The question of Alaska’s statehood was a prominent political debate in the mid-20th century, ultimately leading to its admission to the Union on January 3, 1959.
The United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. The discovery of gold prompted American emigration to the vast frontier. Between 1880 and 1900 the population nearly doubled to 63,592. At this time, Alaska was subject to the first Organic Act of 1884, which made Alaska a “civil and judicial district” but did not provide for an elected legislature. Many immigrants from the mainland thus felt cheated out of their right to vote.
In 1906 Congress allowed Alaskans to elect a nonvoting congressional delegate. In 1912 Congress passed the Second Organic Act, allowing Alaska an elected legislature with restricted powers. Notably it had no control over the lucrative fishing industry and lacked the authority to issue bonds. At this time, many began to see statehood as Alaska’s best hope for internal autonomy. Congressional delegates such as Joseph Wickersham and Anthony Dimond proposed statehood bills to Congress into the 1930s without receiving serious consideration.
The statehood movement received a great boost during World War II, when Alaska and Hawaii both became strategically important to the United States. The population boomed with defense personnel, and Alaska governor Ernest Gruening led an effort to make statehood a national priority. Within Alaska, opposition to statehood came from industries that benefited from the territory’s inability to tax. Some also questioned whether Alaska could afford the financial strain of statehood. The majority, however, desired statehood and invoked the revolutionary slogan “no taxation without representation.” In 1946 a referendum favored immediate statehood by a margin of 3 to 2.
In Washington, Democratic-leaning Alaska had support in the Midwest and West, as well as from liberals in the Northeast. Opposition came from conservative Republicans and southern Democrats, who feared that Alaska’s large native population would lead to increased pressure for civil rights legislation. Frustrated with delay, in 1955 the territorial legislature announced a constitutional convention without federal approval. This move sought to create a state government and elect a congressional delegation in order to pressure Washington to grant statehood. A delegation was elected in 1956, but Congress refused to seat it.
The delegation, however, lobbied and generated enough support that Congress finally passed an Alaskan statehood bill signed by President DwiGHT D. Eisenhower on July 7, 1958. It was formally admitted the following January.
Further reading: Claus-M. Naske, An Interpretive History of Alaskan Statehood (Anchorage: Alaska Northwest Publishing Company, 1973).
—C. D. Beard
Ali, Muhammad (1942- ) heavyweight boxing champion, activist
One of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time, Muhammad Ali was also one of the most important and controversial cultural figures of the 1960s, a symbol of the racial, cultural, and ideological conflicts of the decade.
Born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., on January 17, 1942, in Louisville, Kentucky, Ali began boxing when he was 12 and quickly established himself as an elite athlete, winning national Amateur Athletic Union and Golden Gloves championships. His skills gained a wider audience in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, where he defeated a Soviet boxer to win the gold medal in the light-heavyweight division.
As a handsome, accomplished athlete who also was skilled in the arts of self-promotion, Clay seemed destined to become a star. He began his professional boxing career in October 1960, and during the next three years won all 19 of his fights, 15 of them by knockout. Then, and throughout his career, Clay attracted attention as much for his actions and words outside of the ring as for his victories in it, often using playful rhymes to predict exactly when his opponents would fall and then backing up his boasts. Despite his claims that he already was the “greatest,” when Clay challenged Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship in February 1964, he entered the ring as a 7-1 underdog. When Liston stayed in his corner at the beginning of the seventh round, Clay had his first championship belt.
The next day, after he announced his membership in the controversial Nation of Islam, the American public had another reason to discuss Clay. During the mid-1960s, the adherents of the Black Muslim faith frightened and threatened much of white America. In March 1964 Clay drew more attention to his conversion by rejecting his given
Muhammad Ali, formerly Cassius Clay, 1964 (Library of Congress)
Name and accepting Muhammad Ali, a name given to him by Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. With his new name, his conscious rejection of Christianity, and his increasingly controversial statements about American race relations, Ali lost most of his support from mainstream America even as he continued dominating the heavyweight division.
By March 1967 Ali had a 29-0 record, but battles more significant than those in any ring helped define his professional boxing career. After stating in 1966 that he had “no quarrel with them Viet Cong,” referring to the Vietnam War, in 1967 Ali officially became a conscientious objector to the draft. In the face of a five-year prison sentence and a $10,000 fine, he refused to join the military. Because of this decision, governing boards stripped Ali of his titles, and he did not fight for more than three years. Ali’s refusal to enlist drew the maximum sentence from a judge, the hatred of many older and more traditional Americans, and the adulation of a new generation of Americans, white and black, who were beginning to protest the war in Vietnam. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, Ali was a highly visible symbol of the nation’s growing division over the war.
In October 1970, Ali resumed his boxing career, knocking out two opponents in a seven-week span. In March 1971, in the first of three classic bouts, Ali met Joe Frazier in New York City, suffering his first loss in a titanic 15-round struggle. Within months, Ali won a more significant victory when the U. S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction for draft evasion.
Ali won 12 out of his next 13 fights, losing only to Ken Norton, before the 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” in Kinshasa, Zaire, against heavily favored George Foreman. Using a new tactic, the “rope-a-dope,” Ali fought defensively for several rounds, absorbing Foreman’s punches and wearing him out. When Ali attacked, Foreman had no energy left, and Ali became the second heavyweight champion to regain his belt. By this time, as many others had come to share Ali’s views on the war, he became one of the most popular athletes in the nation and around the world.
After several other legendary fights, Ali lost his title in February 1975 to Leon Spinks. Ali defeated Spinks a mere seven months later, regaining the title for the final time and becoming history’s first three-time heavyweight champion. After retiring as champion, Ali returned for two more fights, losing them both and leaving him with a final professional record of 56 wins, five losses, and 37 knockouts.
Although Ali no longer boxed, he remained in the public eye. Still widely hailed as the greatest boxer and SPORTS showman of all time, Ali remains one of the most recognizable humans on earth. The onset of Parkinson’s disease in the mid-1980s reduced the number of his public appearances and tempered his ability to speak out on issues, but it has not dampened his wit or his desire to contribute to society. In 1990, he met with Saddam Hussein, the ruler of Iraq, in an attempt to forestall war in the Persian Gulf. Ali created the Muhammad Ali Community and Economic Development Corporation in Chicago to teach job skills to low-income public-housing residents. In 1996, 36 years after his original Olympic glory, he lit the flame at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, reminding billions around the world that he could still perform when the spotlight was on him.
In 1999 Ali’s daughter, Laila, announced her intention to compete in women’s boxing. A personal trainer based in Los Angeles, Laila Ali competed in her first match on October 8 of that year, knocking out her opponent in the first round and going on to win all of her 24 matches. During this time, her father’s legacy was further augmented when a biographical film, Ali, starring Will Smith as Muhammad Ali was released in 2001. In 2005 the Muhammad Ali Center opened in Louisville, dedicated to initiatives involving peace, social responsibility, respect, and personal growth. Notably, it was not only Ali’s dominance in the boxing ring but also his community activism that was lauded when he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom that same year.
Further reading: Elliott J. Gorn, ed., Muhammad Ali, The People’s Champ (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995); Thomas Hauser, Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991).
—Brad Austin and William L. Glankler
World History
