U.S. Mint unveils coin with Alaska Native civil rights icon Elizabeth Peratrovich
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Alaska Native civil rights icon Elizabeth Peratrovich is joining the likes of Jim Thorpe and Sacagawea on the back of the U.S. Mint’s latest $1 coin.
The design was unveiled on Oct. 5 at a ceremony at Alaska Pacific University with the theme of “Elizabeth Peratrovich and Alaska’s Anti-Discrimination Law” referring to Peratrovich’s work passing an anti-discrimination law in 1945. A bill designating November as
was signed at the same event.
Peratrovich, a Tlingit from Southeast Alaska, encountered open discrimination against Natives while living in Juneau in the 40s, where many business hung signs saying “No Natives Allowed.” As a leader of the Alaska Native Sisterhood, Peratrovich pushed a bill through the territorial legislature barring such forms of discrimination, nearly 20 years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned such forms of discrimination nation-wide.
The idea for a new coin was passed in a joint resolution from the Alaska Legislature in May, petitioning the U.S. Mint to include her in its Native American $1 Coin Program, which puts a new Native American design on its coin each year.