Black Lives in Alaska: Justice

Activism has helped shape Alaska. Black Alaskans have taken to the streets, but also to city and town halls, the State Capitol, corporate boardrooms, and courtrooms to assert their rights and call out injustice, similar to efforts elsewhere in the US. Alaska’s Black activists protested housing and employment discrimination and advocated for greater accountability in law enforcement, at times forging alliances with Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, and white allies.

Black Civil Rights in Alaska built on the momentum of ongoing Alaska Native activism and advocacy. In 1945, Alaska Native peoples successfully promoted the passage of the Equal Rights Act, an early measure by the territory to limit race-based discrimination in public places. In the 1960s, as the Civil Rights movement was gaining steam throughout the US, Alaska’s communities of color fought and won significant victories.

In the 1930s and 40s, the NAACP repeatedly declined to charter a branch in Alaska, since it was not yet a state. In 1951, after a racist arson attack, it didn’t take long for the NAACP to emerge as a hub for civil rights mobilization. John W. Thomas, Blanche McSmith, Clarence and Flossie Coleman, Joseph M. Jackson, John S. Parks, and Richard Watts are some associated with the early days of the NAACP in Alaska.  The NAACP remains a focal point of Black activism and civic engagement in Alaska. 

ANCHORAGE MAYOR GEORGE HENRY BYER WITH MEMBERS OF THE ALASKA NAACP, INCLUDING BLANCHE MCSMITH (SEATED), ANCHORAGE CITY HALL, 1959

Alvin Campbell encountered taunts and racist slurs as he and his family prepared to move into a newly constructed home in Anchorage’s segregated Rogers Park neighborhood. In October 1950, days before he and his family planned to move into the new house, it was burned to the ground in a racially motivated arson attack. Black Alaskans immediately rallied around the Campbells and successfully lobbied the NAACP to charter its first Alaskan branch. 

Black activists along Alaska’s railbelt, the urbanized stretch of the state extending from Seward to Fairbanks, took up causes associated with the civil rights movement. Job security and employment discrimination, access to housing, and inclusion in politics and business represented some of the prevailing concerns.

Dickerson was born in 1912 and moved to Alaska in 1958. She was the first Black homesteader in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley. She became the first Black woman to practice law in Alaska. She was dedicated to human rights causes and often took on cases involving the rights of women and people of color as well as issues affecting the workplace. She found time to mentor young minority lawyers throughout her long career and worked tirelessly for decades to make Alaska better for everyone. 

Racism in the U.S. is structural, which means that patterns of discrimination are persistent and embedded in our legal, educational, health care, and economic institutions. Many Black Alaskans remain engaged in the quest for equality and have joined a diverse coalition to build a more inclusive Alaska in the 21st century, one with equity and justice at its center.

After the killings of Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012 and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, nationwide protests erupted over systemic racial injustice and the deeply rooted and historic devaluation of Black lives in the US. The refrain, “Black Lives Matter” could be heard from Sanford, Florida to Anchorage, Alaska. The movement gained more traction after the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by law enforcement in Minneapolis and Louisville, respectively, in 2020. 

Amid the global pandemic, millions of people protested and demanded an end to racism, white supremacy, and police violence. Again, Alaskans took to the streets, not only in Anchorage and Fairbanks but also in smaller communities. A multi-racial coalition of Alaska Natives, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and whites stood in solidarity with Black Alaskans. By the end of the year, Black Lives Matter had become one of the largest, most sustained social movements in the nation’s history.