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   In the House, however, it lost by a tie vote, 8 to 8, the smallest possible margin of defeat. 

   While greatly disappointed at the failure of the legislature to pass what had become known as "the equal treatment bill," and that for lack of a single vote, I determined to continue my efforts.

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   Several months later I received a telegram from Nome which said:

   "I am a girl, seventeen years old, half white, half Eskimo. My father was a soldier in World War I. I have two brothers in the Army in this war. Last night I went to the theatre with a friend of mine, a sergeant in the Army. He paid for the tickets. When we sat down the usher came and ordered me to move to the other side of the aisle. When I refused he called the police and had me ejected. When I struggled I was arrested and spent the night in jail." 

   The custom in the one motion-picture theatre in Nome had been to seat Eskimos on one side of the central aisle, and whites on the other.

   I promptly sent a telegram to this young girl, expressing my regret at her experience, telling her it should neverhave happened in America, and that it would not have happened if the equal treatment bill had passed in the last legislature. 

   Another telegram went to the Mayor of Nome protesting against what had happened and asking for an explanation. 

   The Mayor, Edward Anderson, wired back that he considered it a most unfortunate occurrence, and that it would not happen again. 

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   In pursuance of the objective to make such unhappy experiences impossible in Alaska, I prepared an address for delivery to the thirtieth annual convention of the Alaska Native Brotherhood meeting in Hoonah late in the fall of 1943. I was unable to deliver it myself, as I had been called to Washington on official business, but I asked Bob Bartlett, then Secretary of the Territory, and in my absence from the Territory, the Acting Governor, to deliver it for me. Bob Bartlett was in complete accord with my views on the subject.

   In this address I declared my view that Native people, who at that time comprised about three-sevenths of Alaska's population, were entitled to, and should play, a larger part in the political and economic life of the Territory. I related what had happened in the matter of discrimination and of the set-back of the effort to rectify it.