Whites Only Picnic Area - Shenandoah National Park, circa 1935.

Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes

William J. Trent, Jr., served as an advisor to Secretory of the Interior Ickes. Trent lobbied Ickes to desegregate Shenandoah National Park.

Walter White, as Executive Secretary of the NAACP, fought for African American civil liberties - including equal access to Shenandoah National Park.

Arno B. Cammerer was Director of the National Park Service.

In this letter from Arthur E. Demaray, Associate Director National Park Service to the Director of the National Park Service, Demaray writes that facilities for Negros must be made available right away, so that the lack of such facilities can't be used as an argument for desegregation.

The decision to segregate facilities in the new National Park was controversial. The timeline below shows how the conflict played out between those who supported equal access to the Park and its facilities, and those who wished to enforce segregation.

1932    National Park Services Deputy Directory Arno Cammerer recommended that facilities in the proposed park be segregated.

1936    Associate Director of the National Park Service Arthur Demaray concurs that separate  facilities for white and African American guests will be needed at Shenandoah, in keeping with the laws and customs of the State of Virginia. Rest rooms, cabins, campgrounds and picnic facilities would be segregated.

1937    Virginia Sky-Line Company, the concessioner who won the contract to develop visitor facilities at Shenandoah, presents a plan that includes a campground, cabins, and a small lodge to accommodate African Americans.

Walter White, Executive Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, writes to Interior Secretary Harold Ickes to protest accounts he had read that “…six ‘recreational colonies’ were to be built for whites in Shenandoah National Park and one for African Americans.”

1938    Secretary Ickes’ Advisor on Negro Affairs, William J. Trent, Jr., says that the lack of  facilities for African Americans in the parks is evidence of the failure of separate but equal and argues that segregation has no place in the parks, that segregation would be a  taint on the National Park idea.

1939    Trent attends a meeting of National Park superintendents where he spoke on the need to open the parks to all citizens.

Partial facilities for African Americans only finally open at Lewis Mountain. The concessioner promises lodge and cabins for the 1940 season. Secretary Ickes is not satisfied with the pace of development for African American visitors and orders that the large picnic area a Pinnacles be integrated.  Segregated facilities are allowed in the rest of the park. The integrated picnic area at Pinnacles is called a "demonstration area," with a purpose of demonstrating that African Americans and White visitors can peacefully share the same facilities.

1940    The Department of the Interior issues a directive forbidding the “mention…of segregation on the map or in the literature.” The park’s superintendent disagrees with the policy and is reassigned to the southwest.

1941    All park facilities close during World War II.

1945    When Park facilities reopen after the war, Ickes issues a new directive to all concessioners to fully integrate all park facilities.

1946    Lewis Mountain and main dining room at Panorama are desegregated

Some of Shenandoah’s other facilities are integrated. Other areas remain segregated.

1950    Desegregation of Shenandoah National Park is complete.

All facilities within the park are now open to all people, as Shenandoah becomes one of the first public facilities in Virginia to desegregate.

 (The timeline information is primarily drawn from “Timeline for Desegregation: The Lewis Mountain Story,” Harry F. Byrd, Sr. Visitor Center, Shenandoah National Park, and Terence Young, “A Contradiction in Democratic Government: W.J. Trent, Jr., and the Struggle to Desegregate National Park Campgrounds,” Environmental History Vol 14, No 4 (Oct 2009), 656.)