1.

Lagkagehuset/ the former Women’s Prison

Address: Christianshavns Torv
Voice: La Vaughn Belle
You are standing on Christianshavns Torv: The entrance to the Metro is to your left, and the Hotdog food truck (Pølsevogn) is to your right. In front you see the Layer Cake House (Lagkagehuset), that big white and yellow building which houses the bakery Lagkagehuset, Joe & the Juice and other shops. There are also some marble blocks just in front of you. This is where the old women’s prison used to be.
Excerpt
The FOURTH FREE - 1878 thousands of workers lead the largest Labor revolt in Danish colonial history. Among them are Mary Thomas, Susanna Abrahamson, Matilde McBean and Axeline Solomon. Their prison records state that each of them carried a pair of earrings - metal that pierces flesh to mark meridian pathways and map ourselves. They were banished across the Atlantic to the Women’s Prison in Copenhagen. Somewhere along this process, the one where people become myth and legend, these women come to be known as the Queens of the Fireburn. In burning down plantations and sugar factories, they were crowned by flame, anointed by ashes and exalted by the embers they encoded in each one of us.
We are awaiting the FIFTH FREE. Still. A free from imperial fantasies, a free that does not foreclose revolution, a free that does not make it impossible to imagine itself.
Notes
  1. The St. Croix Fireburn labor rebellion was the largest labor rebellion in the overseas territories of the Danish Empire. In 1848 slavery was officially abolished but the Afro-Carribean workers continued to work under horrific conditions: The pay was low, mobility was restricted, and conditions were harsh. On October 1, 1878, the plantation workers on St. Croix rebelled and burned down many plantations. The rebellion was brutally suppressed, many of the men who participated were shot dead immediately. The four Fireburn Queens - Mary Thomas, Susanna Abrahamson, Matilde McBean and Axeline Solomon - were sentenced to death and sent to prison in the Women’s Prison in Christianshavn, where Lagkagehuset (The Layer Cake House) is located today, thousands of miles away from their families and children. They were pardoned after 10 years and returned to the islands.
  2. “Ancestral Queendom: Reflections on the Prison Records of the Rebel Queens of the 1878 Fireburn in St. Croix, USVI (formerly the Danish West Indies)” By VISCO: Virgin Islands Studies Collective: La Vaughn Belle, Tami Navarro, Hadiya Sewer & Tiphanie Yanique: https://tidsskrift.dk/ntik/article/view/118478
  3. The Fireburn Files: https://fireburnfiles.dk/
  4. I AM QUEEN MARY by La Vaughn Belle & Jeannette Ehlers: https://www.iamqueenmary.com/
  5. La Vaughn Belle mentions Queen Breffu, who led one of the first slave revolts in the Americas: The 1733 slave insurrection on St. John (Sankt Jan) in the Danish West Indies (now St. John, United States Virgin Islands): https://ghanaianmuseum.com/the-story-of-breffu-a-female-slave-from-ghana-who-led-a-massive-slave-revolt-to-take-over-the-west-indies-in-1733/
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