When I was a little girl, my family often vacationed on tropical islands. As far as I was concerned back then, these places existed solely for my pleasure--drinking virgin Pinã Coladas, chasing lizards, and pushing my brothers off their rafts. We went sightseeing, too, to various forts and bird sanctuaries, but such experiences were meant more to entertain than educate.

As an adult, I’ve traveled back to these islands on numerous occasions. Sure, the Pinã Coladas now had rum and the rafts floated boyfriends or husbands rather than brothers, but as when I was a child, I still viewed places of this sort primarily as playgrounds.

I had no reason to believe that my perspective would be any different when my husband and I visited St. John in the Virgin Islands a month ago. We had chosen such a spot over, say, Paris or Rome because we were desperate for rest and I longed for the sea. I looked forward to snorkeling, eating, and pampering. But my days as an innocent tourist were numbered.

As soon as we got to our lovely resort, we felt a chill so icy coming off the mostly black staff that it could have been harnessed for auxilliary air-conditioning. We’ve since learned the place had recently suffered a "management shake-up" that might have contributed to the hostility, but for me, it was a first nudge to awakening. No matter that I personally wasn’t the object of the staff’s scorn; the resentment made me start to ask questions.

Within moments of arriving, we also noticed the tidied ruins of an old sugar plantation that dotted the hotel grounds. The stone walls, towers, and chimneys were tastefully incorporated into the resort’s landscape design; a lovely restaurant perched at the highest point of the site. As we ventured beyond our compound, we realized that these ruins were ubiquitous to the entire island.  We wandered among the remains of several sites in silence, imagining the people who had sweated over vats of boiling sugar. The experience was made more eerie by the fact that, except for one particularly picturesque plantation on the requisite tour of the island, most of the ruins were empty of tourists.

Later, I found a book about the island’s history. Of course, St. John’s story is not so different from that of other such islands throughout the Caribbean. Denmark was the first European nation to colonize St. John. Like the Spanish, their original intent was to subjugate the local population to use as slaves, but there was no local population, so they imported Africans.  Few Danes wanted to live on St. John; highly-paid Dutch overseers did most of the bossing.  At one point in the mid- 1800's, the slave population outnumbered the white population by nearly five to one.

The slaves were expected, of course, to grow their own crops for subsistence, and as they learned to negotiate the difficult living conditions of the island, they also became more self-sufficient than was intended. In fact, more and more slaves began to stockpile supplies and map the island well enough to slip off in the night, "marooning" themselves into a sort of uneasy freedom.

As slaves increasingly disappeared, of course, the already harsh penal code became brutal. Branding, forced amputations, and hanging were common.

Three severe droughts within years of each other finally brought issues to a head in 1733, and the slaves revolted. The rebellion lasted six months; ironically, the whites who managed to escape took refuge together on the very grounds where I now sipped my rum punch. These survivors appealed to the renowned French army, with an offer of dominion over the island for their efforts. Of course, the French routed most of the insurgents. The original band of rebels, though, held out; eventually, they negotiated terms of surrender that included leniency for their actions. Naturally, once they emerged from the scrub brush, those terms were ignored and they were tortured and executed in the most heinous ways.

To me, the story of the rebellion emphasized how miserable the slaves must have been. Armed with homemade weapons, barely sustained on meager rations, they had yet been galvanized to face an enemy notorious for its firepower and its mercilessness.

I couldn’t forget this history for the remainder of my stay on the island. I saw the descendants of slaves raking the grounds or wiping tables, and I wondered what they thought as they walked each day past the remnants of despair. Worse, how could it be to spend your days serving the descendants of those who had persecuted you?

It’s easier at home in New Jersey to forget about slavery than it is in the Caribbean or American south. Physical evidence is slimmer, and because slavery was abolished in the north well before it was in other places, it’s much more distant history. Furthermore, African Americans are perhaps more assimilated into society in the northeastern United States. People in my neighborhood take pride in our community’s diversity. Yet many of my neighbors have visited the same island, and no one talks about the sharp color distinction between haves and don’t-haves, nor about the shameful history of the place.

Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed my vacation. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was colluding in a massive case of denial. Everywhere I looked, I sensed ghosts, and I kept wanting to tap my fellow vacationers on the shoulders and ask, "Aren't you creeped?"

A friend argues that there’s nothing to feel guilty about; after all, tourism provides the main source of jobs, and thus hope, in such places. But I can’t help wondering whether it really just promulgates a stereotype, not to mention a heritage, where whites still give the orders and blacks still serve.