NPCA submitted the following position to members of the House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands ahead of a hearing scheduled for January 13, 2026.
H.R. 627 – Fort Pillow National Battlefield Park Study Act: NPCA supports this legislation, which would direct the National Park Service to conduct a special resource study of Fort Pillow Historic State Park in Henning, Tennessee. The massacre of United States Colored Troops at Fort Pillow in 1864 was one of the worst atrocities of that bloody four-year conflict of the Civil War. Although Fort Pillow became a state park in 1971, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in in 1973, and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1974, there is merit in examining if or how the 1,642 acre site and the history contained there might benefit from the enhanced interpretative and preservation benefits that inclusion in the National Park System as a national battlefield managed by the National Park Service could bring.
