"The Colored People of Juneau" 1914 - 1920ish
Please note: This write-up seems semi-extensive; it is not exhaustive. It reflects the history I have encountered while conducting other research and reviewing previously tabbed newspaper articles, primarily from 1914–1920.
In the early 1900s, the Colored People of Juneau were not simply a population but a visible, organized, and well-known community actively engaged in civic life, social gatherings, and the broader culture of the Gastineau Channel. In 1914, newspapers described what they called “the first real colored party,” held on Thanksgiving by Juanita Johnson, featuring a full meal and dancing accompanied by the Happy Duncan Orchestra. In 1915, the Douglas and Juneau Social Clubs, “composed of colored residents of the channel”, met at Lawson Creek for a picnic, barbecue, and dance.
One of the most prominent figures of this period was E. B. “Happy” Duncan, leader of a “full colored orchestra.” His surprise party in May 1915 was notable enough to appear on the second page of the Juneau papers and was organized by what was described as the “leading members of the Juneau Colored Colony.” (“Happy” Duncan is someone we’ll have to circle back to more in depth in another post, as he is the band leader of the MINSTREL group of the same name) By 1916, the Black population of the Juneau area had grown to approximately 56 individuals. The community continued to host large, well-attended events, including a “monster-sized picnic” on the Taku. At one point, gatherings organized by the Colored People of Juneau were described as the largest of their kind in the ENTIRE Territory of Alaska.
Local Juneau papers most often used the term “Colored People” when reporting on these events, while papers in Anchorage or Ketchikan sometimes referred to the same gatherings using “Negro” or more inflammatory language. Despite this disparity, individuals within the Juneau community were frequently recognized by name and reputation. Frank Vaughn, a well-loved chef (explicitly referred to as such rather than “cook”) at the Gastineau Café, was remembered fondly in the Juneau papers even after his death in California. Classified ads placed by Black residents emphasized strong work histories, often seeking employment as porters, cooks, or in laundry work.
Known residents of the area during this period include Lulu Mathews; “Gastineau Bill” Jackson; Vera Hill; Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Bozen; John Smith; A. E. Shepard; Mr. and Mrs. Curtis; Cleo Wardel; Mrs. Thompson; Marie Mejia; Harrt; Jack Ivory; the young Miss Dupy; W. N. C. Waddleton; Charles Garette; Professor Wilson; Mrs. Ruckert; Peter Brown; Mr. and Mrs. Buzard; S. E. Smith; Mamie Harper; Juanita Johnson; Mrs. Max Bennett; Bernice Richardson; B. E. Lippens; Warren Weston; Mr. Garretty; Ollie Harper; John D. Robinson; Margaret Berry; Mr. Meriweather; and members of the Vaughn & Olive family.
While some names appear in the papers in relation to crime, these incidents were overwhelmingly low-level and often involved accusations related to alcohol; particularly drinking with or selling liquor to Indigenous people. Although Black residents were generally considered part of the Juneau community and held higher social standing than some other marginalized groups, they were still subject to false claims and disproportionate punishment for petty or circumstantial offenses. And/or the crimes are no less extraordinary nor notable than those of their white neighbors. There are a number of individuals who first appear in the historical record through reports of celebrations, club events, or weddings. One such example is the marriage of Jack Ivory and Bernice Elaine Richardson, announced on August 14, 1918. At the time, Mr. Ivory was employed at the Gastineau Hotel.
One of the earliest recorded instances of communal mourning appears with the death of Harrt Theadcraft, who had been born into slavery in Georgia and arrived in Alaska in 1915. After residing in Juneau for several months, he passed away, with services held at Young’s Church and burial at Evergreen Cemetery, making him one of the earliest known Black individuals interred there. Unfortunately at this time his exact resting place in the graveyard is unknown.
In 1917, an editorial published in The Daily Alaska Empire welcomed the United States’ entry into World War I, asserting that “every man of every color” would be welcomed into the ranks and that all trades were needed to support the nation abroad. The Colored People of Juneau became instrumental in the war effort, not only through enlistment, but through extensive fundraising and volunteer labor. In the spring of 1918, one article reported that Juneau had exceeded its Red Cross fundraising goals, with a bold subheading noting: “Bootblacks and Colored People Helped by Taking In Good Sum During Sunday.” In that single drive, the Colored People of Juneau contributed $103 (over $2,000 today), raising more than the railroad employees, Thane residents, churches, Behrends Bank employees, and the Steam Laundry, and nearly matching the total contributions of the Juneau business district group.
Additional drives further demonstrated the community’s commitment. In the “Juneau Bed” fund, sponsoring hospital beds for wounded soldiers in France, the Colored People of Juneau again outpaced most other contributors, donating $58 (just over $1,000 today), more than double the next highest individual contribution.
By this time, the community supported a Colored People’s Club, a welfare group, a full orchestra, and smaller civic organizations including maintaining a Colored Women’s Auxiliary as an official branch of the Juneau Red Cross, producing surgical garments and other knitted hospital supplies. While many Black Americans elsewhere remained trapped in sharecropping systems, the Colored People of Juneau vastly included homeowners, established workers, and business owners. B. E. Lippens, even delivered a speech as the sole Black attendee at a meeting of the Juneau Republican Club.
Coverage of the Colored People of Juneau remained largely positive until the fall of 1918, when a notable shift occurred with the arrival of The Birth of a Nation in Alaska. Promoters Barnum and Amberson brought the film to the territory several years after its initial 1915 release. Though widely praised at the time for its scale and spectacle, the film was notorious for its racist depictions of Black people, most portrayed by white actors in blackface, and its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan. It had already played to packed houses in Fairbanks, Nenana, Cordova, before opposition in Juneau coalesced.
In Juneau, resistance organized by “the colored people of Juneau” led to a rare suppression order on the film. Governor Thomas Riggs, writing in his diary on October 9, 1918, amid efforts to combat the Spanish Flu, recorded:
“At request of the negro population of Juneau, instructed the marshall to prohibit the showing of the film ‘Birth of a Nation’. Grateful lot of darkies. Issued proclamation for ‘Liberty Day’.”
Mayor Valentine issued his own decree barring the film. On October 8, the Daily Alaska Empire reported that approximately one hundred citizens, initiated by the Colored People of Juneau, had signed a protest presented to both the Mayor and Governor. The following day, newspapers announced that United States Marshal J. M. Tanner had ordered theaters not to show the film, citing petitions circulated by colored residents and supported by other prominent white citizens.
Mayor Valentine explained the decision explicitly:
“The object of the prohibition…is that the picture tends to produce class hatred and is humiliating to many of our citizens… the colored people of our city should be held in highest regard for the self-sacrifice and devotion to the cause of the Nation.”
After the end of World War I, the Daily Alaska Empire reported that the ban, described as a “wartime measure”, could no longer be enforced, again centering the role of Juneau’s Black community in efforts of support for the War as the reason why the ban even went through in the first place. The article emphasized that the order lapsed not due to a change in sentiment, but because the legal authority to suppress the film ended with the war.
Although The Birth of a Nation ultimately screened in Juneau, Douglas, and finally then Ketchikan, these records demonstrate that the most direct and sustained resistance to the film in Alaska came from the organized action of the Colored People of Juneau. Their petitions briefly halted the film statewide and compelled public officials to articulate, often with unusual clarity, the harm the film posed to racial unity and civic dignity.
Unfortunately, it is around this point that frequent references to “the Colored People of Juneau” as an organized community begin to disappear from the newspaper record. Later mentions are sporadic and often framed in the past tense, such as references to “the Juneau Colored Colony.” Black residents and other minorities do not vanish from the papers entirely, but the nature of their coverage shifts: from reports of community life, civic participation, and local events to isolated notices; a wedding gone weird, a business closing, a handful of crimes, or individuals seeking work. At the same time, newspapers increasingly carried sensational and often violent stories from the Lower 48, coinciding with the rise of the Ku Klux Klan’s second wave in the years following The Birth of a Nation.
I would argue that this sudden decline in visibility also coincides with local screenings of The Birth of a Nation itself. While my other research suggests that Alaska’s Klan focused heavily on suppressing Native rights, that does not mean its presence, or the cultural force of the film, had no impact on other minority communities, particularly Black residents of Juneau. Being placed so publicly at the center of opposition to what was widely promoted as a “great historical film that everyone must see”, to the extent that the Gross family even purchased the rights to extend its run at a reduced price, likely carried consequences. We know the film’s influence on perceptions and racial attitudes in the South; it is not unreasonable to suggest similar effects occurred here.
This is especially true given the broader local context. This was a community that had forcibly removed Chinese laborers, lynched two Tlingit men in public, created a network of white-only organizations, embraced minstrel shows, and would go on to establish a Ku Klux Klan chapter by 1924/25. Within that environment, The Birth of a Nation marks not just a film screening, but a transition point; an ending of one chapter and the beginning of another in BIPOC history along the Gastineau Channel.
I do not want to end on a note of erasure or despair. The difficulty in locating records of Black life in Juneau and Douglas before 1926 speaks less to absence but more to the limits of the archive itself. Outside of newspaper accounts, formal recognition is scarce. Yet those same papers tell us that some of the largest Black gatherings in the entire territory occurred here; that Black residents were artists, organizers, and civic participants; that they took excursions together, held picnics, debated public issues, and built community. A group of fifty-six people traveling up the Taku is nothing to sneer at.
Black people have been part of the Juneau community for a very long time. Even when obscured in the historical record, they were present, active, and recognized by their contemporaries. That continuity, and that contribution, deserves to be emphasized and remembered.
The Northern Lights have seen Queer sights but the Queerest they ever did see Was on the marge of lake LeBarge, where I cremated sam McGee.
