Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South by William E. O’Brien (review)

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.