Credit: UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library Archives, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Region I Photograph Collection
Woman picketing outside FW Woolworth Company Store, Fairbanks, Alaska, c. 1960
The movement for Black freedom and civil rights ramped up in Alaska during the postwar decades, as it had across the nation. In this image, a Black woman pickets the Fairbanks Woolworth’s store over its discriminatory practices. Woolworth’s was just one of several businesses that discriminated against Black people. Pickets occurred throughout Alaska Fairbanks and these elsewhere in Alaska, notably in Anchorage at the Carrs grocery store in the Fairview neighborhood. These actions had a cumulative impact over time. Pickets and marches represented parts of a broader strategy to highlight racism and ensure actions were taken to address it.