Governor Pearson

The United States acquired what are now the Virgin Islands of the United States (USVI) from Denmark in 1917. The USVI was administered by the Department of the Navy from 1917 to 1931, when responsibility for administration was transferred to the Department of the Interior. In that year President Herbert Hoover appointed Barbara's maternal grandfather, Paul M. Pearson, as the USVI's first civilian governor. He served in that position until 1935.

Governor Pearson was a Quaker college educator from Philadelphia who had organized and managed the traveling Swarthmore Chautauqua. As Governor, he inititated a number of programs that were intended to improve the depressed economy of the territory and cultural life of its citizens. In addition to building the first tourist hotel in the territory, establishing an export market for local crafts, revitalizing the sugar industry, and creating a rum company (to the chagrin of his Quaker friends in Philadlephia), Governor Pearson inspired the territory's first affordable housing project.

After leaving office in 1935 Governor Pearson was placed in charge of the then new national government housing program. (He was Assistant Director of Housing in the Interior Department.) He pioneered the first public housing units in such difficult cities as Charleston, South Carolina, Chicago and San Francisco, and he paved the way for integrated housing in northern cities. He was even able to secure passage of a new housing law in California, which had banned public housing. In light of these efforts, it was appropriate that the USVI name one of its first public housing developments -- Paul M. Pearson Gardens in Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas -- for Governor Pearson. He died in 1938. On his death The New York Times observed that as Governor his "... crowning achievement was that of setting out upon a twenty year plan for the welfare of a few thousand people in a few little islands of the Antilles, somewhere in the supposed vicinity of the Lost Atlantis. He hardly got beyond the first year or two, however, with his utopian experiment before he had to give it over to other hands."

In 1968 Congress enacted legislation that for the first time enabled the citizens of the USVI to elect their governor. In its June 21, 1968 edition the Virgin Islands Daily News observed that "[w]ith the passage of the important Elected Governor Bill by the United States House of Representatives, a movement which began with the civilian government of the islands in 1931 has reached a conclusion gratifying to all of us. In that year President Herbert Hoover declared the Navy regime at an end. A distinguished civilian governor, in spite of unreasonable and unreasoning opposition, laid the foundation then for for the measure of autonomy which we shall soon enjoy."