We the People: Celebrating 250 years

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - She had been sitting, knitting and listening.

Sen. Allen Shattuck was speaking to the Alaska legislature. He “bemoaned the notion of equality among whites and Alaska Natives.”

“The races should be kept further apart. Who are these people, barely out of savagery, who want to associate with us whites with 5,000 years of recorded civilization behind us?” the National Park Service reported him saying at the time.

The floor opened for public comment and Elizabeth Peratrovich set down her needles.

“I would not have expected that I, who am barely out of savagery, would have to remind gentlemen with 5,000 years of recorded civilization behind them of our Bill of Rights,” Peratrovich is reported to have said, according to the National Park Service.

NPS says enough senators were moved by Peratrovich’s speech that the Alaska Equal Rights Act of 1945 was passed and then signed by Gov. Ernest Gruening.

Gruening was on record saying the bill never would have passed without Peratrovich’s efforts.

Over this next year, Alaska’s News Source is joining Gray Media nationally, as well as all local Gray stations, in honoring the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which was adopted July 4, 1776.

One key figure in shaping Alaska was Peratrovich.

“She’s largely credited with the passage of the first antidiscrimination bill in the country, [in] 1945, and she worked passionately her whole adult life to get that passed,” Annie Boochever said. Boochever wrote “Fighter in Velvet Gloves: Alaska Civil Rights Hero Elizabeth Peratrovich” with the collaboration of Roy Peratrovich Jr., Elizabeth’s son.

“It was almost 20 years before Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” Boochever said.

Boochever described the room after Peratrovich’s speech:

“The entire room was filled, people were standing on chairs in the back, it was really well attended and after she finished her talk people openly wept and huge applause and they took the vote and she won.”

“She was very powerful,” Boochever said.