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WORK TITLE: Landscapes of Exclusion
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BIRTHDATE: 1963
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LC control no.: n 2015061261
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rda
Personal name heading:
O'Brien, William E., 1963-
Found in: Landscapes of exclusion, 2015: ECIP t.p. (William E.
O'Brien) data view (Associate professor of environmental
studies at the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College of
Florida Atlantic University)
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PERSONAL
Born 1963.
EDUCATION:Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Florida Atlantic University, Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, Jupiter, FL, associate professor of environmental studies.
AWARDS:Florida Atlantic University, University Award for Excellence and Innovation in Undergraduate Teaching, 2014; J. B. Jackson Book Prize from the Foundation for Landscape Studies, for Landscapes of Exclusion.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to academic journals, including Historical Geography, Geographical Review, Human Ecology, Journal of Geography, Journal of American Culture, and Ethics, Place and Environment.
SIDELIGHTS
William E. O’Brien researches the intersection of the environment and race. His 2016 book, Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South, he follows the struggle for desegregation of and access to national parks. O’Brien is associate professor of environmental studies at the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University where he received the 2014 University Award for Excellence and Innovation in Undergraduate Teaching. O’Brien has also written academic articles for numerous publications, including Historical Geography, Geographical Review, and Journal of Geography.
O’Brien’s Landscapes of Exclusion, part of the “Designing the American Park” series, received the J.B. Jackson Book Prize from the Foundation for Landscape Studies. In the book, O’Brien traces the history of racial segregation in state parks and describes the struggle for integration in America’s national parks. In the 1930s, when the National Park Service expanded public access to scenic locations across the country, strict Jim Crow rules prevented entry by African Americans. P.W. Kaufman explained in Choice that O’Brien conducted “painstaking research into the records of New Deal funding for public state parks in the southern U.S.”
Advocacy groups pressured the park service to create some facilities for blacks, which some parks reluctantly did. Although declared “separate but equal,” these “Negro Area” facilities were substandard to the “white’s only” areas and were unkempt with dilapidated buildings. Online at H-SHGAPE, Nancy Murray said: “The strength of O’Brien’s book is explaining how the preservation of recreational areas and parks were viewed as a method to maintain white superiority. The author’s case studies also clearly illustrate the difficulties that civil rights activists faced as they fought to desegregate a park system initially built to support Jim Crow.”
After World War II, the NAACP filed federal lawsuits demanding desegregation in parks. Rather than desegregate, some Southern states closed their parks altogether. However after for litigation, by the middle of the 1960s, parks were fully open to all. Yet even today, the signs of segregated state parks are still evident in the South even though many parks do not acknowledged their segregated past. “This book is a good start at examining a topic that badly needs historical attention, but it really only scratches the surface of this larger history. Both the book’s argumentation and its historical depth and detail leave much room for additional work,” according to Journal of Southern History writer Chris Wilhelm.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, July, 2016, P.W. Kaufman, review of Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South.
Journal of Southern History, February, 2017, Chris Wilhelm, review of Landscapes of Exclusion, p. 215.
ONLINE
H-SHGAPE, https://networks.h-net.org/ (August 20, 2017), Nancy Murray, review of Landscapes of Exclusion.*
Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South
William E. O’Brien
Published by University of Massachusetts Press in association with LALH
Cloth $39.95
January 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62534-155-6
To order: University of Massachusetts Press
tel. 800-537-5487, fax 410-516-6998
A volume in the series Designing the American Park
Winner, J. B. Jackson Book Prize from the Foundation for Landscape Studies
An outgrowth of earlier park movements, the state park movement in the twentieth century sought to expand public access to scenic places. But under severe Jim Crow restrictions in the South, access for African Americans was routinely and officially denied. The New Deal brought a massive wave of state park expansion, and advocacy groups pressured the National Park Service to design and construct segregated facilities for African Americans. These parks were typically substandard in relation to “white only” areas.
After World War II, the NAACP filed federal lawsuits that demanded park integration, and southern park agencies reacted with attempts to expand access to additional segregated facilities, hoping they could demonstrate that their parks achieved the “separate but equal” standard. But the courts consistently ruled in favor of integration, leading to the end of state park segregation by the mid-1960s. Even though it has largely faded from public awareness, the imprint of segregated state park design remains visible throughout the South.
William E. O’Brien illuminates this untold facet of Jim Crow history in the first-ever study of state park segregation. Emphasizing the historical trajectory of events leading to integration, his book underscores the profound inequality that persisted for decades in the number, size, and quality of state park spaces provided for black visitors across the Jim Crow South.
WILLIAM E. O’BRIEN, Ph.D., is an associate professor of environmental studies at the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University. His work on environment and race has appeared in journals including Historical Geography, Geographical Review, Human Ecology, Journal of Geography, and Ethics, Place and Environment. He is a 2014 recipient of the University Award for Excellence and Innovation in Undergraduate Teaching.
Professor of Environmental Studies
O'Brien Ph.D., Environmental Design and Planning, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Dr. O'Brien's work on the intersection of environment and race has appeared in journals including Historical Geography, Geographical Review, Human Ecology, Journal of Geography, Journal of American Culture, and Ethics, Place and Environment. He is author of the book Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South, published jointly by the Library of American Landscape History and the University of Massachusetts Press (2015).
Contact Dr. O'Brien: 561.799.8033; SR 206
wobrien@fau.edu
Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South
Chris Wilhelm
83.1 (Feb. 2017): p215.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South. By William E. O'Brien. Designing the American Park. (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016. Pp. xvi, 191. $39.95, ISBN 978-1-62534-155-6.)
In six slim chapters, Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South tells the important and unexplored history of segregated state parks in the U.S. South. The history of state and national parks has often been neglected by environmental historians; the western bias in environmental history has meant that southern parks have been doubly neglected. This work, the third book in the Designing the America Park series, largely avoids the implications of segregation for the practice of landscape architecture and park design and instead offers a brief history of segregated state parks in the South.
William E. O'Brien, a geographer at Florida Atlantic University, "examines the creation and operation" of state parks in the South "that allowed African American access, emphasizing how racism and discrimination were etched into the geography and design of the region's scenic landscapes" (p. 4). O'Brien notes that despite the New Deal's enormous efforts to spur state park development, the South had fewer state parks than other parts of the country. The region paid even less attention to the recreational needs of African Americans. By 1940 there were only seven parks available for African Americans, and very few white parks that included sections for black use. Unsurprisingly, there were significant "inequities in the design of separate state parks" (p. 11).
After introducing the book's topic and examining the early history of state parks in the South, O'Brien next examines the New Deal's role in the creation of state parks. The New Deal accepted segregation in the South, as did the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the National Park Service under Franklin D. Roosevelt, examined in chapter 2 and chapter 3 respectively. O'Brien finds that only nine state parks built by the CCC in the South were accessible to African Americans, and that most southern states had no facilities in state parks for African Americans before World War II. The National Park Service pushed for recreational opportunities for black southerners during the interwar period but largely failed to deliver, ultimately accepting the segregated norms of the South.
After World War II, though, many southern states expanded black access to state parks. Chapter 4 examines these efforts state by state and concludes that although states made progress in constructing these facilities, "African Americans largely were no longer seeking to increase segregated spaces" (p. 97). Chapter 5 examines the desegregation of state parks. O'Brien mostly examines the actions of the NAACP and the results of that group's litigation. The book's last chapter very briefly catalogs the ways that the racial histories of these parks have been hidden from the public. O'Brien states that only "eight of the forty parks" that are part of this history discuss segregation in their interpretative materials (p. 150).
This book is a good start at examining a topic that badly needs historical attention, but it really only scratches the surface of this larger history. Both the book's argumentation and its historical depth and detail leave much room for additional work. The book also lacks connections to the relevant secondary literature on state and national parks, conservation, the New Deal, segregation, and the civil rights movement. Landscapes of Exclusion offers a brief narrative account of the history of segregation in southern state parks and will hopefully spur more research into the history of southern parks.
Chris Wilhelm
College of Coastal Georgia
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Wilhelm, Chris. "Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South." Journal of Southern History, vol. 83, no. 1, 2017, p. 215+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA481354187&it=r&asid=77157511e959a217e838ab558d7ff519. Accessed 10 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A481354187
O'Brien, William E.: Landscapes of exclusion: state parks and Jim Crow in the American South
P.W. Kaufman
53.11 (July 2016): p1663.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
O'Brien, William E. Landscapes of exclusion: state parks and Jim Crow in the American South. Massachusetts/Library of Ameri can Landscape History, Amherst, 2016. 191 p index afp ISBN 9781625341556 cloth, $39.95; ISBN 9781613763605 ebook, contact publisher for price
53-4936
F220
2015-27970 CIP
Using painstaking research into the records of New Deal funding for public state parks in the southern US, O'Brien (environmental studies, Florida Atlantic Univ.) reveals the total policy of segregation in public spaces. Park spaces allocated to African Americans--"Negro Area"--featured inferior and poorly kept buildings. Park Service officials allowed a request to use one of the white-only camps in Oklahoma's Lake Murray State Park to host a meeting of the Southwest Council of Student Christian Associations, which included one African American institution. When the permit was requested a second year, local authorities denied it. Later, when the authority for state parks was given to the states, NAACP lawyers in individual states and parks pushed for equality. Soon after the Brown decision (1954), the US Supreme Court declared that "public park segregation was unconstitutional." As a result, some states closed some of their parks. Finally, in 1967, when Virginia reopened the facilities at Seashore State Park three years after the Civil Rights Act was passed (1964), "[tjhe Jim Crow era of southern state parks had finally come to an official end" (p. 147). Many of the former spaces are no longer public parks, but the majority that still operate as recreational space do not acknowledge their segregated past. Summing Up: ** Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.--P. W. Kaufman, University of Southern Maine, retired
Kaufman, P.W.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Kaufman, P.W. "O'Brien, William E.: Landscapes of exclusion: state parks and Jim Crow in the American South." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, July 2016, p. 1663. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA457393516&it=r&asid=0b49de6d8ea7b7df50cef80d6e7b63aa. Accessed 10 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A457393516
The "Achilles' Heel" of Jim Crow: A Review of Landscapes of Exclusion
Andrew W. Kahrl
University of Virginia
Review
Published April 4, 2017
Overview
Andrew W. Kahrl reviews William E. O'Brien's Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015).
Review
Cover, Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South.
In the years surrounding the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision, state legislatures as well as county and municipal governments in the US South hastily built new "colored" schools in a desperate attempt to convince federal courts that separate could be equal. White officials tried in vain to give the appearance of equality to spaces and institutions conceived and designed to engineer inequality. This included the "Great Outdoors." In Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South, a fascinating, deeply researched, and richly illustrated book, William O'Brien tells the story of segregated state parks and recovers a history that states have worked assiduously to erase. O'Brien's is the third book in the Library of American Landscape History's "Designing the American Park" series, a collection devoted to exploring aspects of North American park history which, as series editor Ethan Carr explains in the preface, "remain relatively obscure in proportion to their significance" (ix). One could scarcely imagine a more fitting subject for this series. State parks, O'Brien convincingly shows, became important battlegrounds in the legal and bureaucratic struggle over segregation. The history of these places offers new insights into the way states and localities utilized federal programs and dollars to bolster Jim Crow and extend its reach, the cautious approach and ambivalent attitude of New Deal-era agencies toward southern defiance of federal law, and the evolution of the NAACP's legal strategy for securing African Americans' civil rights.
Locations of state parks in the South highlighting facilities made available to African Americans between 1937 and 1962. Map by William O’Brien. Originally published in William O’Brien’s Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015). Image provided by author.
Locations of state parks in the South highlighting facilities made available to African Americans between 1937 and 1962. Map by William O’Brien. Originally published in William O’Brien’s Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015). Image provided by author.
As O'Brien's work suggests, of all of the segregated facilities that dotted the South, few were more nakedly unequal or more clearly designed to inscribe white supremacy and black inferiority onto the built and natural environment than public parks. Without exception, African American outdoor accommodations were vastly inferior in size and quality, often located in remote, inaccessible areas, on land that formerly served as dumping grounds and mosquito-breeding spots. Providing black citizens separate spaces that approximated the outdoor experiences whites enjoyed at coastal beaches, interior lakes, and mountain parks was a practical impossibility. Even modest attempts by state and federal agencies to provide black citizens with decent parks in accessible locations succumbed to organized white opposition and bureaucratic indifference. Because of these gross inequities and the practical impossibility of state parks ever becoming separate and equal, the NAACP identified them as the "Achilles' Heel" of the Jim Crow system. By the 1950s, state parks had become one of the chief targets of civil rights lawyers in their fight to dismantle apartheid. During the 1960s, court-ordered desegregation rendered already sparsely-used Negro parks—once thought of as critical to the maintenance of white supremacy—deserted and superfluous. Today, physical evidence of Jim Crow's imprint on southern state parks is hard to find, except in the racial demographics of park users, which remain overwhelmingly white.
African Americans and whites still congregate separately in the newly integrated Lake Meer, Piedmont Park, Atlanta, Georgia, June 12, 1963. Photograph by Ken Patterson. Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photographic Archives collection, Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. Copyright Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Courtesy of Georgia State University
African Americans and whites still congregate separately in the newly integrated Lake Meer, Piedmont Park, Atlanta, Georgia, June 12, 1963. Photograph by Ken Patterson. Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photographic Archives collection, Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. Copyright Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Courtesy of Georgia State University.
While state parks predated the national park system, it was not until the 1920s that states began to take active measures to preserve natural landscapes and provide recreational resources. These efforts accelerated in the 1930s when states partnered with the National Park Service and New Deal agencies such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and Works Progress Administration (WPA). Typically, federal agencies acquired the land (through purchase or donation) and federal workers built the facilities before handing it over to states to operate. Between 1932 and 1942, the eleven states of the old Confederacy added 150 state parks, and excluded African Americans from nearly every one. While the National Park Service had an official nondiscrimination policy, typical of New Deal federal agencies it worked hard to avoid interfering with "local customs." As historian Ira Katznelson and others have written, southern Democrats used their control of Congressional committees to force virtually every significant piece of New Deal legislation to conform to—and, in the process, vastly expand—the power of Jim Crow. Bureaucrats in Washington learned to respect southern segregationists' power over the purse and avoid overt challenges to segregation.1
State Parks For Negroes Exhibit, State Fair Grounds, Richland County, South Carolina, 1958. Photograph by unknown creator, South Carolina State Commission of Forestry. Courtesy of Black and white negatives of South Carolina State Parks, 1934–1967 collection, Open Parks Network, Clemson University and National Park Service.
State Parks For Negroes Exhibit, State Fair Grounds, Richland County, South Carolina, 1958. Photograph by unknown creator, South Carolina State Commission of Forestry. Courtesy of Black and white negatives of South Carolina State Parks, 1934–1967 collection, Open Parks Network, Clemson University and National Park Service.
By the late 1930s, National Park Service officials, under pressure from civil rights organizations, encouraged southern states to provide some form of accommodation for African Americans. Reluctantly, states began to add "Negro areas" to existing state parks or designate new park sites for "colored" only. It wasn't until the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund (LDF) began filing lawsuits in the late 1940s that southern states attempted to "equalize" their park systems. It was a cynical strategy aimed at appeasing the courts and holding back civil rights. As O'Brien writes, "no state would pursue actual equalization" (15). Instead, they sought available lands deemed of "marginal economic value," "worthless for agriculture," that could be "purchased at a reasonable price" for Negro state parks (15).
Many "Negro parks" never made it off the drawing board. Those that opened had few visitors. Landscapes of Exclusion details how park planners perpetuated white racism. In South Carolina, for example, fearing that black bathers would pollute the water, planners eliminated possible sites for Negro parks in areas upstream from white parks (118). States did as little as possible; Negro park facilities usually existed in name only. Mississippi constructed a single park for black citizens, Carver Point on Grenada Lake. On paper, Carver Point was equal in size and provided the same amenities as its whites-only counterpart. But its remote location and the poorly maintained roads leading there made it inaccessible.
Charleston Negroes Seek Use of Lily-White Park. Published in the Memphis World, May 31, 1955, p. 6. Crossroads to Freedom Digital Archive, Rhodes College.
Charleston Negroes Seek Use of Lily-White Park. Published in the Memphis World, May 31, 1955, p. 6. Crossroads to Freedom Digital Archive, Rhodes College.
The few attempts by states to provide equivalent facilities for blacks generated white anger and hostility. When the CCC constructed two identical Recreational Demonstration Areas on Oklahoma's Lake Murray, local whites registered their opposition to a facility deemed "far too elaborate for Negroes" (54). The very idea of African Americans at leisure undermined the image of sweating black field hands laboring for whites.
Following Brown, the NAACP filed dozens of lawsuits to force the desegregation of parks. O'Brien details how, during the 1950s and 1960s, southern states resisted, and responded to federal court rulings declaring park segregation unconstitutional. Some states, such as Kentucky and West Virginia, quietly, bitterly, acceded to court rulings. Others waged campaigns of defiance. South Carolina opted to shut down its entire park system rather than desegregate. Still others concocted alternatives to public recreation. A sign of things to come, Georgia leased twelve of its parks to private operators. As Kevin Kruse and other historians have noted, the demise of legal segregation and African Americans' increased use of formerly segregated sites led whites to abandon public spaces in favor of private facilities. States and cities steadily withdrew support for public parks and recreation.2
Jones Lake State Park, Bladen County, North Carolina, ca. 1940. Photograph by unknown creator, North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation. Courtesy of the North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation Records collection, State Archives of North Carolina, North Carolina Digital Collections, State Library of North Carolina. Jones Lake State Park Fishing Pier, Bladen County, North Carolina, August 25, 2013. Photograph by Flickr user Gerry Dincher. Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 2.0.
Top, Jones Lake State Park, Bladen County, North Carolina, ca. 1940. Photograph by unknown creator, North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation. Courtesy of the North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation Records collection, State Archives of North Carolina, North Carolina Digital Collections, State Library of North Carolina. Bottom, Jones Lake State Park Fishing Pier, Bladen County, North Carolina, August 25, 2013. Photograph by Flickr user Gerry Dincher. Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 2.0.
Southern states quickly got to work erasing evidence of their parks' Jim Crow origins. In Landscapes of Exclusion's final chapter, O'Brien explores the afterlife of Jim Crow state parks and makes the case for publicly acknowledging this history. Many of the Negro parks were simply shut down, sold off to private interests, or allowed to return to nature. Others were converted into privately owned and operated parks, or handed over to county governments. Several parks that once provided separate white and black facilities combined the two sites and removed all references to their segregated past. At these parks, O'Brien notes, the "footprints of segregated design remain" in the form of separate entrances, two sets of picnic and swimming areas, one invariably smaller and less attractive (152). In rare instances, states continued to operate formerly "colored only" parks under their original names and acknowledge in brochures and displays the park's racialized past. O'Brien found only three such parks still in operation today: Tennessee's Booker T. Washington and T.O. Fuller State Parks, and North Carolina's Jones Lake State Park (153).
O'Brien argues that state park agencies should do much more to acknowledge and reckon with the history and legacy of Jim Crow. As evidenced by the paltry numbers of black visitors to national parks today, many African Americans continue to feel unwelcome in such places. "[M]arking this racialized history can be potentially advantageous as a way of drawing new visitors. Most important, such actions help to preserve the national memory of African American struggles for justice" (155). The inclusion of Jim Crow in the public histories of state parks—much like the Equal Justice Initiative's effort to place a marker at every lynching site in the US—will serve as a reminder, especially to white park visitors, of a history of exclusion and ostracism written onto the natural landscape that continues to shape notions of race, understandings of nature, and encounters with the natural world.
About the Author
Andrew W. Kahrl is assistant professor of history and African-American studies at the University of Virginia. He is the author of The Land Was Ours: How Black Beaches Became White Wealth in the Coastal South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016).
1.
Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (New York: Liveright, 2013).
2.
Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2005).
Interested in submitting your work to Southern Spaces?
Recommended Resources
Text
Chafe, William H., Raymond Gavins, and Robert Korstad, eds. Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South. New York: The New Press, 2001.
Maher, Neil M. Nature's New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement. Oxford University Press, 2009.
O'Brien, William. "The Strange Career of a Florida State Park: Uncovering a Jim Crow Past." Historical Geography 35 (2007): 160–184.
Shumaker, Susan. "Segregation in the National Parks." In Untold Stories from America's National Parks, 15–36. Public Broadcasting Service, 2009.
Smith, Langdon. "Democratizing Nature Through State Park Development." Historical Geography 41 (2013): 208–223.
Taylor, Patricia A., Burke D. Grandjean, and James H. Gramann. "National Park Service Comprehensive Survey of the American Public 2008–2009." Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, July 2011.
Thompson-Miller, Ruth, Joe R. Feagin, and Leslie H. Picca. Jim Crow's Legacy: The Lasting Impact of Segregation. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2014.
Vickers, Lu and Cynthia Wilson-Graham. Remembering Paradise Park: Tourism and Segregation at Silver Springs. University Press of Florida, 2015.
Web
"America's Parks." StateParks.com. 2017. http://www.stateparks.com/usa.html.
Golash-Boza, Tonya and Vlina Bashi Treitler. "Why America's National Parks Are So White." Aljazeera America. July 23, 2015. http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/7/heres-why-americas-national-parks-are-so-white.html.
Lear, Mike. "MU Researcher: Histories of Segregation, Racism Limit Blacks' Attendance at State, National Parks." Missourinet. June 21, 2016. http://www.missourinet.com/2016/06/21/mu-researcher-histories-of-segregation-racism-limit-blacks-attendance-at-state-national-parks/.
"North Carolina State Parks." North Carolina Digital Collections. State Archives of North Carolina and State Library of North Carolina. Accessed February 7, 2017. http://digital.ncdcr.gov/cdm/home/collections/nc-state-parks.
Repko, Melissa. "Segregated Parks Gone, but They Still Divide." The Dallas Morning News. February 15, 2015. http://interactives.dallasnews.com/2016/segregated-parks/.
Murray on O'Brien, 'Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South'
Author:
William E. O'Brien
Reviewer:
Nancy Murray
William E. O'Brien. Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South. Designing the American Park Series. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015. Illustrations. 208 pp. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-62534-155-6.
Reviewed by Nancy Murray (National Park Service)
Published on H-SHGAPE (April, 2017)
Commissioned by Jay W. Driskell
William E. O’Brien’s book Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South chronicles how the development of state parks in the South was rooted in racial prejudices and stereotypes that justified unequal access and participation. The Jim Crow laws in the South dictated the creation and use of state parks. Southern state parks were successful in developing and maintaining segregated parks despite using federal funds.
O’Brien explains the larger narrative of how preserving North American landscapes was viewed as a method to preserve the supposed “American way of life” against African Americans and newly arrived immigrants from Europe and Asia at the turn of the century. Early American ideas of wilderness preservation were based on the theories of nineteenth-century French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck who argued that “environmental influences on the behavior and character of living animals could be inherited by descendants, suggesting that encounters with natural elements might lead to enhancement or decline of a species” (p. 31). Although the Darwinian theory of genetic inheritance ultimately displaced Lamarck’s perspective, the idea that acquired characteristics were heritable nonetheless persisted.
Racial theorists embraced the Lamarckian view and suggested that the “vitalism” needed to survive in the harsh climes of northern Europe and the American West resulted in these groups becoming superior to other races. According to O’Brien, the fear that Nordic types would lose the evolutionary battle against the recent Mediterranean immigrants who peopled early twentieth-century cities spurred the promotion of scenic parks and wilderness areas as a way to preserve an environment where white superiority could renew itself. The preservation of rural and wild places for Nordic populations would provide them with an environmental advantage over the constant flood of other races.
By contrast, advocates for wilderness recreation viewed national parks as a means to prevent black criminality. As early as the 1920s, officials argued that recreational areas and parks for African Americans would help to address stereotypical problems of crime and juvenile delinquency. In October 1925, while introducing a speaker at the Twelfth Recreation Congress in Asheville, North Carolina, Chairman Robert Lassiter stated that, “with proper attention to recreational facilities, they [African Americans] will make good citizens. Improper attention to that, and neglect and abuse of it, will make a criminal population” (p. 34). These assumptions about black criminality knew no color line. The following year, Ernest Attwell, director of the Parks and Recreation Association (PRA) Bureau of Colored Work and a Tuskegee Institute graduate, reiterated Lassiter’s views.
These arguments resulted in the emergence of another stereotype that African Americans needed outdoor spaces for loud and gregarious activities unlike their white counterparts who preferred wide open spaces for contemplative thought. This approach justified larger parcels for whites-only state parks that included hiking and nature appreciation while African American park users needed only a picnic area, hunting and fishing places, and perhaps a ball park. O’Brien argues that these early views influenced park development well into the twentieth century.
O’Brien’s book spans a period of time beginning with the origins of state park development in the 1930s to the turbulent civil rights era in the 1960s and relates how the development of state parks reflected the political and racial conflicts of these decades. Throughout, Landscapes of Exclusion emphasizes how local, state, and federal agencies adhered to what was called “customary” practices to justify using public funds to build and maintain segregated state parks. By the 1930s and 1940s, even as state park officials acknowledged African Americans’ need for state parks, Jim Crow laws and the hostility of white residents meant that most southern states refused to provide them.
O’Brien presents case studies for Oklahoma, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and South Carolina to illustrate how government agencies navigated local racist attitudes while striving for equitable development and use of state parks. For example, Arkansas proposed the South’s first state park exclusively for African Americans in 1935 during the early days of the New Deal. To preserve segregation, the planned Arkansas R-4, Pine Bluff Regional Negro Park would be located in an area that was 90 percent African American and maintained by the Pine Bluff Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College (AM&N), a historically black college. Despite the support of AM&N’s president John Brown Watson, Arkansas governor Junius Marion Futrell, and the president of the University of Arkansas, the park was never built. Additional case studies further illustrate the difficulty of developing state parks for African Americans. For example, in 1937, the Park Service proposed a segregated camp at Swift Creek Recreational Demonstration Areas (RDA) near Richmond, Virginia. The RDA program was developed to convert agricultural land into recreational areas. Despite assurances that natural buffers (and different names) would separate white and black areas of the park, the local advisory board rejected the proposal.
Not all states rejected segregated parks for African Americans. Those built in this period drew on the resources offered by the New Deal to preserve segregation. In Oklahoma, Roman Nose State Park opened on May 16, 1937, and included a picnic area for African Americans. Designed by Park Service staff and constructed by members of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), it featured a bathhouse with a concrete pool fed from a local spring as well as camping facilities and overnight cabins. The area set aside for African Americans, referred to as the “Negro Picnic Area” on the park’s master plan, was located in the extreme northwest sector of the park and included picnic tables, barbecue pits, restrooms, a playground, and a parking lot. Despite these amenities, its day-use only status and significant distance from the African American population meant that the “Negro Picnic Area” went largely unused.
After World War II, in the face of mounting challenges to segregation, southern states proposed a more expansive network of segregated parks for African Americans and the leasing of whites-only parks to private entities in an attempt to prevent integration. Despite these attempts to preserve Jim Crow, civil rights activists nonetheless persisted. In 1951, four African American beachgoers were denied entry into Seashore State Park on Cape Henry in Virginia. When attorneys from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed a lawsuit, the Virginia Department of Conservation offered to build a park for African Americans near Seashore State Park with similar amenities. When the NAACP rejected this offer, they filed suit in Tate v. Department of Conservation.
At the same time, the NAACP filed another case, Lonesome v. Maxwell, in the summer of 1952 to desegregate Sandy Point State Park in Maryland. The park had separate facilities for African Americans and whites on the same grounds, “including segregated beaches and bathhouses.” After the eight plaintiffs were refused access to South Beach (for whites only), officials directed them to East Beach, “a virtually unusable area” reserved exclusively for the use of African Americans (p. 130). Initially, Judge Calvin Chestnut ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in 1953 but overturned the verdict one month later after the state improved the facilities at East Beach.
While both Lonesome and Tate were pending, the Supreme Court issued its ruling on Brown v. Board of Education, ruling that “separate but equal” was unconstitutional. Although the ruling focused on school segregation, its broader implications, including integrating parks and recreational facilities, soon became evident. With Judge Walter E. Hoffman finally set to hear the Tate case on April 26, 1955, Virginia officials anticipated an adverse ruling and attempted to lease the public park to a private entity to avoid desegregation. Judge Hoffman issued a temporary injunction on March 12, 1955, that barred any such leases until after the April court hearing.
The Fourth Circuit of Appeals forbade the state of Maryland from operating segregated parks in the Lonesome case. The outcome confirmed what Virginia’s segregationists feared would happen. Ultimately, Judge Hoffman ruled that Virginia must desegregate all state parks and could not avert this ruling through privatization. In response, Virginia governor Thomas B. Stanley defied the court’s ruling and ordered the closure of Seashore State Park for the 1955 season and refused to desegregate the rest of the state’s parks.
My criticisms of the work are, for the most part, minor. Because O’Brien focuses on how southern states sought to maintain segregation, he does not discuss how northern states approached these same issues. Given the persistence of segregation both above and below the Mason-Dixon Line, it would have been enlightening to read how local, state, and federal officials outside of the South acquiesced to “customary” practices of segregated parks and services.
The strength of O’Brien’s book is explaining how the preservation of recreational areas and parks were viewed as a method to maintain white superiority. The author’s case studies also clearly illustrate the difficulties that civil rights activists faced as they fought to desegregate a park system initially built to support Jim Crow. The historical photographs included in the book also provide readers with a nice visualization of how these parks were constructed. Landscapes of Exclusion offers readers a well-rounded and thoroughly researched history of the South’s legacy of racial segregation in the state park system.
Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=47976
Citation: Nancy Murray. Review of O'Brien, William E., Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South. H-SHGAPE, H-Net Reviews. April, 2017.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=47976