Governor of All

When Archie Alexander, a lifelong Republican, landed one day last week in pastel-painted Charlotte Amalie, the sign on the hangar that says "Harry S. Truman Airport" was tactfully shrouded by a big welcome banner. Next day Alexander, a Negro contractor from Des Moines, climbed up on the back seat of a crimson Chevrolet convertible and headed a brass-band parade up the Kronprindsensgade (Crown Prince Street) and down the Dronningensgade (Queen Street). At the Emancipation Garden where the Danes* freed their slaves in 1848, he was sworn in as the first Republican governor of the Virgin Islands (pop. 26,665, of whom 91% are of Negro or mixed blood).

In his inaugural address, Alexander promised to be "governor of all and every segment of the population . . . Prejudice is born in ignorance and dispelled by knowledge." He got it on the record early that "we've room on these islands for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the Red flag." He pledged himself to work for a bigger tourist trade ("but an economy based on the tourist trade alone is not a stable one"), to aid schools, to help end the islands' water shortage.

Governor Alexander, now 65, was born in Ottumwa, Iowa. The son of a janitor, he worked his way through the University of Iowa, was a three-letter football tackle, graduated in engineering in 1912. He formed his own contracting business two years later and is now head of prosperous Alexander & Repass, builders (among many projects) of Washington's K Street Freeway along the Potomac.

Alexander replaces Morris de Castro, a white islander who has served the island government for 35 years, as acting governor at various times during the '40s and as governor since 1950. Island Republicans are happy with Alexander, an early Ike supporter. Said one woman member of the Republican reception committee, shoving chairs around in preparation for the post-inauguration reception at Government House: "I've waited 20 years to rearrange this furniture."

* Who in 1917 sold the islands (St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix) to the U.S. for $25 million.

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