About 3,000 Black troops worked with white regiments to build the Alaska Highway. In eight months, they hacked their way through some 1,500 miles of rugged Canadian and Alaskan wilderness.
Fairbanks journalism professor and historian Lael Morgan was the instigator of the Alaska Highway Memorial Project. Her extensive research uncovered previously unreported feats of engineering and speedy construction of the Black soldiers.
“What they did with the Alcan was truly amazing. They couldn't have built it without them.”
Memorials for the veterans are scattered in spots throughout the highway, including the Black Veterans Memorial Bridge, over the Gerstle River, re-named in 1993.
At a presentation from Alaska’s Transportation Department, celebrating the highway construction, Meadow Reidel, (rye-DEL) said historians consider it one of the 20th century’s greatest engineering feats.
“The achievements of these soldiers set the stage for the desegregation of the armed forces in 1948, and thus earned the Alaska Highway that distinguished nickname of being the road to civil rights.”
To honor of their competence and endurance, in 2017, Governor Bill Walker signed a bill into law, establishing October 25 as “African American Soldiers’ Contribution to Building the Alaska Highway Day.”
