Did King Arthur pull the sword from the stone during the 1964 earthquake? And what did the green books say about Alaska?

Fourth Street to the Northeast, photographed March 28, 1964 (Photo by Hermann Koeriger/National Archives)

Part of an ongoing weekly series on local history by local historian David Reimer. Do you have a question about the history of Anchorage or an idea for a future article? Go to the form at the bottom of this story.

Readers ask questions every week, and I try to answer them as best I can. These are some of the most interesting requests.

Is there any truth to the story that the 4th Avenue Theater was showing Disney’s “Sword in the Stone” when the 1964 earthquake hit, and that the earthquake struck when Arthur was pulling a sword from the stone?

“Sword in the Stone” is an animated modification of the future King Arthur’s youth, and the honorary sword can only be pulled from the stone by the “rightful King of England”. Yes, a Disney movie was already playing at the soon-to-be demolished 4th Avenue theater when the Good Friday earthquake struck Alaska on March 27, 1964.

However, the proper showing of “Sword in the Stone” begins at 5 p.m. Arthur pulls the sword from the stone about an hour and fourteen minutes after the movie begins. The earthquake occurred at 5:36 p.m. Regardless of any shortcomings that may have appeared before the feature, Arthur was not wielding the sword victorious when the earthquake began.

Anchorage Daily Times ad for Sword in the Stone at 4th Avenue Theatre.

While “the sword in the stone” is sometimes mentioned with the Good Friday earthquake, the 4th Avenue Theater wasn’t the only theater in town. When the earthquake struck, the Denali Theater, also on Fourth Avenue, was showing Irma la Doss, a Billy Wilder comedy starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. In the same way, many people know that “Fireball XL5” was shown on TV at the same time. A puppet show from science fiction that was shown on KENI. On KTVA, a less-mentioned episode of something called “Buckaroos” was shown.

The Denali Theater did not survive the earthquake. The building dropped several feet, just enough distance that his marquee rested on the sidewalk.

I just watched the movie “The Green Book”. What did the green books say about Alaska?

Green Book is a 2018 historical drama starring Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali. The film was selected as the Best Film of the Year at the 2019 Academy Awards, and Ali also won Best Supporting Actor. Although it requires some liberties in the details, the film depicts a realistic research journey for a version of the Green Book of Negro Motorste. Often called the Green Books, these were annual guides for black travelers. Published from 1936 to 1966, during the heyday of Jim Crow discrimination, Green Books hotels, restaurants, auto mechanics, and other services across the country were ready to serve black customers.

Alaska was first mentioned in the 1948 edition of the Green Book, not coincidentally the same year the Alkan Highway opened to the public. Despite the passage of the Alaska Anti-Discrimination Act in 1945, many Alaskan owners continued to discriminate against Alaskan Natives, blacks, and other minorities. The only Alaskan business listed as friendly to black customers in the 1948 edition was the Savoy Hotel in Fairbanks. Savoy remained the only Alaskan property listed in the guide until 1962, when it was joined by the Baranof Hotel in Juneau, the Ingersoll Hotel in Ketchikan, the Travelers Inn in Fairbanks, and the Westward Hotel in Anchorage.

Research trips and informants have provided details of the “Green Book” listings, but the accuracy of the Alaskan listings is uncertain. The guides did not mention the Black-owned Rendezvous Hotel in Anchorage, the first stop for many of the city’s black newcomers. Guides cite the Travelers Inn in Fairbanks but not the one in Anchorage.

To be clear, many Alaskan hotels during the Green Books’ tenure would have denied serving black patrons. In 1951, Bruce Kendall, owner of the Parsons Hotel Anchorage, refused to allow a black man to book a room. In a rare case of anti-discrimination law enforcement, Kendall did not contest a dispute and paid the maximum fine allowed, $250.

What do women use before infant formula?

This question came in two forms. Like applicators, I’ve seen formula shortages in stores and worry about the coming months.

Historically, there are many reasons why a mother may not be able to breastfeed her child. Physical, social, or psychological trauma may cause a woman’s milk to fail, and throughout the broad timeline of history, new mothers have experienced a great deal of physical, social, and psychological trauma. There are also many reasons why an infant may not be able to breastfeed, including premature birth or a disability that prevents latching. In more extreme cases, the mother may die or be prevented from breastfeeding, as in some cases involving slavery.

The first solution was the wet nurses, to have another woman breastfeed her child. References to wet nurses go back thousands of years, including ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire, and the Bible. Among the many biblical references, the pharaoh’s daughter hires a nurse to feed the baby Moses. Through a complex chain of events, the chosen nurse is Moses’ mother.

As with modern breastfeeding alternatives, wet nursing has historically been used by necessity and choice. Since ancient Greece, it was often fashionable for upper-class women to abdicate the breastfeeding duties of servants. Sometimes wet nurses were well compensated for their services, but other times, their abilities only made them a target. In the prewar American South, enslaved wet nurses were an important part of the slave market, including specialty auctions and newspaper advertisements. In a frightening way, many of those same ads describe women as “without burdens,” meaning they are separated from their children.

Animal-shaped children’s drinking bowl found in Regensburg-Harting, Bavaria, Germany. The container dates back to the Late Bronze Age around 1350 to 800 BC. (Wikimedia image)

History is also replete with examples of breast-milk substitutes. Feeding bottle versions date back to the beginning of recorded history, and are often made of clay with a spout shaped like nipples. Hollow and perforated cow horns were common throughout the Middle Ages, but infant feeding bowls were made of everything from wood to lead. The first modern nipple replacements were made of cork, and rubber nipples were introduced in the mid-1800s.

The first breast-milk substitute was, understandably, animal milk, although there are more strange tales. In the Homeric Hymns, the Greek infant god Apollo feeds not breast milk but a mixture of honey and ambrosia. This indicates that Greek infants were occasionally fed honey, possibly fig juice.

When faced with situations where human and animal milk is not available, cultures around the world often make substitutes from a mixture of broth, bread, cornmeal, vegetables, nuts, honey, and water. Although they didn’t think of it in those terms, moms strove for alternatives with carbs, protein, and water.

Pap and panada were common nutritional supplements or milk substitutes in early modern Europe. The former is made with bread in milk or water, while the latter is made with bread or another mixture of grains in broth. In both cases, the stale bread was soaked or boiled until soft, then poured down the infant’s throat.

In 1724, Algonquin-speaking Abenaki women from the northeastern United States and Canada advised a mother in need of a breast-milk substitute “to take the walnuts, clean them, and beat them with a little water.” They added corn meal to the mix and boiled it, producing something that “looks like milk.”

Manufactured alternatives began to appear in the 19th century. Evaporated milk was patented in 1835. Thirty years later, German chemist Justus von Liebig produced the first infant formula made from powdered cow’s milk, wheat, barley flour and potassium bicarbonate. The product was sold as Liebig’s Soluble Food for kids, a somewhat uninspiring name. Within two decades of Liebig’s breakthrough, more than twenty competitors were in the market. Around 1900, condensed milk, often diluted with water, became popular as a breastmilk substitute.

Of course, when times were tough, mothers throughout history used whatever they had at their disposal. An English colony from early 18th century New England wrote about using “beaver broth or other offal” to feed her baby. When that failed, she poured cold water over her chest so the infant could suck “whatever it can get from the breast.”

The first formula for infants, and thus the first of its recent iterations, hit the market in 1929. By the 1950s, many mothers increasingly refused to breastfeed in favor of formula milk. While formula was already popular in America, the real breakthrough in this country came with the Baby Formula Act of 1980, which set nutrition and quality standards enforced by the Food and Drug Administration.

Before modern infant formula, many babies died directly from breastmilk substitutes, unhealthy feeding bowls or inadequate nutrition. Many surviving examples of ancient clay feeding utensils have been discovered in infant tombs. Although delicious stale bread soaked in milk, it lacks the full range of nutrients that infants need. Likewise, the capacitor has little to recommend for its use after it becomes available. In 1909, a British authority declared that “the true Holocaust of infants was caused, either directly or indirectly, by condensed milk.”

The manufacture of modern commercial infant formula is certainly not without many flaws. However, history conclusively shows that more babies are surviving today than in the past, thanks to the choice of whole food formula.

Main sources:

Sevasco, Carla. ‘Look’d Like Milk’: Breastmilk substitutes in Borderlands, New England. Hypotheses, February 4, 2015.

“Court Fines Hotelman, $250.” Anchorage Daily Times, November 8, 1951, 8.

Davenport Haynes, Richard and Judy Slane. Glasgow: A History to 1962. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Fulminant, Francesca. “Infant Feeding Practices in Europe and the Mediterranean from Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages: A Comparison of Historical and Biology Sources.” Childhood in the past 8, no. 1 (2015): 24-47.

Jones Rogers, Stephanie. “[S]He can. . . He kept one bountiful breast for the profit of its owner: the hidden labor of white mothers and enslaved wet nurses in American slave markets.” Slavery and the Abolition of Slavery 38, No. 2 (2017): 337-355.

Stevens, Emily E, Thelma E. Patrick, and Rita Beckler. “History of Infant Feeding.” Journal of Perinatal Education 18, no. 2 (2009): 32–39.

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