with a critical eyes so we can better gender equality and help more qualified people enter into integral parts of education. It would be a detriment to our society if accomplished people felt unwelcome to any job based on their race or gender. What is great is when I see these people get over their misconceptions. Parents feel relieved when they know more about me and feel comfortable to collaborate in their child's needs and how we can address them best. A significant portion of people with autism or boys and many of them grow up without fathers. It makes me so proud and a parent says they're happy their child sees me as more than a teacher, but a role model. I would encourage anyone who feels like they, who feels like they like to see growth and work with people on a personal level, to pursue a career in special education in any of its many forms. Each is essential and rewarding. Thank you again for the informative podcast. Mr Hernandez p s. You two had more detail on the struggles that led to I d e a than any special education press I ever took. How that's that's Tracy's awesome research at works, so she gets all the kudos on that one. Oh, thank you and thank you Mr her name is for writing to us. If you would like to write to us, we are at history podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're also on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash miss in history and our Twitter at ms in history. Our tumbler is missed in History dot tumbler dot com, and are also on Pinterest at pinterest dot com slash miss in History. We have a spreadshirt store at miss in history dot spreadshirt dot com and that has lots of t shirts and phonecases and things like that. If you would like to learn more about what we talked about today, you can come to our website and the word sugar in the search bar. That is at how stuff works dot com. You will find how sugar works. You can also come to our website, which is miss in history dot com, and you will find an archive of all of our episode ever and show notes and blog posts and cool stuff like that. So you can do all that and a whole lot more at how stuff works dot com or missed in history dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it has to have works? Doffle