On a bus in Montgomery, a lone woman refused to be sent to the rear. In the dry desert east of Yosemite lie the foundations of an internment camp where thousands of Americans were imprisoned simply because of their ancestry. In a small, drab bar on Christopher Street in New York City, a handful of young men refused to be harassed by the police. These sites were all turning points in American history. They may not be as beautiful as the Tetons, or have the cachet of Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace, but they are each, in their own way, as important in our nation’s unfolding history. 

Originally built as stables in the 1840s, the small two-story building had multiple lives until it was opened as the Stonewall Inn in 1967. Soon it was the largest gay establishment in New York City, if not the nation. Frequently the target of harassing police raids, patrons erupted in rebellion on a hot June night in 1969. Dozens of gay youths refused to be picked on anymore. Rallying hundreds more, they turned the tables, trapping a handful of police officers inside the bar.

Sadly, not long after the riot, the bar closed, and over the next few decades the building languished in various guises, including a shoe store. But in the ensuing decades, a more enlightened society, growing gay pride, and an increasing appreciation of its iconic value led the bar’s stature as a symbol to grow. In 2000, the building was included with Christopher Street as part of the area’s National Historic Landmark designation. In 2007, the building was renovated again and re-opened with its old name, the Stonewall Inn.

Inside the bar today, a small mahogany countertop extends along the west wall facing just a dozen stools, another half-dozen booths line the opposite wall, and a small mirror-ceilinged gathering room remains in the back. It’s just a quarter the size of Boston’s famous bar from the television show Cheers, and when I last went in, it was still a neighborhood hang-out. At midday, a sole bartender was plying her trade to two locals. Stonewall could not be farther from the grandeur of the Grand Canyon. 

Yet, this unlikely site is more than worthy of being a national park. Stonewall Inn is the iconic anchor of a great arc of history that passes on through Harvey Milk, the proliferation of gay rights marches and parades in 1970s, the Rainbow Coalition, the incredible losses of the AIDS epidemic, and the profound shift toward the acceptance of same-sex marriage today. Like the history behind many sites, from Custer’s Last Stand to Manzanar, you don’t have to agree or disagree to recognize it. 

In this light, I urge you to email your Congressman and Senators (find them on our website) and ask that the Stonewall Inn be incorporated into our National Park System. For as then-Assistant Secretary of the Interior John Berry (now Director of the Office of Personnel Management) said in 2000, ”Let it forever be remembered that here—on this spot—men and women stood proud, they stood fast, so that we may be who we are, we may work where we will, live where we choose, and love whom our hearts desire.”

This story is reprinted from the most recent Northeast Regional Field Report. Read the rest of the issue on NPCA’s website.

Today the country celebrates an important milestone in preserving its history. After years of advocacy and study, President Obama has finally named three new national monuments as part of the National Park System, including a new national park site on Maryland’s Eastern Shore honoring Harriet Tubman. This new national monument encompasses several sites in Dorchester County, Maryland, of great historic significance to Tubman’s early life as an enslaved person and during her career as a conductor on the Underground Railroad.

American schoolchildren grow up learning about Tubman and her legendary bravery, hearing how she escaped from slavery and risked her freedom—perhaps her own life—to free dozens of others on the Underground Railroad. Now, just a couple of weeks after the 100th anniversary of her death, the Park Service will help to tell her story.

As an enslaved girl on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Tubman was hired out to work for “Miss Susan,” a mistress who was quick to use the whip. Once, after she caught Tubman stealing a lump of sugar, Miss Susan flew into a violent rage. Tubman fled to escape another beating, and hid in a pigpen for days until hunger forced her to return. She was brutally whipped for her transgressions. 

In October 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia. In December 1854, Tubman, who could neither read nor write, asked a friend to send a coded letter to Jacob Jackson, an Eastern Shore neighbor and a free and literate black man. The letter instructed Tubman’s three brothers to prepare for her pending return to guide them to Philadelphia and freedom. They successfully escaped on Christmas Day, telling no one of their plans, not even their mother who was expecting her sons for Christmas dinner. The Jacob Jackson Site will be part of the Harriet Tubman National Monument and managed by the National Park Service in partnership with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the State of Maryland.

Later, as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Tubman returned to Maryland multiple times to liberate friends and family members. Much of the landscape found today on Maryland’s Eastern Shore has changed little since Tubman roamed the territory in the 1800s. The preservation of those fields, trails, and waterways—intact and unimpaired for benefit and enjoyment of future generations—makes this designation an even sweeter victory.

Of equal or greater significance is what this national monument designation will do to advance public understanding of women’s history in general, and the role of African American women in particular. Of the 398 units in our National Park System prior to today’s designations, just seven were tasked directly with commemorating some aspect of women’s history.

Tubman also served in the Civil War as a Union nurse, spy, and scout, on one occasion leading Federal troops along an obscure path which allowed them to more stealthily approach opposing Confederate forces. Tubman’s courageous work contributed directly to the preservation of the Union and highlighting that legacy will help the National Park Service create a much broader and more accurate picture of who really matters when it comes to understanding the conflict that defined this nation. After the war, she continued to serve her people and her country selflessly until her death in 1913. 

While the national monument is a great step forward, it does not accomplish everything advocates hope to achieve on Harriet’s behalf. The national monument would leave out the Poplar Neck plantation (in Talbot and Caroline Counties, Maryland) from which Tubman escaped in 1848. It also does not include any properties in Auburn, New York, including the A.M.E. Zion Church where Tubman worshipped, her personal residence, and a home for the aged she raised money to build and operate. For the past six years, NPCA has actively worked with partners such as the Association for the Study of African American Life & History (ASALH), the Maryland Office of Tourism, and a variety of other federal, state, local, and grassroots champions to pass legislation introduced by Senator Ben Cardin and cosponsored by Senators Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Gillibrand (D-NY), and Schumer (D-NY) to preserve these additional sites. Our work on the legislative front will continue even after the designation of the national monument.

As the National Park Service advances towards its centennial in 2016, much discussion has been had about the best ways to create a 21st century park system for a 21st century America. A Tubman site helps advance that goal by commemorating the legacy of a woman who rose from humble beginnings under the worst circumstances any of us could imagine to become one of this nation’s most admired historic icons. Tubman’s story is important because in many ways it is our history at its best. Thanks to bold action of President Barack Obama, her narrative is now a story we can share more broadly with the world, and for that, maybe help make that world a better place.

Colonel Charles Young and the Buffalo Soldiers

In addition to the long-awaited site honoring Tubman, President Obama also designated two other national park sites sharing important parts of our nation’s history, including the Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument. Though Harriet Tubman’s story is widely taught, Young’s fascinating legacy and the story of the Buffalo Soldiers is less familiar to many.

In 1884, Second Lieutenant Charles Young became just the third African American to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Young distinguished himself as a soldier in the Ninth U.S. Cavalry, one of the black troops known as the Buffalo Soldiers that served, among other roles, as some of the nation’s first park rangers. Despite the rigid segregation of the U.S. military at the time, Young rose through the ranks to become a colonel; served as a professor of military science, French, chemistry, geometry, and geology at Wilberforce University in Ohio; and went on to become the first African-American acting national park superintendent at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park in 1903. The national monument preserves Young’s home in Xenia, Ohio, and helps tell not only his story, but the story of life as a black soldier in the 19th century.

First State National Monument

Last but not least, today’s announcement helps preserve an urban oasis along the Brandywine River in Delaware—the only state in the country that did not have a national park site. The First State National Monument tells much of early America’s history, from the Native American Lenape tribe that lived in the river valley to the Wyeth family of artists who still paint its beautiful landscapes. The largest battle of the Revolutionary War, the Battle of the Brandywine, was fought here, and the birth of industry was literally propelled by the Brandywine River’s steady flow. Even the paper used to print the Declaration of Independence was made on the Brandywine River. The new monument also commemorates the legacy and perseverance of early Dutch, Swedish, and English settlements, a vital aspect of the state’s rich history.

More than five million people live within 25 miles of the main property, making it readily accessible to the public and a conservation centerpiece for the state and the region.

Learn more about the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad, Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers, and First State National Monuments on NPCA’s website.

Korematsu’s story is not widely known, though three state governments are helping to change that by declaring January 30 Fred Korematsu Day—the first such holiday honoring an Asian American.

The United States officially entered World War II after Japanese fighters bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941; the country had been at war for more than a year when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 giving U.S. armed forces broad powers to incarcerate anyone in the name of military defense. The government overwhelmingly used this power to imprison Japanese Americans for having “foreign enemy ancestry” (though German Americans, Italian Americans, and Jewish Americans were also detained, in smaller numbers). Ultimately, the military kept 120,000 innocent people under armed guard in isolated areas of the West, forcing them to leave their homes, businesses, possessions, and normal lives behind—for years.

When the incarcerations began, Korematsu chose to defy the executive order and live as an ordinary American, changing his name and even undergoing minor plastic surgery on his eyes in an attempt to hide his ethnicity. Still, he was arrested in May 1942, convicted in a federal court, and held against his will at a “relocation center” until the end of the war.

“Fred was not interested in a pardon from the government; instead, he always felt that it was the government who should seek a pardon from him and from Japanese Americans for the wrong that was committed.” – Kathryn Korematsu

Korematsu maintained his innocence and appealed his arrest all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled against him in 1944, claiming the imprisonments were a “military necessity.” His arrest was a black mark on his record for decades. Finally, in 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed a special commission on the incarcerations that ultimately determined in 1983 that the government had imprisoned thousands of Japanese Americans based on racism and prejudice, not military necessity. In 1982, Peter Irons, a political science professor at the University of California, uncovered secret government documents while conducting research. The documents proved that the Justice Department had knowingly suppressed evidence showing that the incarcerated Americans were innocent of wrongdoing and posed no military threat to justify their imprisonment. The new evidence and the presidential commission’s findings allowed a legal team to reopen Korematsu’s case and overturn his criminal conviction in 1983, more than four decades after his arrest.

During the litigation, the government offered Korematsu a pardon in exchange for dropping his lawsuit. His wife, Kathryn Korematsu, described his reaction this way: “Fred was not interested in a pardon from the government; instead, he always felt that it was the government who should seek a pardon from him and from Japanese Americans for the wrong that was committed.”

Korematsu spent the later years of his life protesting the government detention of suspected combatants at Guantanamo Bay after 9/11, filing amicus briefs on behalf of Muslims incarcerated without trials.

The National Park Service has played an important role telling the story of Japanese-American incarceration during World War II. Three of the ten “relocation camps” at Manzanar, Minidoka, and Tule Lake are now parts of the National Park System, though the camp where Korematsu spent most of his incarceration, the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah, was mostly stripped of its buildings and artifacts after the war when the government auctioned off much of the land and property there. Some items are preserved in a local museum, and the site is recognized as a National Historic Landmark.

Learn more about Korematsu’s legacy on the Korematsu Institute website, and read a recent story in National Parks magazine about some of the remarkable works of art created by Japanese Americans in the camps, written by the daughter of two internees.

-Jennifer Errick, Editor, Online Communications

On Monday, January 21, the Department of the Interior will waive entrance fees at all national parks in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. For those of us fortunate enough to have the day off, the fee-free day is an excellent reason to commemorate the life of the visionary leader in one of America’s most inspirational places.

Monday is also Inauguration Day. For those who plan to be in the Washington, D.C., area, a trip to the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial near the Tidal Basin on the National Mall is worth the short walk from downtown. The memorial, officially dedicated in 2011, is a majestic, larger-than-life tribute to the Civil Rights hero that allows visitors to travel through a symbolic “Mountain of Despair” to see a 30-foot replica of King himself, known as the “Stone of Hope.” (Both quotes are from King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech from 1963.) The statue is surrounded by a 450-foot granite wall inscribed with memorable quotes from throughout King’s career.

If you’re not planning to be in D.C., however, it’s worth noting that this memorial is always free to the public—as is the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site that preserves his childhood home, his tomb, and the Center for Nonviolent Change founded in his name by Coretta Scott King in Atlanta, Georgia—so you can plan a cost-effective trip to either of these historic places when it suits you. For more inspiration on where to spend a meaningful day near you, see NPCA’s list of parks in the National Park System that showcase African-American history, including pivotal people and places in the Civil Rights movement.

Of course, if you’re the solitary type, you might also put a book on King in your backpack, head to any of your favorite parks, find an overlook on a quiet trail, and reflect on his tremendous legacy.

-Jennifer Errick, Editor, Online Communications

At the heart of the video is an interpretation of the Buffalo Soldier experience by Yosemite Park Ranger Shelton Johnson. Shelton has been working for decades to promote diversity in the national parks, and he has been telling this particular story since 1998. What follows are excerpts from a recent interview with Shelton, where he described these experiences to me in his own words.

-Jennifer Errick, Editor, Online Communications

***

My first job in a national park was as a dishwasher at the Old Faithful Inn [in 1985]—and I should add that I was an excellent dishwasher! There weren’t a lot of other African-American employees, even working with the concession in Yellowstone. It always struck me that there were people from all over the world who were working as employees in the park. I remember thinking at the time, how is it that a woman from Italy has not only heard about working in national parks, she’s here doing it, and I didn’t know anyone who had worked in a national park, growing up in Detroit? Early on it struck me that there was a disconnect between the whole idea of national parks and the African-American community.

***

Whenever you talk about the Buffalo Soldiers, you can’t tell that story without talking about race. You can’t tell that story without talking about slavery. You can’t tell that story without talking about genocide. I’m not only telling those stories and covering those difficult topics, I’m telling it to an audience that is mostly European-American. You can imagine a black guy standing up in front of a room, talking to a majority white audience about race. [He laughs.] That doesn’t sound like somebody’s idea of a good time in a national park. I can’t offend the listeners, but at the same time, I’m telling a story that makes people uncomfortable. The big challenge for me was to learn how to be comfortable with my discomfort and to be non-accusatory in the issues that I was bringing up with regard to race and class.

***

African Americans are the group that is least likely to have a wilderness experience. They don’t necessarily feel a cultural connection to the land. What this Buffalo Soldier story does is it provides that bridge back to the earth—back to America. And in a positive way, instead of the negative associations that are tied to both slavery and that period of post-emancipation which led to Jim Crow and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan.

People focus on the physical brutality of [slavery], but they tend to not focus on what that would do to your perception of the land, if the land is a place where you’re forced to work, you get no financial reward for working the land, you’re lucky if you can make it through the day without getting beaten. So how does someone who’s forced to work the land look at the land, under those circumstances? It’s not any wonder when you really delve into the history that you would have these negative associations.

People who have grown up camping and reading John Muir, they have this completely different perception of the land. What I’m going up against is this entrenched cultural aversion. I knew it was going to be a challenge. I had absolutely no idea it was going to be as challenging as it turned out to be.

***

Almost all of the soldiers who served here [at Yosemite] were either the sons or grandsons of enslaved people. Here they are going from this legacy of slavery to this experience of stewardship and protection. That’s an incredible story. That’s why I feel the Buffalo Soldier story is the most important story for African Americans in the entire breadth of the National Park System.

And yet, that history is forgotten. As long as there are African Americans out there who have the mindset that, “Oh, we don’t have anything to do with the national parks. That’s not a black thing,” then my job isn’t done. The absence of information is just as profound as the presence of information. That’s why there’s so much to overcome. We have decades and decades of this mindset that has been internalized within the African-American community that “we have nothing to do with national parks.”

***

It’s easy to assume that it’s poor people of color who don’t have a park experience, but it’s across the board. It doesn’t matter if you’re male or female, rich or poor, highly educated or not as highly educated. If you’re of African descent, you’re much less likely to have a national park experience.

***

Sometimes I make it look too easy when I’m out there performing, because actually, there’s a part of me that’s scared to death. Every single time I put the uniform on, I’m hoping it’ll work. I liken it to dancing in a minefield. While I’m doing it, I know that I’m one step away from absolute disaster.

The thing I’ve found is that when people hear a truth that runs contrary to what they’ve been led to believe, the natural response is to close up, and they stop listening. And when I first started doing my Buffalo Soldier program, there was no humor in it at all. I had a guy who told me early on, “Thanks, ranger. I think I need to go to a bar.” [He laughs.] It was just too hard-hitting. And then I realized at some point that there would have been humor in that story, because there had to have been. You can’t go through a rough time without finding something funny in it to lift your spirit up.

It’s not that I want to hurt [members of the audience], but I want them to understand that this is a story of people who have been hurt. I want them to feel it emotionally, and I want people to connect emotionally with what I’m doing. I don’t see what I do as a performance. I see it more as channeling, and what I want people to walk away with is this sense that they’ve been in the presence of a real person.

Watch the video:

To learn more about Buffalo Soldiers in Yosemite, visit http://www.nps.gov/yose/historyculture/buffalo-soldiers.htm.