Fairbanks is celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday weekend with several events including a gospel festival Friday evening, a youth breakfast Saturday, and a Black history event Sunday afternoon. That presentation at Pioneer Park will cover the efforts to document important firsts in Alaska’s Black community.
Ed Wesley started his Alaska life as a soldier at Fort Greely near Delta Junction in the 1970s. After leaving the Army, he stayed in Alaska, working security for the pipeline construction and living on a 35-acre spread in Delta Junction.
Eventually he moved to Anchorage, where he said there was always a reason for activism.
“The only reason that emphasis is on Black history in Alaska is because it was omitted in so many areas,” Wesley said.
In 2018 The HistoryMakers, a national digital archive committed to preserving the history of African Americans, identified 10 Black “unsung heroes” to interview in Alaska. Wesley was one of them.
“When The HistoryMakers came to town, it sparked something in me to document more history in Alaska,” he said.
It inspired Wesley to seek out a University of Alaska Anchorage history professor named Ian Hartman, who had written a chapter on Black contributions in a book on Anchorage’s history.
“I approached Dr. Hartman and said, ‘I understand that you were interested in doing something on black history. I’m willing to work with you to make that come to fruition,’” Wesley said. “And he agreed, and we probably had 13, 14 meetings, and I gave him a lot of information. And that’s how we got that.”
Hartman wrote the book “Black History in the Last Frontier.” It was published quickly as a free download by UAA and the National Park Service in 2020, a year when readers were especially hungry for Black history. The book is freely downloadable in PDF format here.
Wesley wrote the foreword to that book. And he and Hartman have continued their collaboration.
“The second part of that was to have the University of Alaska archive that information and do it on a permanent basis so that anyone could pick it up,” he said.
In the book’s foreword, Wesley recounts several of the statewide firsts he witnessed as a Black Alaskan. He said he is particularly proud of serving on the African American Business Council, which opened greater access to banking for Anchorage’s Black population.
“When I travel outside, people ask, what do you like about Alaska?” Wesley said. “And I said, I love the majestic scenery, but more importantly, I love the people here.”
Hartman has since written a second book, a paperback called “Black Lives in Alaska” released in 2022.
Wesley will give a talk on Alaska Black History at 3 p.m. Sunday afternoon in Fairbanks’ Pioneer Park Civic Center. The presentation is free, and is sponsored by the Martin Luther King Foundation of Fairbanks and the Greater Fairbanks NAACP.
