Diversity in the National Park System

For more than a decade, NPCA has recognized and worked to address the importance of diversity in the National Park System. More than a dozen years ago, we ran one of the first articles in National Parks magazine about the need to ensure a diverse park system. The article stressed that attracting a more diverse audience was vital to ensuring that the national parks remain relevant to a changing America.

NPCA through National Parks magazine has done its best to advance this conversation with our members and other key audiences. The dialogue is not always comfortable, but it is always purposeful and vital to the future of the parks.

Some of the articles that have appeared in the magazine have regaled readers with stories about Native American prisoners who were held at Castillo de San Marcos and the art they created during their incarceration; about the African-American pilots who flew during World War II and whose heroic contributions to that effort are commemorated at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site; about the hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans held at Manzanar, one of ten internment camps on American soil during World War II; and about the struggles of the civil rights movement as told in a variety of stories focusing on Little Rock High School, Martin Luther King, Jr., Selma to Montgomery, and Harpers Ferry.

This is just a small sampling of the number of articles that can be found in past issues of the magazine. And it is also a small sampling of some of the historic treasures that can be found within the 392 units of our National Park System.

Sadly, far too few people are aware of the vital role the Park Service plays in telling the whole of America’s history. A properly funded, well-managed and well-maintained National Park System could more deliberately elevate all of America’s history to its proper place in our collectively diverse cultural memory.

And Justice For All
Harpers Ferry/Niagara Movement

A Woman's Work-Mesa Verde
Mesa Verde: Role of Women in Conservation Before They Could Even Vote

Continental Divide
Audrey Peterman's essay about African Americans visiting the parks

Drawing on Experience
Castillo de San Marcos/Native American Imprisonment

History Unearthed
New York African Burial Ground

Q&A: The Trail of Tears
Expanding the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail

Students of History
Arkansas' Little Rock Nine

Telling the Rest of the Story
Rosie the Riveter & African Americans on the WWII Homefront 

Turning the Tide
Gullah/Geechee