Prominent
Alaskan leaders witness the signing of the Alaska Statehood Proclamation
by President Eisenhower on January 3, 1959. Second row, from the left:
Congressman-Elect Ralph Rivers, Senator-Elect Ernest Gruening, Senator-Elect
Bob Bartlett, Secretary of the Interior Fred Seaton, Secretary of Alaska
Waino Hendrickson, Unknown, Territorial Governor of Alaska Mike Stepovich
& Bob Atwood, Chairman of the Alaska Statehood Committee. First Row,
seated: Vice President Richard Nixon, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and
Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn. |
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want to say...that your work is being watched by not only the Congress
of the United States, but by our 165 millions of people.
Despite the objections that have come from some people to statehood,
I think the overwhelming proportion of the American people expect,
and I think ultimately they will demand that both Alaska and Hawaii
become states of the American union. Anything I can do in my individual
capacity or in my capacity as a minority leader of the Senate of
the United States to expedite that day... I will be prepared to
do. I think of no pledge we might take as American citizens better
than the pledge of Thomas Jefferson, the great architect of the
Declaration of Independence, who said, "I have sworn upon the
altar of God eternal hostility on every form of tyranny over the
minds of man."
-Senator
William K. Knowland of California to the Delegates of the Alaska
Constitutional Convention
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