Talk:Alaska Statehood Act

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This article is very biased in favor of statehood.

An actual effort to lay out the political history would be far more interesting and enlightening than what is here offered.

Alaska had a population of 220,000 in 1959, and they got two senators and a representative out of the deal. So a painfully obvious argument existed at the time, against grantng statehood.

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—Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.235.80.60 (talk) 20:08, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Could anyone add some information about why Alaska became a state, and what its history was as part of america before it became a state?

Try History of Alaska for part of that. 68.39.174.238 02:19, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

• • I have just started doing some of the cleanup of this page. It is currently much worse than 'B' grade. It reads like a propaganda piece supporting statehood. Extremely un-encyclopedic. --Piggyspider123 (talk) 23:58, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

There had been efforts on the part of the white settlers in Alaska to have at least some form of civil government and/or hope of self-governance since the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt. Most of the real impetus towards actual statehood didn't occur until the 1950s. My take on the whats and hows is extremely biased, so I'll just leave it at that for now.

I have been trying to research a little deeper on the proponent and opponent lists. Here's an excerpt from page 381 of Ernest Gruening's autobiography, Many Battles:

I left the governor's mansion with only one regret. After an apparently promising start in the early 1950s, our campgaign for statehood had gone into a decline. Senator Hugh Butler continued to oppose it. President Eisenhower himself seemed to have lost his earlier enthusiasm for it, and Frank Heintzelman who succeeded me as governor was openly opposed to statehood for Alaska.

The pertinent part is the last half of the last sentence. Of course, the list on the page has Heintzelman as a proponent of statehood, with nothing to verify that. RadioKAOS (talk) 01:53, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Having recently performed an expansion of the Heintzelman article, I can say that claiming he was a proponent of statehood falls under the heading of selective sourcing. During his confirmation process he was opposed to Alaska statehood, arguing the territory was not sufficiently developed to justify the transition ("Statehood is Opposed". New York Times: p. 10. March 14, 1953). A couple months later he modified his position and proposed the territory be split into two sections and only the developed areas in the south (Anchorage and Fairbanks) and in the panhandle be admitted as a state with the western (Nome) and northern sections remaining a territory (Knowles, Clayton (April 6, 1954). "Statehood Fight Up To Eisenhower". New York Times: p. 14). It was not till the end of his term of office that Heintzelman could realistically be labeled a supporter of statehood. --Allen3 ^talk 00:27, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

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Article issues

I didn't look at the history but the "multiple issues" tag indicates citation issues that do not pass the B-class assessment criteria, #1 (citations dated June 2013), #3 (lead section dated July 2014) or #4 ("The article is reasonably well-written" dated June 2014) for sure. There are too many unresolved issues for just a discussion so I am demoting this article to C-class.

In a cursory reading, I noticed several problems.

"Many Alaskans, like the Lomen brothers of Nome and Austin E. "Cap" Lathrop, who benefited largely from Alaska's small tax base, did not want themselves or their businesses to be hurt financially by the increase in taxes ..." A "small tax base" would mean that Alaska did not have much property to tax, resulting in high taxes, not low taxes. I think the author means "low tax rates."

"The Southern Democrats feared more pro-civil rights congressmen." I think this must mean "more pro-civil rights Senators." Alaska, throughout its history, would have been entitled to only one representative, which would not make much difference in a 435-member body. In the Senate, though, southern strength hovered at just about the 1/3 ratio that was required, at that time, to sustain a filibuster.

"In the late 1950s civil rights bills were being introduced in Congress. To overcome the Southern Democrats' suppression of the pro-Republican African-American vote ..." The African-American vote had been solidly Democratic since the first FDR administration. It wasn't much of a factor in the South due to legal roadblocks set up to disenfranchise blacks. It is true that civil-rights legislation was supported more strongly by Republicans in Congress than by Democrats, but African-Americans almost all voted for pro-civil-rights Democrats. Edgy4 (talk) 01:53, 3 May 2022 (UTC)