MARCH 3, 1944

IÑUPIAQ TEEN ALBERTA SCHENCK ARRESTED FOR SITTING IN WHITE SECTION OF NOME THEATRE—LEADS TO ALASKA ANTI-DISCRIMINATION ACT OF 1945.

Born inNome, Alaska, on June 16, 1928, Alberta was a 16-year-old usher in Nome’s Dream Theater when she was fired for opposing theatre policies forbidding Natives and “half-breeds” from sitting in the white section. Alberta first wrote an essay for a city newspaper arguing that such treatment violated the Constitution. After publication, she went to the theatre with a white Army Sergeant and sat in the white section. When ordered to the Native section, she refused, was forcibly evicted, and arrested. After release, she telegrammed then-Governor Ernest Gruening with her story. Her ordeal was used as a “prime example” of discrimination by Gruening in pushing passage of the Alaska Equal Rights (also Anti-Discrimination) Act of 1945. Her story was later memorialized in a PBS Special film, For the Rights of All:  Ending Jim Crow in Alaska. In 2011, Alberta was inducted into the Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame posthumously. She died July 6, 2009, in Anaheim, California.

Source: “Albert Daisy Schenck Adams,” Alberta Schenck Adams.  Retrieved 7/2/2019, http://www.albertaschenckadams.com/

Photo:  Alberta Schenck Adams (1928-2009), circa 2008. Courtesy of Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame.