Lewis Mountain — Segregation Inside a National Park
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Transcript
When Shenandoah opened, Virginia’s Jim Crow system shaped the park’s visitor facilities. Lewis Mountain was developed as the designated area for African American visitors, with campground, picnic facilities and cabins separated from white-only areas. The National Park Service records that integration began in the late 1940s under pressure from Washington. This history complicates the democratic language often used around national parks. Public land was technically national, yet access to services was racially unequal. Lewis Mountain is important precisely because the discrimination was built into ordinary recreation—where people slept, ate and picnicked—not only into dramatic political confrontations.