The Virgin Islands of the United States (commonly called the United States Virgin Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands or USVI) are a group of islands in the Caribbean that are an insular area of the United States. The islands are geographically part of the Virgin Islands archipelago and are located in the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles.
The U.S. Virgin Islands consist of the main islands of Saint Croix, Saint John, and Saint Thomas, along with the much smaller but historically distinct Water Island, and many other surrounding minor islands. The total land area of the territory is 133.73 square miles (346.4 km2).
As of the 2010 census the population was 106,405, mostly composed by those of Afro-Caribbean descent. Tourism is the primary economic activity, although there is a significant rum manufacturing sector.
Formerly the Danish West Indies, they were sold to the United States by Denmark in the Treaty of the Danish West Indies of 1916. They are classified by the UN as a Non-Self-Governing Territory, and are currently an organized, unincorporated United States territory. The U.S. Virgin Islands are organized under the Revised Organic Act of 1954, and have since held five constitutional conventions. The last and only proposed Constitution adopted by the Fifth Constitutional Convention in 2009 was rejected by the U.S. Congress in 2010, which urged the convention to reconvene to address the concerns Congress and the Obama administration have had with the proposed document. The convention reconvened in October 2012 to address these concerns, but was unable to produce a revised Constitution before its October 31 deadline.
Read more about United States Virgin Islands: History, Geography, Economy, Demographics, Transportation and Communications, Media, Education, Holidays
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states and/or virgin:
“I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mothers side was not an Indian chief.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (18911960)
“I hate to do what everybody else is doing. Why, only last week, on Fifth Avenue and some cross streets, I noticed that every feminine citizen of these United States wore an artificial posy on her coat or gown. I came home and ripped off every one of the really lovely refrigerator blossoms that were sewn on my own bodices.”
—Carolyn Wells (18621942)
“Sean Thornton: I dont get this. Why do we have to have you along. Back in the states Id drive up, honk the horn, a gald come runnin out.
Mary Kate Danaher: Come a runnin. Im no woman to be honked at and come a runnin.”
—Frank S. Nugent (19081965)
“Tis chastity, my brother, chastity.
She that has that is clad in complete steel,
And like a quivered nymph with arrows keen
May trace huge forests and unharbored heaths,
Infamous hills and sandy perilous wilds,
Where, through the sacred rays of chastity,
No savage fierce, bandit, or mountaineer
Will dare to soil her virgin purity.”
—John Milton (16081674)