Growing up in Juneau, Elizabeth Peratrovich, who was Tlingit, regularly saw signs posted in local businesses that read things like "No Natives Allowed" and "We cater to white trade only." As an adult, she became president of the Alaska Native Sisterhood, and alongside her husband Roy Peratrovich, who led the Alaska Native Brotherhood, she spent years pushing Alaska's territorial government to pass a law banning this kind of discrimination. A first attempt to pass an anti-discrimination bill failed in 1943, but the Peratroviches kept working at it, even helping recruit and campaign for Alaska Native candidates who went on to win seats in the territorial legislature.

On February 5, 1945, the bill came up for debate again, and during the public comment period, a senator from Juneau argued that the law would only make racial tensions worse, saying the races should be "kept further apart." Elizabeth Peratrovich responded with a speech that's still remembered today, pointing out that no law can fully eliminate discrimination, but that lawmakers could at least state clearly that they recognized the problem and intended to do something about it. Her testimony was so powerful that the gallery broke into applause, and the bill passed by a vote of 11 to 5. Governor Ernest Gruening signed the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945 into law on February 16, making it the first law of its kind in the United States, nearly two decades before the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. Alaska now celebrates Elizabeth Peratrovich Day every year on February 16, and in 2020, she became the first Alaska Native person featured on U.S. currency.