'A contradiction in democratic government': W. J. Trent, JR., and the struggle to desegregate national park campgrounds

Environmental History

Volumn 14, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 651-682

  Terence, Young ^a  

^a CALIFORNIA STATE POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AFRICAN AMERICAN; AUTOMOBILE; DEMOCRACY; GOVERNMENT; LEADERSHIP; NATIONAL PARK; NINETEENTH CENTURY; POLICY ANALYSIS; PUBLIC ACCESS; RACIAL DISPARITY; TWENTIETH CENTURY; WAR;

SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK; UNITED STATES; VIRGINIA;

EID: 76649124545     PISSN: 10845453     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/envhis/14.4.651     Document Type: Article

References (147)

1. W. J. Trent, Jr., to Harold L. Ickes, January 3, 1939, National Park Service, RG 79, Appendix 2, 2nd subseries (hereafter NPS-2], Box 10, 0-1.1 - "Parks General, Conference ... 1939" Pt. 1 File, National Archives, College Park, MD, (hereafter NA], 1.
2. On displacement of indigenous populations, see Robert H. Keller and Michael E. Turek, American Indians and National Parks (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998);
3. Mark David Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999);
4. and Philip Burnham, Indian Country, God's Country (Covelo, CA: Island Press, 2000).
5. The superintendents' statement is quoted in Marguerite S. Shaffer, See America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880-1940 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), 126.
6. Congress also authorized the National Park Service to create a multitude of "recreational demonstration areas" (RDA) with the various states during the 1930s and it transferred the National Military Parks from the War Department to the National Park Service in 1933. In the South, RDAs were often racially segregated. See William O'Brien, "The Strange Career of a Florida State Park: Uncovering a Jim Crow Past" Historical Geography 35 (2007): 160-84. Civilian Conservation Corps camps were also racially segregated when the work was performed in southern states.
7. See Owen Cole, The African-American Experience in the Civilian Conservation Corps (Tallahassee: University Press of Florida, 1999),
8. Neil Maher, Nature's New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008);
9. and Timothy B. Smith, "Black Soldiers and the CCC at Shiloh National Military Park," CRM: The Journal of Heritage Stewardship 3 (2006): 73-84.
10. For more on Murray and his impact, see Warder H. Cadbury, "Introduction" in Adventures in the Wilderness, by William H. H. Murray, ed. William K. Verner (Syracuse: Adirondack Museum/Syracuse University Press, 1989);
11. David Strauss, "Toward a Consumer Culture: 'Adirondack Murray' and the Wilderness Vacation," American Quarterly 39 (1987): 270-86;
12. and Philip Terrie, Contested Terrain: A New History of Nature and People in the Adirondacks (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997).
13. For additional reasons why Murray's book was a success, see Cadbury, "Introduction";
14. and Strauss, "Toward a Consumer Culture."
15. I use the term "pilgrimage" as a metaphor, not as the description of a religious practice. In this more generic sense, a pilgrim can be understood as someone who was in society, traveled out of it in pursuit of some goal, and then returned to society changed. As metaphor, pilgrimage has been used to explain a variety of leisure travel, including theme park visits, summer vacations, and tourism. See Alexander Moore, "Walt Disney World: Bounded Ritual Space and the Playful Pilgrimage Center," Anthropological Quarterly 53 (1980): 207-18;
16. Susan Sessions Rugh, Are We There Yet? The Golden Age of American Family Vacations (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008);
17. Nelson H. H. Graburn, "Tourism: The Sacred Journey," in Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism, 2nd ed., ed. V. L. Smith (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 21-36;
18. and John F. Sears, Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
19. Rugh and Sears both argued that the nature tourists who camped at such places as Yosemite and Yellowstone were engaged in pilgrimage. Thomas R. Dunlap, Faith in Nature: Environmentalism as Religious Quest (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004), similarly argued that visits to wilderness are often pilgrimages. On the larger role and meaning of pilgrimage in American life,
20. see Gwen Kennedy Neville, Kinship and Pilgrimage: Rituals of Reunion in American Protestant Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
21. For more on pilgrimage in general, see: Victor W. Turner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978);
22. and John Eade and Michael J. Sallnow, eds. Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (NewYork: Routledge,1991).
23. William Cronon, "The Trouble with Wilderness; Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature," in Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995), 69-90, argued that Americans view wilderness, not cities, as their legitimate home.
24. Most of the personal accounts from this period remain unpublished, but a few have appeared in print. See, for example, Ansel Judd Northrup, Camps and Tramps in the Adirondacks, and Grayling Fishing in Northern Michigan: A Record of Summer Vacations in the Wilderness (Syracuse: Davis, Bardeen and Co., 1880);
25. and Mary B. Richards, Camping Out in the Yellowstone, ed. William B. Slaughter (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994).
26. See Gary Cross, Time and Money: The Making of Consumer Culture (New York: Routledge, 1993) on the length of vacations.
27. The systemwide visitor numbers are from Statistical History of the United States from Colonial Times to the Present (Stamford, CT: Fairfield Publishers, 1965), 222. The number of individuals is not recorded, only the visits, which could include the same person entering repeatedly.
28. Peter J. Schmitt, Back to Nature: The Arcadian Myth in Urban America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 162, notes that 51,506 visited Yellowstone in 1922 and all but 1,500 camped. These last slept in hotels.
29. Stanford E. Demars, The Tourist in Yosemite, 1855-1985 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1991), 101, writes that during the 1920s it was common for Yosemite valley's public campgrounds to accommodate 5,000 to 7,000 a night compared to a total of 2,800 combined in hotels and hotel camps.
30. The automobile prices are from Daniel M. G. Raff and Manuel Trajtenberg, "Quality Adjusted Prices for the American Automobile Industry: 1906-1940," in The Economics of New Goods, ed. Timothy F. Bresnahan and Robert J. Gordon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 77.
31. James J. Flink, The Automobile Age (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), 33. At the other extreme, the 1910 Packard 30 limousine cost $5,450,
32. Flink, Automobile, 35, 37. The 1906 per capita annual personal income for the United States was $236, but it rose to $301 in 1908 and to $331 in 1916, Statistical History, 7,139.
33. See also Cindy S. Aron, Working at Play: A History of Vacations in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 209, on auto availability.
34. "The Cost of a Transcontinental Auto Journey" Sunset Magazine 53 (September 1924): 48-49. It would have remained a costly vacation for many if not most Americans, however.
35. According to Statistical History, 7,139, the U.S. per capita annual personal income in 1924 was only $642 or approximately $1.76 per day.
36. Cross, Time, 78-81, 95.
37. See also Aron, Working, 183-205.
38. "Neighbors for a Night in Yellowstone," Literary Digest 82 (August 30, 1924): 44,-46
39. R. L. Duffus, "America Works Hard at Play," New York Times Sunday Magazine, September 1, 1929, 21
40. The limits and challenges faced by African Americans as they pursued nature-based and other recreations at this time were reported in William H. Jones, Recreation and Amusement Among Negroes in Washington, D.C. (1927; reprint, Westport, CT: Negro Universities Press, 1970);
41. Forrester B. Washington, "Recreational Facilities for the Negro," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 140 (1928): 272-82;
42. Charles S. Johnson, The Negro In American Civilization (New York: Henry Holt, 1930), 299-310, 457-58;
43. and Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, Twentieth Anniversary Edition (1944; reprint, New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 346-47.
44. For more on the history of African American recreation and outdoor activities in a variety of public and private settings, see Craig Allan Kaplowitz, "A Breath of Fresh Air: Segregation, Parks, and Progressivism in Nashville, Tennessee, 1900-1920," Tennessee Historical Quarterly 57 (1998): 132-49;
45. Aaron V. Wunsch, "From Private Privilege to Public Place: A Brief History of Parks and Park Planning in Charlottesville," Magazine of Albemarle County History 56 (1998): 77-117;
46. Mark S. Foster, "In the Face of 'Jim Crow': Prosperous Blacks and Vacations, Travel and Outdoor Leisure, 1890-1945," The Journal of Negro History 84 (1999): 13049;
47. Jearold Winston Holland, Black Recreation: A Historical Perspective (Chicago: Burnham, 2002);
48. Brian Alnutt, "'The Negro Excursions': Recreational Outings Among Philadelphia African Americans, 1876-1926," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 129 (January 2005): 73-104;
49. and Scott E. Giltner, Hunting and Fishing in the New South: Black Labor and White Leisure after the Civil War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).
50. See also Aron, Working, 206-236
51. Washington, "Recreational," 272;
52. Johnson, The Negro, 457.
53. William G. Crawford, Jr., "The Long Hard Fight for Equal Rights: A History of Broward County's Colored Beach and the Fort Lauderdale Beach 'Wade-Ins' of the Summer of 1961," Tequesta: the Journal of the Historical Association of Southern Florida 67 (2007): 19-51.
54. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Shenandoah National Park, and Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky were all authorized in May 1926, but became available for public use at different times. Great Smoky Mountains park was established for "full development" in June 1934, Shenandoah was "fully established" in December 1935, and Mammoth Cave was "established" in July 1941. See The National Parks: Index 1997-1999 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2000), 46, 80, and -90.
55. See also Alfred Runte, National Parks: The American Experience, 3rd ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997).
56. See Durwood Dunn, Cades Cove: The Life and Death of a Southern Appalachian Community, 1818-1937 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988);
57. Margaret Lynn Brown, The Wild East: A Biography of the Great Smoky Mountains (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000);
58. Daniel S. Pierce, The Great Smokies: From Natural Habitat to National Park (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2000);
59. Darwin Lambert, The Earth-Man Story Starring Shenandoah Skyline (New York: Exposition Press, 1972);
60. and Justin Reich, "Re-Creating the Wilderness: Shaping Narratives and Landscapes in Shenandoah National Park," Environmental History 6 (January 2001): 95-117.
61. See E. K. Burlew to Carter Glass, March 6, 1939, Department of the Interior, Office of the Secretary, Central Classified Files, 1937-1953, RG 48, Box 3791, "National Park Service, General, Racial Discrimination" [hereafter DOI-Racial], NA; and Harry Byrd to E. K. Burlew, March 9, 1939, DOI-Racial, NA.
62. See Jerrold M. Packard, American Nightmare: The History of Jim Crow (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002).
63. L. E. Wilson to Harold L. Ickes, September 10, 1936, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA; A. E. Demaray to L. E. Wilson, September 18, 1936, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA.
64. Walter White to Harold L. Ickes, January 21, 1937, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA. For more on the history of the NAACP during this period, see Mark V. Tushnet, The NAACP's Legal Strategy against Segregated Education, 1925-1950 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987);
65. Kenneth Robert Janken, White: The Biography of Walter White, Mr. NAACP (New York: New Press, 2003);
66. Manfred Berg, "The Ticket to Freedom": The NAACP and the Struggle for Black Political Integration (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005);
67. and Gilbert Jonas, Freedom's Sword: The NAACP and the Struggle Against Racism in America, 1909-1969 (New York: Routledge, 2005). White and Ickes had been corresponding about federal involvement in racial issues since shortly after the latter was appointed Interior secretary in 1933 and they were both on the Virgin Islands Advisory Council that was formed in February 1934.
68. See T. H. Watkins, Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1874-1952 (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1990), 503;
69. Nancy J. Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 51;
70. and Janken, White, 176ff. White greatly respected the secretary, saying he was "throughout his life an unequivocal battler for justice to the Negro"
71. in Walter White, A Man Called White: The Autobiography of Walter White (New York: Viking Press, 1948), 181-82. The NAACP embraced other segregation issues at around this time. Late in the following year, 1938, the black press, and a variety of black organizations began to call for racial integration throughout the military. The NAACP took up this issue officially and vigorously in spring 1940.
72. See Weiss, Farewell, 274ff;
73. and Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 302ff.
74. Harold L. Ickes to Walter White, February 4, 1937, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA. Three months later, the Memphis Chapter of the NAACP requested the NPS to provide "proper provision for Negroes" at the Shelby Forest RDA. Along with many supporting churches, clubs and fraternities, they stated that there were no "rural parks for out-door recreation available to Negroes" in the area. In harmony with many recreationists around the country, they claimed that this situation condemned "Negro Youth, during leisure hours, to the streets of Memphis and makes them the easy prey of places of vice and disease." Grace T. Hamilton to Conrad L. Wirth, May 13, 1937, National Park Service, RG 79, Appendix 30 [hereafter NPS-30], Box 17, "Recreation Facilities for Negroes," NA. After this single exchange, further contact with the NPS came only through the NAACP's central office.
75. J. R. Eakin to William P. Gamble, September 18, 1933, NPS-2, Box 1101, "601-02," NA.
76. See also A. D. Lambert, "Shenandoah National Park, an Administrative History" Typed, unpublished manuscript, (Luray, VA: Shenandoah N.P.,1979), 254, who records that Arno Cammerer, assistant director of the National Park Service, noted the need for African American accommodations at Shenandoah National Park in late 1932, but no controversy was involved at the time.
77. T. Arnold Hill to Harold L. Ickes, June 25, 1935, NPS-2, Box 379, "National Park Service Recreational Areas", NA
78. Hill and Ickes became friends while the former was executive secretary of the Chicago Urban League from 1916 to 1925. He changed from acting to executive secretary of the National Urban League during 1925. See "T. Arnold Hill," The Journal of Negro History 32 (1947): 528-29;
79. and Guichard Parris, "Hill, T(homas) Arnold," in Dictionary of American Negro Biography, ed. Rayford Logan and Michael R. Winston (New York: W.W. Norton, 1982), 311-13.
80. Watkins, Righteous, 199-201, details Ickes's involvement with the NAACP during these years. Weiss, Farewell, 51, also mentions Ickes's time as the NAACP chapter's president and she quotes Ickes as saying that "'the prevention of discrimination against the Negro race' was a subject that was 'very close' to his heart." T. A. Walters to T. Arnold Hill, July 3, 1935, NPS-2, Box 379, "National Park Service Recreational Areas", NA.
81. Weaver graduated 1n 1934 from Harvard University with a PhD in economics. According to Watkins, Righteous, 645-47, Weaver was hired in November 1933 to be an assistant to Clark Foreman, Ickes's first adviser for Negro affairs. Weaver took over Foreman's post in early 1936. See also Sitkoff, A New Deal;
82. and Janken, White. Robert C. Weaver to Arno B. Cammerer, July 1, 1936, NPS-2, Box 378, "General, Lands, Camp Sites," NA. Arno B. Cammerer to Robert C. Weaver, July 6, 1936, NPS-2, Box 378, "General, Lands, Camp Sites," NA. Beginning in 1934, the federal government provided funds to purchase "submarginal agricultural lands" for conversion into dozens of state parks. The National Park Service administered the Recreational Demonstration Area program throughout the decade.
83. See Linda Flint McClelland, Building the National Parks: Historic Landscape Design and Construction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 414-420
84. Robert C. Weaver to Harold L. Ickes, August 17, 1936, NPS-2, Box 378, "General, Lands, Camp Sites," NA. The issue of African American campgrounds and Cammerer's position on them come up in Cammerer to Weaver, July 6, 1936; Arno B. Cammerer to A. E. Demaray and Conrad L. Wirth, September 30, 1936, NPS-2, Box 378, "General, Lands, Camp Sites," NA; and Arno B. Cammerer to Charles S. Johnson, May 27, 1937, NPS-2, Box 379, "National Park Service Recreational Areas," NA. Great Smoky Mountains National Park Superintendent J. R. Eakin conveyed to Cammerer that if the proposed African American campground was constructed in his park, the number of African American campers "would undoubtedly increase." J. R. Eakin to Director [Arno B. Cammerer], April 25, 1938, NPS-2, Box 1101, "601-03," NA.
85. Johnson was Robert E. Park's first African American student and a graduate of the University of Chicago. He ultimately rose to become Fisk University's president and a nationally renowned expert on race relations. He was a well-known, prolific author and knew Eleanor Roosevelt personally when he sent his letter to Cammerer. See Patrick J. Gilpin and Marybeth Gasman, Charles S. Johnson: Leadership Beyond the Veil in the Age of Jim Crow (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003). Charles S. Johnson to Arno B. Cammerer, April 23, 1937, NPS-2, Box 379, "National Park Service Recreational Areas," NA; Cammerer to Johnson, May 27, 1937; Charles S. Johnson to Arno B. Cammerer, June 8, 1937, NPS-2, Box 379, "National Park Service Recreational Areas," NA; Johnson to Cammerer, June 8, 1937; Arno B. Cammerer to A. E. Demaray, July 24, 1937, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA.
86. See "W. J. Trent, Jr. Gets New Job under Federal Works Agency," Norfolk Journal and Guide, July 28, 1939, on Trent's 1936 work for the Weaver survey. Judy Scales-Trent, e-mail with author, June 20, 2006, related the story of Weaver's recommendation of Trent.
87. Bethune would become one of the best-known advocates for equal civil rights. See Rackham Holt, Mary MacLeod Bethune: A Biography (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1964);
88. Weiss, Farewell; and Andrea Davis Pinkney, Let It Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters (San Diego: Harcourt, 2000). For more on the "Black Cabinet,"
89. see Willard M. Kiplinger, Washington Is Like That (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1942), 147-62;
90. Albert W. Hamilton, "The Black Cabinet," Common Sense 12 (1943): 97-99;
91. and Weiss, Farewell, 136-155
92. W. J. Trent, Jr., to Mary McLeod Bethune, December 21, 1938, William J. Trent, Jr. Papers [hereafter TrPa], Box 1, "Interior Department, Articles Statements Speeches," MoorlandSpingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC [hereafter MSRC). The "special interest" quote is from Judy Scales Trent, e-mail with author, June 20, 2006. Trent's hunting is mentioned in William J. Trent to William J. Trent, Jr., December 4, 1944, TrPa, Box 1, "Personal Correspondence," MSRC.
93. Both Salomon and Evison were well established in their fields. See, for instance, Julian Harris Salomon, "Camping Trends and Public Areas," in American Planning and Civic Annual, 1938, ed. H. James (Washington, DC: American Planning and Civic Association, 1938), 146-51;
94. and Herbert Evison, ed., A State Park Anthology (Washington, DC: National Conference on State Parks, 1930).
95. Ickes's request for a study is noted in W. J. Trent, Jr., "New Deal Recreation Program for Negroes" (unpublished speech, Washington, DC, n.d. [1939]), TrPa, Box 1, "Interior Department, Articles Statements Speeches," MSRC, 1. W. J. Trent, Jr., to T. Edward Davis, December 21, 1938, TrPa, Box 1, "Interior Department, Articles Statements Speeches," MSRC;
96. and W. J. Trent, Jr., "The Government and Organized Camping Among Negroes," The National Educational Outlook Among Negroes 2 (February 1939): 23.
97. W. J. Trent, Jr., to Mary McLeod Bethune, December 23, 1938, TrPa, Box 1, "Interior Department, Articles Statements Speeches," MSRC, 5; Trent's request letter is W. J. Trent, Jr. to The Secretary [Harold L. Ickes], January 3, 1939, NPS-2, Box 10, "Parks General, Conference *Wash DC Santa Fe, 1939," NA.
98. Trent's preface is noted in Donald S. Libbey, Secretary, "[Minutes - ] Superintendents' Conference, Washington, D.C., January 7, 1939," NPS-2, Box 10, "Parks General, Conference * Wash DC Santa Fe, 1939," NA, 1; Trent, Negro and National Parks: A Discussion Before the Superintendents of the National Parks, NPS-2, Box 10, "Parks General, Conference * Wash DC Santa Fe, 1939," NA,1.
99. Trent, Negro, 3, 5-6.
100. Trent, Negro, 2, 8.
101. Eakin to Director, April 25, 1938, placed the total number of visitors at 727,243 at Great Smoky Mountains National Park; Cammerer and Lassiter are recorded in Libbey, Secretary, "[Minutes - ]", 1; The superintendents' recommendations are recorded in "Accommodations for Negroes," in Recommendations of the National Park Superintendents'Conference, January 1939, NPS-2, Box 10, "Parks General, Conference * Wash DC Santa Fe, 1939," NA, 12.
102. Michael Fletcher, "Inherently Unequal," The Crisis (2004): 24-31.
103. See also White, A Man, 142. When Ickes assumed the secretary's office he needed a departmental solicitor so he consulted with Felix Frankfurter of Harvard University and Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. Both recommended the 33-year-old Margold.
104. See Jeanne Nienaber Clarke, Roosevelt's Warrior: Harold L. Ickes and the New Deal (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 39-40.
105. Phineas Indritz to Solicitor [Nathan R.] Margold, January 12, 1939, DOI-Racial, Box 3791, "National Park Service, General, Racial Discrimination," NA, 3, 9. Indritz would go on to become a renowned New Deal liberal and civil-rights activist.
106. See New York Times obituary of October 26, 1997.
107. Nathan R. Margold to Secretary [Harold L.] Ickes, January 17, 1939, DOI-Racial, Box 3791, "National Park Service, General, Racial Discrimination," NA, 1-2.
108. Franklin D. Roosevelt quoted in Watkins, Righteous, 638. Ickes's notification to Demaray is mentioned in Associate Director [A. E. Demaray] to Director [Arno B. Cammerer], February 11, 1939, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA, 1;
109. Ickes quote from Harold L. Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes, Volume II: The Inside Struggle, 1936-1939 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), 10506.
110. See also Rixey Smith and Norman Beasley, Carter Glass: A Biography (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1939), who noted how Glass defended Virginia's poll taxes against President Roosevelt's efforts to eliminate them throughout the United States and Glass's acidic, public disagreement with Ickes over the use of federally funded public works projects. Both events occurred in 1938.
111. Ebert Keiser Burlew (known universally as "E. K.") had been with the Interior Department since 1923. Ickes, who considered Burlew quick, reliable, and efficient, appointed him as one of his two personal assistants. See Watkins, Righteous, 329. Carter Glass to E. K. Burlew, March 7, 1939, DOI-Racial, Box 3791, "National Park Service, General, Racial Discrimination," NA; Harry F. Byrd to E. K. Burlew, March 9, 1939, DOI-Racial, Box 3791, "National Park Service, General, Racial Discrimination," NA.
112. W. J. Trent, Jr., "The Government and Organized Camping Among Negroes, Part II," TrPa, Box 1, "Interior Department, Correspondence, 1939," MSRC, 1, 5.
113. W. J. Trent, Jr., to Harold L. Ickes, March 20, 1939, TrPa, Box 1, "Federal Works Agency, Correspondence," MSRC.
114. A. E. Demaray to Director [Arno B. Cammerer], March 25, 1939, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA.
115. See also E. K. Burlew to Clyde C. McDuffie, n.d. (March 29, 1939], NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA, which includes the earliest reference to "jurisdictional islands."
116. The quotes are from A. E. Demaray to Secretary [Harold L. Ickes], April 7, 1939, DOIRacial, Box 3791, "National Park Service, General, Racial Discrimination," NA.
117. The development at Lewis Mountain is detailed in the attachments to a memo from A. E. Demaray to E .K. Burlew, March 14, 1939, DOI-Racial, Box 3791, "National Park Service, General, Racial Discrimination," NA.
118. Secretary Ickes was apparently pleased with Trent's work and decided that Trent should change posts. Judy Scales-Trent, e-mail with author, June 20, 2006.
119. Soon Trent's title changed to racial relations officer and the agency was renamed the Federal Works Agency. W. J. Trent, Jr., to Henry S. Percival, October 25, 1939, TrPa, Box 1, "Interior Department, Correspondence, 1939," MSRC;
120. Henry S. Percival to William J. Trent, Jr., November 20, 1939, TrPa, Box 1, "Interior Department, Correspondence 1939," MSRC.
121. W. J. Trent, Jr., to Harold L. Ickes, February 24, 1940, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA;
122. Harold L. Ickes to W. J. Trent, Jr., March 6, 1940, NPS2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Site's," NA.
123. Trent's ongoing concern about federally sanctioned racial segregation was not limited to the national parks. According to Truman K. Gibson, Knocking Down Barriers: My Fight for Black America (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2005), 81,
124. in Fall 1940, Trent convinced Gibson, a family friend, to come to Washington. D.C., to meet William Hastie, a member of the "Black Cabinet" and civilian aide to the secretary of War, who wanted Gibson for his assistant. Gibson visited for one week and during an evening's poker game, "Trent and (Robert] Weaver poured out all the arguments about duty, responsibility, and challenge" to convince Gibson to take the post. In particular, Gibson found "the challenge of tackling segregation in the army registered strongly with me," which suggests that Trent advocated its end in the national parks and beyond. Gibson accepted Hastie's offer and became personally involved in many of the meetings, discussions and debates that culminated in President Truman's Executive Order 9981 in July 1948. It declared a policy of equal treatment in the military and began the end of racial segregation in it.
125. Walter Magnes Teller to Newton B. Drury, October 4, 1940, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA, about segregation as a violation of democracy,
126. but see also, for example, Walter Gellhorn to Harold L. Ickes, May 26, 1939, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA;
127. Sadie Evans Gough to Harold L. Ickes, June 19, 1939, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA;
128. Millicent E. Selsam to Harold L. Ickes, July 7, 1939, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA;
129. Richard Grobstein to Harold L. Ickes, July 5, 1940, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA;
130. George F. Miller to President [Franklin D. Roosevelt], July 6, 1940, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA;
131. Arthur Ernst to Harold L. Ickes, September 23, 1940, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA;
132. Robert O. Ballou to S.K. Padover, January 17, 1941, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA;
133. and Norma E. Boyd to W. J. Trent, Jr., April 2, 1941, TrPa, Box 1, "Federal Works Agency-Correspondence," MSRC.
134. According to J. R. Lassiter and Theodore T. Smith to Director [Arno B. Cammerer], February 28, 1940, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA,
135. "The Rangers at the checking stations [of Shenandoah National Park] have been bitterly assailed for allowing the joint use of picnic grounds," but a year later, Oliver G. Taylor, "A Report On Developments for Public Use in Shenandoah National Park with Particular Reference to Racial Use," typed report, Washington, D.C., January 23, 1941, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA, 2, reported that visitors had "made no written complaint" at the park. The author found no complaint letters anywhere else among the archival records.
136. Drury became the National Park Service Director on August 20, 1940. The study was Taylor, "AReport." The quote is from Newton B. Drury tq Superintendent [J.R.] Lassiter, February 25, 1941, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA.
137. On Trent's support see W. J. Trent, Jr., to E. K. Burlew, April 4, 1941, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA;
138. E. K. Burlew to W. J. Trent, Jr., April 14, 1941, DOI-Racial, Box 3791, "National Park Service, General, Racial Discrimination," NA
139. ; and W. J. Trent, Jr., to E. K. Burlew, May 3, 1941, DOI-Racial, Box 3791, "National Park Service, General, Racial Discrimination," NA.
140. Archibald MacLeish to Harold L. Ickes, April 7, 1942, TrPa, Box 1, "Federal Works Agency-Correspondence," MSRC.
141. W. J. Trent, Jr., to E.K. Burlew, May 19, 1942, NPS-2, Box 378, "General, Camp Sites (Colored)," NA.
142. Harold L. Ickes to Archibald MacLeish, May 21, 1942, NPS-2, Box 378, "General, Camp Sites (Colored)," NA.
143. The letters Ickes had sent were E. K. Burlew to Director [Newton B. Drury], May 21, 1942, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA;
144. E. K. Burlew to Director [Newton B.] Drury, May 22, 1942, NPS-2, Box 378, "General, Camp Sites (Colored)," NA. For an example of the letters sent to the Regional Director and the superintendents,
145. see Newton B. Drury to Superintendent [J.R. Lassiter], May 26, 1942, NPS-2, Box 1650, "Shenandoah, Lands (General), Camp Sites," NA.
146. Newton B. Drury to First Assistant Secretary [E. K.) Burlew, June 12, 1942, NPS-2, Box 378, "General, Camp Sites (Colored)," NA;
147. Newton B. Drury to Regional Director, Region One, June 15, 1942, NPS-2, Box 378, "General, Camp Sites (Colored)," NA.