Elizabeth Peratrovich Day

 Elizabeth Peratrovich: Civil Rights Leader
  

"No law will eliminate crimes but at least you as legislators can assert to the world that you recognize the evil of the present situation and speak your intent to help us overcome discrimination." 

-- Elizabeth Peratrovich, addressing the Alaska State Senate as she testified in favor of the Anti-Discrimination Act, passed by the Legislature February 8, 1945, and signed into law by Governor Ernst Gruening on February 16, 1945.



Elizabeth Wanamaker Peratrovich (July 4, 1911 - December 1, 1958) was an renowned Alaska Native civil rights leader and Grand Camp President of the Alaska Native Sisterhood. After moving to Juneau, Elizabeth and her family faced appalling racism that made it difficult for them to find a home and excluded them from many public facilities. In response, Elizabeth, together with her husband, Roy Peratrovich, and then Governor Ernest Gruening, introduced Alaska's "Equal Rights" Bill to the Legislature in 1943. Elizabeth also gave incisive testimony in favor of the bill, which is credited with splitting opposition to the bill and facilitating its passage in 1945.

It is said that Elizabeth listened quietly to the opposition while Congressmen argued that the Bill would unnecessarily exacerbate racial tensions and that segregation was the real answer. After hearing Senator Allen Shattuck of Juneau declare, "Who are these people, barely out of savagery, who want to associate with us whites, with 5,000 years of recorded civilization behind us?", Elizabeth rose to speak. "I would not have expected," she began, "that I, who am barely out of savagery, would have to remind gentlemen with five thousand years of recorded civilization behind them of our Bill of Rights."

The gallery erupted into applause when Elizabeth finished speaking, and the Alaska Civil Rights Act was passed 11-5 on February 16th.

In 1988, the Alaska Legislature established February 16th as Elizabeth Peratrovich Day, memorializing her "courageous, unceasing efforts to eliminate discrimination and bring about equal rights in Alaska" (Alaska Statutes 44.12.065).


The following is a list of resources compiled for classroom use and professional development. Relevant audiovisual materials are also available on our iPod carts. Our staff are available to address Elizabeth Peratrovich Day in trainings, presentations, or facilitated discussions.

If you have questions about accessing any media or documents, please call 742-7867 or click "contact" in the navigation bar. Your school's Title VII staff member is also able to help you.

 
Primary Source Documents

Alaska Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
  2002  Racism's Frontier: The Untold Story of Discrimination and Division in Alaska. Washington,
    D.C.: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

The Daily Alaska Empire
  1945  Super Race Theory Hit in Hearing. February 6.

A Collection of Correspondence Regarding Race Issues in Juneau in 1942 and 1943
Alaskool

Miscellaneous Media

With a New Generation, an Opportunity to Heal
America Healing & First Alaskans Institute

Juneau, Alaska ca. 1908
Generations Join Together, to Talk and Heal in Alaska
America Healing & First Alaskans Institute

Lesson Plans


Elizabeth Peratrovich Day Celebration
Anchorage School District 

Three Alaska Native Leaders
ECHO Learning Center

I am Indopino
RaceBridges for Schools

Annotated Bibliography

Full text is linked where available.

Benson, Diane E., dir.
  2003  "When My Spirit Raised its Hands": A Dramatization of Elizabeth Peratrovich and Alaska
    Civil Rights. 27 min. Anchorage, Alaska: Anchorage School District.
SUMMARY: A one-woman play by a Tlingit, Diane E. Benson, that dramatizes the life story of Elizabeth Peratrovich, an Alaskan civil rights leader of the 1940s.
Check Availability:
>> Please note that this recording is also available on Disc 2 of ASD's Alaska Studies DVD. Check availability here.

Cole, Terrence M.
  1992  Jim Crow in Alaska: The Passage of the Alaska Equal Rights Act of 1945. In An Alaska
    Anthology: Interpreting the Past. Stephen W. Haycox and Mary Childers Mangusso, eds.
    Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Check Availability:

Foster, Scott, dir.
  1991  The Elizabeth Peratrovich Players (Program #713). In Rain Country. Scott Foster,
    producer. Juneau, Alaska: KTOO TV
SUMMARY: Film focus is on Hoonah High School students as they learn about Elizabeth Peratrovich and present her life in a play researched and written by Wanda Culp. Video can be divided into two parts for presenting to students. Part one introduces the players practicing and what they are learning about themselves as they learn about Elizabeth. Part two is the actual play the students present at a Grand Camp meeting of the ANB/ANS.
Check Availability:

Kurtz, Matthew
  2006  Ruptures and Recuperations of a Language of Racism in Alaska's Rural/Urban Divide.
    Annals of the Association of American Geographers 96(3):601-621.
SUMMARY: A number of scholars note that racism transforms its shape and character at different times and places: both ideas of "race" and concepts of racism have been subject to change. I extend the work of one such scholar, Ann Stoler, who argues that the slipperiness of racial discourse - its "polyvalent mobility" - accounts for its longstanding power. This article is staged on four episodes since World War II, narratives that trace ruptures and recuperations of racial discourse in Alaska through its geographies of state formation. The stories follow the entanglement of two binary structures used to categorize and govern Alaska's population: formations of "race" (Native/white particularly) and frameworks of space (rural/urban) that are often understood to be a code for "race". [...]

Oleska, Michael
  1994  Elizabeth Peratrovich and Roy Peratrovich. In Haa k̲usteeyí, Our Culture: Tlingit Life 
    Stories. Nora Marks Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer, eds. Juneau, Alaska: Sealaska
    Heritage Foundation.
SUMMARY: Haa Kusteeyi, Our Culture: Tlingit Life Stories is an introduction to Tlingit social and political history. Each biography is compelling in its own merit, but when all are taken together, the collection shows patterns of interaction among people and communities of today, and across the generations. By combining historical documents and photographs with accounts gathered from living memory, the book also enables the present, living generations to interact with their past. The book features biographies and life histories of more than 50 men and women, most born between 1880 and 1910, including a special section on the founders of the Alaska Native Brotherhood. Additional lives are described tangentially. [...]
Check Availability:

Oleska, Michael 
  1991  Six Alaskan Native Women Leaders: Pre-Statehood. Connie Munro and Anne Kessler, eds.
    Juneau, Alaska: Alaska Department of Education.
SUMMARY: This collection of biographies of six native Alaskan women leaders in various fields (Belle Herbert, Della Keats, Maggie Lind, Elizabeth W. Peratrovich, Anfesia Shapsnikoff and Sophia Vlasoff) is intended for use as a classroom resource on the history of women in Alaska.
Check Availability:

Olsen, Sharon and Wanda Culp
  1991  A Recollection of Civil Rights Leader Elizabeth Peratrovich, 1911-1958. Juneau, Alaska:
    Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.


Silverman, Jeffry, dir.
  2009  For the Rights of All: Ending Jim Crow in Alaska. 56 min. Anchorage, Alaska: Blueberry
    Productions.
SUMMARY: The inspiring story of Alaska Natives who, through non-violent social change, overcame prejudice, disadvantage and blatant bigotry to win justice for all Alaskans -- a story that resonates today for Natives facing new challenges. A blend of documentary and drama, with re-enactments, new interviews, and rare historic footage and photographs, this one-hour film traces the remarkable story of Alaska's civil rights movement in a series of victories for citizenship, voting rights, school desegregation and freedom from discrimination won over the course of the 20th Century -- one generation inspiring the next. [...]
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