Winner, J. B. Jackson Book Prize from the Foundation for Landscape
StudiesWinner, American Association for State and Local History Award of
MeritDuring the 1930s, the state park movement and the National Park
Service expanded public access to scenic American places, especially
during the era of the New Deal. However, under severe Jim Crow
restrictions in the South, African Americans were routinely and
officially denied entrance to these supposedly shared sites. In
response, advocacy groups pressured the National Park Service to provide
some facilities for African Americans. William E. O'Brien shows that
these parks were typically substandard in relation to "whites only"
areas.As the NAACP filed federal lawsuits that demanded park integration
and increased pressure on park officials, southern park agencies reacted
with attempts to expand segregated facilities, hoping they could
demonstrate that these parks achieved the "separate but equal" standard.
But the courts consistently ruled in favor of integration, leading to
the end of segregated state parks by the middle of the 1960s. Even
though the stories behind these largely inferior facilities faded from
public awareness, the imprint of segregated state park design remains
visible throughout the South.O'Brien illuminates this untold facet of
Jim Crow history in the first-ever study of segregation in southern
state parks. His book underscores the profound disparity that persisted
for decades in the number, size, and quality of state parks provided for
black visitors in the Jim Crow South. "State park design in the South
during the Jim Crow era is a highly significant chapter in the cultural
history of American parks, and one that has received almost no scholarly
attention. Many state parks or park areas cre-ated under the 'separate
but equal' doctrine were subsequently altered so that their origins are
not immediately apparent today. O'Brien's remarkable work of scholarship
makes it possible for us, finally, to understand this formerly obscured
category of American parks."--Ethan Carr, author of Mission 66:
Modernism and the National Park Dilemma
