Credit: Alaska State Library, Portrait Files, ASL-McSmith
Blanche Louise Preston McSmith, c. 1960
Blanche McSmith was outspoken when it came to issues of racial injustice. She grew up in Texas during the height of the Jim Crow era and decided to get as far away from the South as she could. She traveled to California before heading to Alaska in the late 1940s. After facing racial discrimination at the Pagoda, an Anchorage area restaurant, McSmith organized a lawsuit. According to the Anchorage Daily Times, it “was one of the first, if not the first case involving racial discrimination to be tried before a jury in Anchorage.” After the twelve-person jury deliberated, they acquitted the owners and staff of the Pagoda on the grounds that the Black patrons were refused service not due to their race but because they failed to reserve a table in advance. The case led McSmith to become more deeply involved in activism and local politics. She went on to write for Anchorage’s Black newspaper, the Alaska Spotlight, served in the State Legislature as the first Black lawmaker, and helped to establish the Anchorage branch of the NAACP the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).