by Ernest Gruening
Governor of Alaska 1939-1953
Keynote Address
Alaska Constitutional Convention
University of Alaska
November 9, 1955
The Convention was established by enactment by the 22nd Alaska Territorial Legislature of Chapter 46, approved March 19, 1955. The Act provided for the election by the people of Alaska of fifty-five delagates who would meet on November 8, 1955 for not more than seventy-five days to draft a Constitution for the State of Alaska. The Constitution would thereafter be submitted to the people of Alaska for their approval or disapproval.
We meet to validate the most basic of American principles, the principle of "government by consent of the governed." We take this historic step because the people of Alaska who elected you, have come to see that their long standing and unceasing protests against the restrictions, discriminations and exclusions to which we are subject have been unheeded by the colonialism that has ruled Alaska for 88 years. The people of Alaska have never ceased to object to these impositions even though they may not have realized that such were part and parcel of their colonial status. Indeed the full realization that Alaska is a colony may not yet have come to many Alaskans, nor may it be even faintly appreciated by those in power who perpetuate our colonial servitude.
Half a century ago, a governor of Alaska, John Green Brady, contemplating the vain efforts of Alaskans for nearly forty years to secure even a modicum of workable self-government, declared:
"We are graduates of the school of patience."
Since that time Alaskans have continued to take post-graduate courses. Today, in 1955, sorely tried through 88 years of step- childhood, and matured to step-adulthood, Alaskans have come to the time when patience has ceased to be a virtue. But our faith in American institutions, our reverence for American traditions, are not only undimmed but intensified by our continuing deprivation of them. Our cause is not merely Alaskans'; it is the cause of all Americans. So we are gathered here, following action by our elected representatives who provided this Constitutional Convention, to do our part to "show the world that America practices what it preaches."
In a public address at Denver, September 16, 1950, General Dwight D. Eisenhower declared: "Quick admission of Alaska and Hawaii to statehood will show the world that America practices what it preaches."
These words are not original with me. But they remain as valued and as valid as when they were uttered five years ago. They remain no less valid even if their noble purpose is as yet unfulfilled. We are here to do what lies within our power to hasten their fulfillment.
We meet in a time singularly appropriate. Not that there is ever a greater or lesser timeliness for the application by Americans of American principles. Those principles are as enduring and as eternally timely as the Golden Rule. Indeed democracy is nothing less than the application of the Golden Rule to the Great Society. I mean, of course, democracy of deeds, not of lip-service: democracy that is faithful to its professions; democracy that matches its pledges with its performance. But there is nevertheless, a peculiar timeliness to this Alaskans' enterprise to keep our nation's democracy true to its ideals. For right now that the United States has assumed world leadership, it has shown through the expressions of its leaders its distaste for colonialism. And this antipathy to colonialism - wherever such colonialism may be found - reflects a deep-seated sentiment among Americans.
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