School takes time to remember civil rights leader

Nationally, the country sets aside February to remember the civil rights advances won for African Americans by such leaders as Martin Luther King Jr.

Other marginalized groups struggled for equality as well, and their efforts are likewise remembered. To that end, students at Stikine Middle School and Wrangell High School were invited Tuesday to remember one of the champions of equal rights for Native Alaskans.

Elizabeth Peratrovich was a Tlingit activist who pushed for passage of the Alaska Civil Rights Act of 1945. The day the anti-discrimination act was signed into law, February 16, was subsequently made a state holiday, named in her honor.

Members of Wrangell's Alaska Native Sisterhood Camp #1 joined the Johnson-O'Malley program dancers in the high school commons area to share a bit of their culture and also some of the unpleasant experiences Native Alaskans faced in Peratrovich's day.

Christie Jenkins with Wrangell's ANS told the story. Born in Petersburg in 1911 and raised in Southeast, Peratrovich left the state for college. When she eventually returned from Washington with her husband, she settled down in Juneau in 1941. Peratrovich had been upset to find the rampant discrimination aimed against her people.

At the time, indigenous Alaskans were routinely barred from using the same theaters, businesses and public amenities as whites, and employment was hard to come by. Thinking of her own mother's experience here in Wrangell, JOM coordinator Virginia Oliver recounted to students she had to attend a segregated, one-room schoolhouse that encompassed all grade levels.

Getting involved in the civil rights movement through the Alaska

Native Sisterhood, Peratrovich's voice became integral to the act's passage. Amid this discriminatory atmosphere, a

wider push was made to outlaw such practices.

Such a legislative act reached the Territory Senate by February 1945, but opposition to its passage was deep. Jenkins pointed out many of the arguments made then may sound familiar, such as the bill would aggravate tensions between the races, segregation was the best solution, or there wasn't really a problem at all.

"Those are some of the ideas that we've come to recognize in the past 60 years as the public face of private injustice," Jenkins reminded students.

Responding to such arguments, Peratrovich was pointed in her sarcasm: "I would not have expected 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."

After delivering a heartfelt speech to the Senate, Jenkins told students the chamber had been swayed in favor of the Civil Rights Act's passage.

"She was the champion of Alaska Natives and all people who have experienced discrimination," Jenkins declared. "We honor her today for her wisdom, her vision and her courage for speaking about what she thought was right."

Jenkins reminded students that the lesson of Peratrovich's life is that a single person, speaking from the heart, can affect whole communities.