Christine McClure: Racial injustice during construction of the Al-Can Highway

Send us Fan MailOn the 80th anniversary of the completion of the Alaska-Canada highway, we talk with author Christine McClure, who with her late husband Dennis, wrote two books about the construction of the Al-Can. The first, We Fought the Road was a more general history of the three African-American regiments that were instrumental in the building of that 1600 mile road in just 8 months. Today we explore their second book: A Different Race which tells a specific story. The winter of 1943 was record-setting cold in interior Alaska. Soldiers of the 97th regiment were not provided with proper clothing and when a group of them were ordered into the back of an open truck for a 130 mile trip to Fairbanks when it was 34 degrees below zero, they refused. They were court martialed and brought up on charges of mutiny – a crime punishable by death. Nine of the ten soldiers were found guilty.