A hobbyist, a Jew, and a future US senator walk into a grocery store
- Dorene Lorenz
- Sep 17
- 3 min read
A humble grocery store may not seem historic, but the value of a building goes beyond its architecture
By Dorene Lorenz
No one was expecting to change Alaska, but that’s precisely what happened when three men with backbone, a civil rights hobbyist, a Jewish grocer, and a rookie legislator with something to prove, walked into the Anchorage Gambell Carrs.
Together, they turned a picket line into policy and created one of the longest-running human rights commissions in America.
In 1962, over 30% of the Carrs Gambell store’s customers were black, yet there wasn’t a single African American working in a public-facing role. In a letter, co-owner Bernard J. Carr, Sr. admitted to employing “two Negro employees” as a janitor and a garbage collector, but insisted, “The time is not right to hire a Negro checker.” Activist Pat Berkley recalled, “Carrs didn’t want to hire any Blacks...Pop Carr wasn’t about to hire another after one got too friendly with a white girl.”
When negotiations failed, the Alaska NAACP organized the second picket in Anchorage’s history. A Navy veteran who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor aboard the USS Honolulu, Willard Bowman, a self-described civil rights “hobbyist,” coordinated dozens into a 24-hour picket line that lasted nearly two weeks. Berkley led women during the day while men marched at night. “Cars and pedestrians booed and laughed at [us],” she recalled.
The protest worked. Carrs agreed to hire one black employee immediately, a second in 30 days, and a third in 60 — all in customer-facing roles. Though it missed the deadlines, the NAACP persisted. Richard Watts Jr., the son of a protester, was hired as a bagger. Proof of the protestors’ vision, Watts stayed for 50 years, retiring as a district operations manager.
Bowman wasn’t satisfied. If progress required a picket line, Alaska’s constitution wasn’t working. To his surprise, one of the men across the table agreed.
Two years earlier, Barney Gottstein had merged his family wholesale grocery business with Larry Carr’s, forming an empire. Gottstein, a WWII Army Air Corps veteran, had returned to Alaska to work in the family business after he was told no airplane manufacturer would hire a Jew. The protest frustrated him. Dialogue should have resolved the issue, not protest signs.
Bowman and Gottstein, once adversaries, found themselves aligned. They wanted something permanent, a process to uphold Article I, Section 3 of Alaska’s Constitution, which prohibits discrimination based on race, creed, or national origin. But three years into statehood, the legislature had done nothing. Fortunately, Barney knew a guy.
That November, he helped elect his real estate partner Mike Gravel to the Alaska House. When approached by Bowman and Gottstein, Gravel — young, ambitious, and eager to make his mark — saw an opportunity.
He drafted the Alaska Human Rights Act, which created the State Commission for Human Rights. Introduced by Governor Bill Egan, it was one of the first bills passed in the 1963 session, signed into law on March 19.
Bowman became the Commission’s first executive director. Gottstein served as one of the original five commissioners alongside Roy Peratrovich, widower of civil rights icon Elizabeth Peratrovich. In 1970, Bowman made history again, becoming one of Alaska’s first Black state legislators.
This year’s closing of “The People’s Carrs” marks more than the end of a neighborhood store, it’s the quiet shuttering of a site where real change began.
Because once, a civil rights hobbyist, a Jewish businessman, and a young man with presidential ambition didn’t just walk into Carrs. They walked into history.
They turned protest into policy and outrage into infrastructure. Thanks to them, Alaska didn’t just talk about equality; it built something to protect it.
• Dorene Lorenz is the Chairman of the Alaska Commission for Human Rights
