Bessie Couture, Alaska’s first known Black woman to run her own business.
Bessie Couture was born in Charlotte County, Virginia in 1869. Jim Crow Laws were beginning to loom in the South, making opportunities very limited for people of color.
Like other Blacks, Bessie aspired for work beyond domestic service. In 1896, dreaming of a better life, Bessie made her way to Skagway, Alaska!
Within a year, Bessie Couture opened a restaurant named The Kitchen! Bessies Skagway restaurant kept miners of the Klondike Gold Rush fed through at least 1900.
As for Bessie, there is little about her full history.
It's known that Bessie married three times. Her first marriage ended in divorce. Her second marriage, to a ship deckhand named Kendall, ended in tragedy.
Kendall was among the 364 crew and passengers aboard the Princess Sophia, all killed in October 1918, when the Sophia rapidly sank after smacking a reef near Juneau.
Two years later, Bessie married again.She and William Couture, a Frenchman, opened Broadway Restaurant and Bakery, where both served cooks.
Bessie Couture is noted as “Head of Household” in both the 1930 and 1940 U.S. census reports. A remarkable achievement very few Black women claimed during this time.
She spent her later years between Skagway and Seattle, Washington.
She was 90 when she died April 29, 1959.
-KUAC's Shyler Umphenour