
kayla smernoff/kaylasmernoff.com
kayla smernoff/kaylasmernoff.com
cassandra metz took her two daughters to a national park on a whim. she drove west from their hometown of brooklyn, new york with the intention of enrolling the kids in the junior ranger program for one summer. metz and her family ended up spending days in parks hiking, walking and exploring.
she was hooked. “it was like love at first sight,” metz said.
that was 2012. since then, metz has found time to spend time in nature with her family every year. metz, a photographer, enjoys capturing travel and nature. to her, national parks are an ideal subject because of their “idyllic and sometimes rugged beauty.”
metz’s photography is often black and white, leaving the landscapes of the public spaces she visits as the main focus. as a black woman, metz is a part of the least represented group that visits national parks.
“we’ve never felt unwelcome, we’ve never felt scared or in danger, but we do recognize that we
are an anomaly,” said metz about traveling to national parks as a black family. she is a champion against the disparity and has written letters and proposals with ideas on how to bridge the gap between black people and the great outdoors.
public spaces like national parks are accessible to all members of a community, city or country. however, the complex relationship between african americans and public spaces is part of a historical legacy of disenfranchisement supplemented by exclusion, destruction and violence.
public space is central to the history of america’s development and a global understanding of the sanctity of nature. during the beginning of his second term as president of the united states, president woodrow wilson signed the “organic act of 1916,” the act that established the national park service (nps).
the nps can create accommodations for visitors, write permits for use and approve monuments. colloquially, rangers refer to nps sites as parks, but the agency and its employees are stewards of battlefields, memorials, monuments, parkways, rivers, parks and many other places americans and america’s visitors frequent. the nps and its employees are directed to conserve “the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife” by providing safety for citizens.
the mission seems simple; however, the goal to preserve public space has often excluded black
individuals and communities. the nps has 85 million acres of land and 429 sites being taken
care of by 21,000 employees and 123,000 yearly volunteers. yet, in their own words, the agency has a diversity deficit. black people are 6.7% of the nps workforce. the nps’s diversity initiative spans 60 years, but progress in all categories (race, gender, age) has been slow.
aside from the economic barriers and possible social isolation that could come from being black in the national park service, the lack of black history alienates people of color.
kangjae “jerry” lee, a researcher and professor at north carolina state university, calls the elitism and racism that affects public spaces “slow violence”: a creeping, structural violence perpetrated by oppressors to harm and marginalize minority groups.
conservation, the practice of preventing the destruction of a natural space or habitat, is a movement that the library of congress says dates back to 1850. lee, a scholar of parks, recreation and tourism management, says the conservation movement and creation of national parks is a response to immigration and urbanization.
“white elites promoted this idea that cities were dirty places inhabited by immigrants and people of color and that natural spaces were clean, quiet spaces that white people should enjoy,” lee said lee to nc state university’s college of natural resources news. empowered by government leaders like madison grant, white conservationists dismissed black americans as unworthy of nature and federally excluded black americans from public spaces.
alternatively, black environmentalists posit that black people have a different relationship to land. kimberly k. smith, an environmental ethics-focused political scientist and historian, says black people integrate wilderness into the black intellectual tradition instead of attempting to separate people from land in the name of preservation. wilderness exists in tandem with society and “its preservation facilitated the preservation of african american cultural forms and racial consciousness,” said smith.
the legacy of black people’s exclusion from public spaces continues today. in may of 2020, birdwatcher christian cooper was threatened by a white woman in central park. cooper’s now-deleted twitter video of the harassment went viral and, according to new york times reporter sarah maslin nir, gathered over 40 million views by june of the same year.
in the video, cooper asks the woman to leash her dog in accordance with park rules. the woman refuses and calls the police telling the operator multiple times that “an african-american man is threatening my life.” the angered woman exercises the power of america’s racial hierarchy to attempt to remove cooper from the public park.
“there are certain dark societal impulses that she, as a white woman, facing in a conflict with a black man, that she thought she could marshal to her advantage,” said cooper in a 2020 interview with the new york times.
like cooper’s conflict, the federal government used their power to oust black americans from their land. seneca village was a thriving black neighborhood in 1820s new york. the neighborhood was attractive to black people because of its low property prices and its secluded location. the establishment of the african methodist episcopal (ame) caused people to buy the land around the church. free black people moved to seneca village and created a thriving community full of schools, gardens and other community essentials.
when the city of new york decided to build central park, seneca village was demolished and its residents were displaced. diana wall’s “archaeology of identity and dissonance” says the destruction of seneca village was intentional. the black people living in the neighborhood could not defend themselves and fight for fair financial compensation for their homes. without property, black men were not able to protest through their vote.
in 1853, new york city officials authorized the purchase of the land that makes up the modern-day central park. the city of new york used eminent domain to acquire private property for public use. historians from the central park conservancy hosted an archeological dig to unearth the history of seneca village. the fruits of the exploration were minimal, yielding a china set and other kitchen essentials. the black residents of seneca village were erased to create a park that was supposed to unify and purify the increasing population of immigrants and people of color moving into new york.
not all parks are built on the back of a forgotten black community, but few monuments commemorate black america’s contributions. the acceptance of black landmarks as national monuments is a recent process. billionaire and philanthropist robert f. smith donated the family homes of dr. martin luther king, jr. to be designated as national historic sites.
there are 400 national parks in the united states. there are 12 parks that are named after african americans. without smith’s outside intervention the history surrounding dr. king’s house would be lost, destroying a community’s right to history and access to an important public space.
without representation of black history and representation within the nps, black visitors to public spaces can feel isolated and unsafe. the threat of danger or violence creeps through the great outdoors.
in september of 2020, the great smoky mountains national park was vandalized. the vandalists left a large black bear skin and head draped over the sign that marked the entrance to the park. next to the animal skin was a cardboard sign that said “here to the lake black lives don’t matter.” the sign is in reference to the black lives matter movement that stands against racism and violence against black people.
great smoky mountains national park, located in the appalachian mountains along the tennessee and north carolina border, was a segregated park. j.r. eakin, the great smoky mountains national park’s first superintendent, claimed black people would not use it unless their facilities were designated and separate from white facilities. the parks’ legacy seeped into their segregated lunch areas and into the ancestral memory of the surrounding black communities.
however, the lack of black people in public spaces is changing.
“the service recognizes that, when diverse citizens visit units of the national park system and see and converse with someone who ‘looks like me,’ and who performs the various important responsibilities at these sites, it gives them a sense of being a part of and accepted by the larger community — including the national park service” and “this is beneficial for the service” and for the people it serves said jonathan jarvis, the former director of the united states department of interior.
today, organizations like black girl environmentalist, earth in color and the national black environmental network work to engage their communities in outdoor activities and to preserve the history and culture of black agrarians.
earth in color’s mission is to affirm the “deep cultural connections” that black people have to the earth, “due to our shared ancestry and interconnected histories.” black girl hike pledges “to see brown faces in green spaces.”
alongside the national park service, these black environmental groups have the power to address the socioeconomic and historic discrepancies between the groups that frequent public spaces. the persistence of black environmentalists who continue to show up for their home towns’s public spaces can help free america from the collective memory and policies barring black people from nature.
“this is our land and our history, so why not be in these spaces,” said cassandra metz.
kayla smernoff is a journalist studying at howard university. her article is from nikole hannah-jones’s essay writing course inspired by historical anthology ‘the 1619 project.’