{"id":9929,"date":"2015-10-20T08:01:14","date_gmt":"2015-10-20T15:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/sitkas-slave-auction-to-be-renamed\/"},"modified":"2015-10-20T08:01:14","modified_gmt":"2015-10-20T15:01:14","slug":"sitkas-slave-auction-to-be-renamed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/sitkas-slave-auction-to-be-renamed\/","title":{"rendered":"Sitka’s ‘slave auction’ to be renamed"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014<\/strong> Organizers of an annual Alaska charity event said Monday they will stop calling it a \u201cslavery auction\u201d after the NAACP complained.<\/p>\n

The event in the town of Sitka involves people bidding in an auction on volunteers\u2019 time, with the winning bidders putting the volunteers to work doing odd jobs, like mowing lawns or cleaning gutters. It\u2019s part of Sitka\u2019s Alaska Day festivities, which commemorate the state\u2019s transfer of ownership from Russia to the U.S.<\/p>\n

The president of the Anchorage chapter of the NAACP issued a news release drawing attention to the \u201cslavery\u201d name ahead of this year\u2019s auction, which took place Sunday. The Alaska Dispatch News then did a story about it \u2014 further spreading the word \u2014 and the auction name was widely condemned online.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll at once, I don\u2019t know what happened,\u201d said Rita Ledbetter, a bartender at the Pioneer Bar, which hosts the annual event.<\/p>\n

Anchorage NAACP President Wanda Laws told The Associated Press she wanted to shine a spotlight on the auction name because it was \u201cextremely inflammatory and insensitive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou do not glorify the selling of another human being. You just don\u2019t do that,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s horrific.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twenty to 25 people volunteered to have their labor sold at the auction organized by Sitka\u2019s Pioneer Bar. Sunday\u2019s event raised $3,000 for the local volunteer fire department, Ledbetter said. Previous beneficiaries included Special Olympics and charities fighting multiple sclerosis and breast cancer.<\/p>\n

Ledbetter said the auction has been held for 31 years and has had no problems other than a phone complaint during each of the past two years. She also noted no one contacted her directly about the name.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a local, local thing, and I don\u2019t know why it\u2019s such a big deal,\u201d Ledbetter said by telephone Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy I wasn\u2019t called by the NAACP and say, \u2018Hey,\u2019 instead of slamming us for a word that just means squat now. I mean, how long has that been? 150? Almost 200 years? It\u2019s like, \u2018C\u2019mon,\u2019\u201d Ledbetter said.<\/p>\n

Still, she confirmed the auction will change its name to the \u201cAlaska Day Auction\u201d going forward.<\/p>\n

Alaska Day chairman Ted Allio said the matter has been blown out of proportion. Allio noted Russians enslaved Natives living in Sitka before the U.S. purchased Alaska in 1867. But he says, \u201cYou don\u2019t hear them yelling\u201d about the name.<\/p>\n

But Lawrence SpottedBird, general manager of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, said calling the event a slavery auction wasn\u2019t OK and Allio \u201coverstepped on his comments.\u201d<\/p>\n

The event is well-intentioned but affected the black community, SpottedBird said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI stand with them,\u201d he said. \u201cThere should be basically an apology for using that term.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sitka Fire Chief Dave Miller said the auction money will be put into the training fund for volunteers. He said after Law\u2019s comments and all the online complaints, he asked the auctioneer not to use the world \u201cslavery\u201d during the actual auction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014 Organizers of an annual Alaska charity event said Monday they will stop calling it a \u201cslavery auction\u201d after the NAACP complained. The event in the town of Sitka involves people bidding in an auction on volunteers\u2019 time, with the winning bidders putting the volunteers to work doing odd jobs, like mowing lawns or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-9929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9929\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9929"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=9929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}