Black History in the Last Frontier

Black History in the Last History Black Frontier Black History Black History in the Last Frontier provides a chronologically written narrative to encompass the history of African Americans in in the Last Frontier Alaska. Following an evocative foreword from activist and community organizer, Ed Wesley, the book begins with a discussion of black involvement in the Paciÿc whaling industry during the middle and late-nineteenth century. It then discusses how the Gold Rush and the World Wars shaped Alaska and brought thousands of black migrants to the territory. °e ÿnal chapters analyze black history in Alaska in our contemporary era. It also presents a series of biographical sketches of notable black men and women who passed through or settled in Alaska and contributed to its politics, culture, and social life. °is book highlights the achievements and contributions of Alaska’s black community, while demonstrating how these women and men have endured racism, fought injustice, and made a life and home for themselves in the forty-ninth state. Indeed, what one then ÿnds in this book is a history not well known, a history of African Americans in the last frontier. Ian C. Hartman / Ed Wesley C. Hartman Ian National Park Service by Ian C. Hartman University of Alaska Anchorage With a Foreword by Ed Wesley Black History in the Last Frontier by Ian C. Hartman With a Foreword by Ed Wesley National Park Service University of Alaska Anchorage 1 Hartman, Ian C. Black History in the Last Frontier ISBN 9780996583787 National Park Service University of Alaska Anchorage HIS056000 History / African American Printed in the United States of America Edited by Kaylene Johnson Design by David Freeman, Anchorage, Alaska. Portions of chapter 4 have appeared as “‘A Bonanza for Blacks?’: Limits and Opportunities for African Americans in Southcentral Alaska,” in Imagining Anchorage: Te Making of America’s Northernmost Metropolis, ed. James K. Barnett and Ian C. Hartman (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2018). Any opinions, fndings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily refect the views of the Department of the Interior or the University of Alaska. 2 Contents Living through History: A Foreword and Refections by Ed Wesley ....................................5 Introduction Black History in Unlikely Places ...................................................11 Chapter One Black Exploration and Arrival in the Icy Northwest .................19 Chapter Two Black Life in the Gold Rush Era .....................................................35 Chapter Tree World Wars and a Changing Alaska ..............................................53 Chapter Four Statehood and the Cold War ...........................................................73 Chapter Five Civil Rights Under the Northern Lights .......................................93 Conclusion Black History in Alaska at Century’s End ..................................117 150 Years of Black History in Alaska: A Timeline ....................126 Biographical Sketches ....................................................................130 Sources by Chapter ........................................................................177 Selected Bibliography ....................................................................189 Index ..................................................................................................192 3 Utqiagvik (Barrow) Kotzebue Nome Fairbanks A L A SK A Bethel Anchorage Seward Skagway Juneau 4 Living through History: A Foreword and Refections by Ed Wesley I arrived in Alaska in February 1973 to serve my country as a military police soldier (MP) in the U.S. Army. I was stationed at Fort Greely, just outside of Delta Junction and deep within Alaska’s interior. It was a far cry from where I grew up in Mississippi, and it was certainly diferent from my teenage years in Chicago. But my story and how I got to Alaska might not be too diferent from the tens of thousands of others who have made their way to the Last Frontier. I grew up in the Mississippi Delta during the era of segregation, the civil rights movement, and the blues. Te juke joints in Shelby and Clarksdale were the training ground for blues singers like B.B. King and Muddy Waters. Music was the sharecropper’s temporary escape from the miseries of feld labor under the brutal Jim Crow system. My family lived six miles from Mound Bayou, Mississippi, an independent black town established in 1887 by former slaves of Confederate president Jeferson Davis and his brother Joseph Davis. Mound Bayou’s founding is most associated with Isaiah Montgomery, a formerly enslaved man who in freedom led a long career as a Republican politician. Another Republican politician, Teddy Roosevelt, once referred to Mound Bayou as the “Jewel of the Delta”—a moniker that’s stuck. In the 1950s and 1960s Mound Bayou had also become known as the cradle of the civil rights movement and a haven for activists such as Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer. Here, I crossed paths with many notable fgures and learned about the history of African Americans in this country. In fact, I lived it! My biological father, Henry Ward, and many of my closest relatives came of age in Mound Bayou. My cousin Darryl Johnson Jr. served as a mayor, and Uncle Harold Ward was a circuit judge. Darryl’s father, Herman Johnson Sr., also resides in the town and even has a typewriter and desk that the slain civil rights hero Medgar Evers used when he worked as an insurance agent for Magnolia Mutual Insurance, then owned by Dr. T. R. M. Howard, the famous black entrepreneur and activist. Herman replaced Medgar Evers at the 5 insurance company when Dr. Howard sent Evers to become Mississippi’s state feld secretary for the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). Although not many know Dr. Howard’s name or his contributions, he was a prominent leader in the civil rights movement. He organized boycotts against Mississippi gas stations where the owners prohibited black folks from using public restrooms. He helped bring to light the murder of fourteen- year-old Emmett Till by two white men in Money, Mississippi, on August 28, 1955. Black newspapers published the picture of Till’s mutilated face in an open casket. Te photograph generated outrage throughout the country and propelled the civil rights movement. Eight years later, hundreds of thousands participated in the March on Washington. During her visit to Anchorage in 1982, I spoke with Rosa Parks, and she told me Dr. Howard inspired her to resist giving up her seat on the bus, the action that culminated in the famous bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. My mother, Minnie, and stepfather, Prentiss, both worked as sharecroppers—or what some call tenant farmers—on a plantation. By age thirteen, I was chopping cotton for twelve hours a day—laboriously using a garden hoe to remove weed from around the cotton plants—at a pay rate of three dollars a day. In the hot Mississippi sun, my family and I worked the felds, tended to animals, and pumped water for drinking, cooking, and bathing. Like many families along the Delta, debt was a part of life, and it usually got worse over time. At the end of the year you never had enough money to pay of what you borrowed the previous year. Tey called it “settling up”—the ability to actually free yourself from all of that debt—and it was all but impossible to get out from under. Tat was by design. Te white landowners in the South never intended blacks to gain economic or political freedom. Tey rigged the system and made sure you could never balance the fnances, let alone get ahead. So in 1965 we did what we had to do to escape the debt and poverty of Mississippi. We lef for Chicago and joined a great migration to the north just as so many other blacks had done throughout the middle of the twentieth century. We moved in with some relatives who arrived earlier and took up residence on the South Side, one of the nation’s most famous black neighborhoods. Our apartment was on Forty-sixth Place and Vincennes, immediately south of the commercial district on Forty-seventh Street and a block from the Regal Teater. At the Regal the Motown Revue was more ofen than not a coming attraction. I went to Forestville High School and took up football before an injury ended my playing days. Around that time, my stepdad insisted that I contribute to the household fnances. 6 You had to grow up fast in the city. To help support our family, I took a job at the Empire Room in downtown Chicago, a place known for its celebrity appeal. I worked as a busboy and encountered star performers, including Jimmy Durante, Ethel Merman, Vikki Carr, Phyllis Diller, Alan King, and Tony Bennett. Chicago in the late 1960s was the place to be. Tere was always something happening. I witnessed the police riots on the young people protesting the 1968 Democratic National Convention at Grant Park (the most famous of whom became known as the Chicago Eight). Te Black Panthers organized in and around my neighborhood. So, too, did other youth street clubs like the Blackstone Rangers and the Disciples. Te Nation of Islam sold bean pies and the latest issue of Mohammed Speaks, their widely distributed newspaper, on the street corners. Even though the media described these clubs as “gangs” there wasn’t the violence you see today. Teenagers spent summer days at the park, on the beach at Lake Michigan, or over at the Brookfeld Zoo on Sundays. As a sports fan, Chicago was—and still is—a great town. Te Bears had Gale Sayers; Ernie Banks played for the Cubs; and the Bulls had Bob Love and Jerry Sloan. I took an interest in politics around that time, too. In 1969 I participated in a protest organized by the Reverend Jesse Jackson. We marched on the Illinois State Capitol in Springfeld under his umbrella organization, Operation Breadbasket. Tis was part of the Illinois Campaign to End Hunger and was rooted in the Poor People’s Campaign that Dr.

Load more