ABSTRACT
A seemingly innocuous piece of legislation, the Alaska Mental Health Bill of 1956, touched off this political movement. Written to enable the territory of Alaska to hospitalize its own mentally
ill residents, the 1956 bill appropriated land and money to fund psychiatric facilities and programs. Protests led by grassroots anti-communist organizations erupted after the House of Representatives unanimously approved the bill in January. Shortly after the House vote, Mrs. Leigh F.Burkeland of Burbank, California, unleashed a wave of protest when she published an article in Orange County’s Santa Ana Register called “Now-Siberia, U.S.A.”3 “Based on close study of the bill,” Burkeland warned, “it is entirely within the realm of possibility that we may be establishing in Alaska our own version of the Siberian slave camps.”4 The bill’s alleged danger lay in the dubious circumstances under which authorities could commit so-called mentally ill persons. Any police officer or health care professional, according to Burkeland, had the power to incarcerate individuals he or she deemed psychologically unfit. In the eyes of its opponents, the Alaska Mental Health Bill provided both the physical structures and the legal mechanisms for a Soviet-style police state in America. The bill signaled a “trend toward the centralization of Government,” proclaimed Robert Williams of Orange County, who also appeared in Washington that week to expose, in his words, “boobytraps” that hide in “thick padded bills.”5
