Treasury urged to mint 5M Peratrovich coins

New $1-coin honors Tlingit woman who was a Native civil rights leader

Alaska legislators have passed a join resolution urging the U.S. Treasury to mint no less than 5 million of the coins honoring Alaska Native civil rights activist Elizabeth Peratrovich under the Native American $1 Coin Act.

House Joint Resolution 9, sponsored by seven members of the House and 13 senators, also has the support of Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who signed the resolution on Feb. 20.

Backers of the resolution want the coins delivered to the Seattle branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco for distribution throughout Alaska.

Peratrovich, who was born in Petersburg on July 4, 1911, was a civil rights activist known for her work on behalf of equality for Alaska Natives. She is credited with the advocacy that resulted in passage of the territory’s Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945, the first anti-discrimination law in United States history.

Peratrovich, who was orphaned at a young age, was a member of the Lukaax̱.ádi clan, in the Raven moiety of the Tlingit nation. She was adopted by Andrew Wanamaker, a fisherman and Presbyterian lay minister, and his wife Mary. Wanamaker himself was a charter member pf the Alaska Native Brotherhood, which was formed to address racism. His wife, Jean, was a basket weaver. After graduation from Ketchikan High School she studied at Sheldon Jackson College in Sitka and the Western College of Education in Bellingham, Washington, now part of Western Washington University.

In 1931, she married Roy Peratrovich, also Tlingit, of mixed Native and Serbian descent, and they lived in Klawock, where Roy served four terms as mayor.

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While living in Juneau in 1941, the couple had difficulty finding housing and saw signs banning Native entry to public facilities. They petitioned territorial governor Ernest Gruening to ban the “No Natives Allowed” signs.

The Anti-Discrimination Act was at first defeated by the territorial Legislature in 1943, but the Peratroviches continued to lobby legislators as leaders of the Alaska Native Brotherhood and Alaska Native Sisterhood. In 1945, Elizabeth Peratrovich’s impassioned testimony convinced legislators to make the Anti-Discrimination Act law.

Elizabeth Peratrovich died of cancer on Dec. 1, 1958. She is buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Juneau, alongside of her husband, Roy.

On Feb. 6, 1988, the Legislature established Feb. 16 as Elizabeth Peratrovich Day to honor her contributions “for her courageous, unceasing efforts to eliminate discrimination and bring about equal rights in Alaska.”

On March 20, 2019, the New York Times included Elizabeth Peratrovich in a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in the Times.

“It was the first antidiscrimination act in the United States,” the Times noted.

It would be nearly 20 years before the federal Civil Rights Act would be passed, in 1964, and 14 years before Alaska would become a state.”

On Oct. 5, 2019 U.S. Mint Chief Administrative Officer Patrick Hernandez said that Elizabeth Peratrovich would appear on the reverse of the 2020 Native American $1 coin.

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