Book Review: ‘Black Lives in Alaska: A History of African Americans in the Far Northwest’

Hartman, Ian C, and Reamer, David, “Black Lives in Alaska: A History of African Americans in the Far Northwest” University of Washington Press, 2022
301 pages, 0295750936 $24.95, 978-0295750934

“Black Lives in Alaska” is a brief sketch of the accomplishments and struggles of Black Americans in years that predate the Civil War up to the present, specifically in Alaska.

The book is broken into eight chapters that focus on different time periods, such as before the purchase of Alaska, the gold rushes, the world wars, discrimination and opportunity in postwar Alaska, civil rights, the pipeline era, criminal justice, cultural rejuvenation and looking forward.

According to the book, when Black people had a problem that needed to be fixed, it was they who did the legwork to fix it. They were going  to public meetings to speak up and spoke to lawmakers who could help.

According to “Black Lives,” it was the unofficial “mayor of Fairview,” John S. Parks, who, during the oil boom, recognized the need for poor people in Anchorage to have reliable transportation to get to work. Believe it or not, there was a time when the city lacked public transportation.

“Black Lives” points out that he wasn’t just worried about Black people; he was concerned for “poor Black, brown, and white people.” This theme of Black people being aware of others needing what they were fighting for comes up over and over.

According to the book, Beatrice and Robert Coleman should be lauded as much as Elizabeth and Roy Peratrovich as civil rights fighters. Both couples lived during Alaska’s Territorial Days. The Peratroviches were from Southeastern Alaska and their advocacy for Alaska Natives saw the passing of the “Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945 that banned discrimination based on race in Alaska.” The Anti-Discrimination Act was the first state or territorial anti-discrimination law enacted in the United States. The Colemans fought a loophole in the anti-discrimination law when they were refused service in a Fairbanks bar in 1946, and fought to end workplace race and gender discrimination within the military when Mrs. Coleman got a job as a stenographer.

I was genuinely surprised in how Anchorage’s two competing newspapers reported on Black issues. As a student of journalism, this emphasized the importance of researching the entire story and being unbiased. Some of the worst examples that I found were in ,but were not limited to, the criminal justice chapter. The book states, “Robert Atwood, publisher of the influential paper, the Anchorage Times and conservative proponent of aggressive policing, frequently circulated rumors about the Black population as his paper covered sensational instances of crime that bolstered racist stereotypes.”

The book also talks about Black parents giving their children “the talk” about how to act with police so that they are more likely to come home alive, “just try to get someplace where there are witnesses,” one parent told their children.

According to the book, even in present day Alaska, racism is still pronounced and present, but as a whole, Black people have not given up on Alaska and are doing more cultural diversity work in the schools. Black men and women have become part of the fabric that makes Alaska the state we know and love, having taken on roles in civic leadership and all levels of government.

I liked the book because I learned about a topic that was never taught to me as a student in Alaskan schools. I found some bitter irony in the notion that enslaved Black people were escaping the American South to go to deep harbor towns in New England to get on ships that would take them to the whaling waters of tsarist Russian Alaska.

I think “Black Lives” has a place on reading lists for anyone taking social work, journalism, criminal justice, and history. There are copies at most public libraries in Anchorage and the Valley, and you can do an easy search and buy it. The authors don’t go deep on topics, so it is a great introductory work to find what interests you and start your own research.

“Black history in Alaska” stands well as its own discipline, and it also belongs to Alaska. Black stories are woven into the social and political fabric of what we know and experience as modern Alaska.

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