In 1979, Melvin H. Evans became the first Black Delegate
to represent the U.S. Virgin Islands in Congress. Evans,
who had also been the first popularly elected governor of
the Virgin Islands, used his political experience to promote
health care, education, and other areas of concern to his
constituents during his one term in the U.S. House of
Representatives. “We of the Virgin Islands believe that the
significance of our progress towards full membership in the
American system reaches beyond the hearts and minds of
our small numbers,” he declared.1
Melvin Herbert Evans was born to Charles and Maude
Evans in Christiansted, St. Croix, on August 7, 1917, only
months after the United States purchased the Virgin Islands
from Denmark. After graduating from Charlotte Amalie
High School on St. Thomas, Evans received a bachelor’s
degree in 1940 from Howard University and a medical
degree from Howard University College of Medicine in
1944. In 1945, Evans married Mary Phyllis Anderson, a
nurse he met in a New York hospital; the couple had four
sons: William, Melvin Jr., Robert, and Cornelius. During
the next 15 years, Evans served in a variety of medical and
public health positions at hospitals and institutions in the
mainland United States and the Virgin Islands. From 1959 to 1967, Evans served as the commissioner of health for the
Virgin Islands; he also chaired the governor’s commission on
human resources from 1962 to 1966. In 1967, he received
a master’s degree in public health from the University of
California at Berkeley. He returned to private practice for
two years before President Richard M. Nixon appointed
him governor of the Virgin Islands. In August 1968,
Congress passed the Virgin Islands Elective Governor Act,
providing for the election of a governor by the territory’s
residents. Evans was elected as a Republican to the governor’s
office in 1970 and served until 1975. After his unsuccessful
bid for re-election in 1974, he was Republican National
Committeeman from the Virgin Islands and chair of the
board of trustees of the College of the Virgin Islands.2
As governor, Evans frequently appeared before the House
Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs to testify in favor
of legislation to provide the Virgin Islands a nonvoting
Delegate in the House of Representatives. “Representation
in Congress for the U.S. Virgin Islands is an urgent and
necessary step in our American democratic process,”
he explained. In 1972, Congress authorized nonvoting
Delegates for the Virgin Islands and Guam. When the first
Delegate of the Virgin Islands, Democrat Ron de Lugo, announced his decision to leave the House at the end of
the 95th Congress (1977–1979) and run for governor back
home, Evans entered the 1978 election to fill the open
seat. Unopposed in the Republican primary, Evans faced
Democrat Janet Watlington, a congressional aide to de
Lugo. Evans ran on his record as governor, while Watlington
emphasized her Capitol Hill experience and argued that she
could collaborate more effectively with the Democratically
controlled House. Either candidate would have been the
first Black Delegate to represent the island territory, which
was about 80 percent Black. In a tight race, Evans narrowly
defeated Watlington with 52 percent of the vote. Sworn in
to the 96th Congress (1979–1981) on January 15, 1979,
Evans served on the Armed Services and Merchant Marine
and Fisheries Committees, as well as the Committee on
Interior and Insular Affairs, which held jurisdiction over
legislation affecting the territories.3
During his congressional career, Evans focused on
improving education and health care in the Virgin Islands.
He secured federal funds to provide the territory’s public
education system with additional programs and services
for its expanding school-aged population. After a career in
medicine, Evans worked to alleviate the critical shortage of
doctors at local health facilities by introducing legislation
permitting foreign physicians to practice in the Virgin
Islands. “I firmly believe that the 120,000 people of the
U.S. Virgin Islands, in addition to the 1½ million tourists
who annually visit our islands, must be provided adequate
medical assistance to which they are entitled,” he said on
the House Floor. He also urged the House to appropriate
funding to build two hospitals to accommodate the growing
population of the territory.4
Determined to improve the quality of life on the Virgin
Islands, Evans used his position in Congress to bring
awareness to a variety of local issues and concerns. In 1979,
Evans introduced legislation making farm credit loans
available to local fishing and agricultural industries, which
had been denied access after Congress failed to include
the Virgin Islands in the 1971 Farm Credit Act. Evans
successfully amended the Justice System Improvement Act
of 1979 to ensure that the Virgin Islands would remain
classified as a state for the purpose of receiving federal law
enforcement funding. Following the devastation wrought
by Hurricane David and Tropical Storm Frederic in 1979,
Evans urged Congress to approve flood control measures
for the islands, with an emphasis on mitigating future hazards. “Simply restoring things as they were before is to
set the stage for a repetition every time there are storms,”
he said before an Appropriations Subcommittee. In 1980,
he organized congressional hearings in St. Croix and
St. Thomas to investigate chronic delays in mail delivery
between the continental United States and the Virgin
Islands. Evans also sponsored a bill, that later became law,
allowing federal recognition for National Guard officers from
the Virgin Islands. As a member of the Merchant Marine and
Fisheries Committee, Evans accompanied members of the
Coast Guard Subcommittee on a trip to the Virgin Islands
to examine the effects of drug trafficking. He cosponsored
legislation to bolster the Coast Guard’s enforcement of drug
laws; the measure was approved in 1980.5
Evans also worked to secure and expand the rights of
African Americans. Shortly after joining the House, he
remarked, “No one who has not been disenfranchised
does not understand what it means to be disenfranchised.”
He added, “I’m from an area, you know, that got its first
delegate to Congress only six years ago.” Evans was one of
only 17 Black Members serving in the 96th Congress, and
despite his Republican affiliation the entirely Democratic
Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) welcomed him as a
member, contending that partisanship should not play a
role in advancing the rights of communities of color. Evans
was both the first Virgin Islands Delegate and the first
Republican caucus member. “Not only do I speak with a
Republican point of view but I represent it in the caucus,”
he said. During his only term, Evans cosponsored the
bill that established the Martin Luther King, Jr. National
Historic Site in Atlanta, and supported efforts to designate
a national holiday in remembrance of the civil rights leader.
He strongly opposed a proposed constitutional amendment
to eliminate court-ordered busing in public schools: “When
people protest how strongly they favor civil rights and
how vehemently they oppose segregation and then seek to
remove one of the only, if not the only, remedies, however
imperfect, without offering viable alternative, it causes
serious concern.” Evans’s dedication to civil rights also
extended to international politics. He joined many of his
House colleagues in expressing outrage against the South
African government’s practice of racial segregation.6
As a Delegate, Evans could not vote on the House
Floor. But his ability to vote in committee nevertheless
gave him considerable influence over the legislative process.
On the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, Evans made headlines when he voted against a public lands
bill championed by congressional Democrats and U.S.
Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus that would have prohibited
commercial activity on 80 million acres of Alaskan
wilderness. Evans was a swing vote that led to the bill’s
demise—the committee then approved an alternative bill
that halved the amount of protected land and opened the
Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration.
The vote worried many of his constituents who feared that
Evans’s actions had jeopardized the Virgin Islands’ standing
among influential members of the Interior Committee.7
In 1980, Evans lost re-election to former Delegate Ron
de Lugo, who had returned to seek his old seat after failing
to win his bid for governor of the territory. Evans garnered
47 percent of the vote. Many Members of the House paid
tribute to the retiring Evans, commending his commitment
to the Virgin Islands. “A man of conviction and high
integrity, Congressman Evans would not be swayed from
his principles,” asserted Representative Donald Clausen of
California. “A spokesman for the common man, he assured
that the interests of his constituents were never overlooked.”
In 1981, President Ronald Reagan nominated Evans as
United States Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago. Evans
served as ambassador until his death of a heart attack in
Christiansted on November 27, 1984.8
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