Why Black People Don’t Go Camping
By: Nikki Brueggeman
Tags: Race, Equality, Camping, History, Outdoors

It has always been easy to rent a camping spot, if you are White. The process usually involves a short application, a one time payment, vehicle registration, and then a polite introduction to the campground keeper when you arrive.

When I was a child, my White father always handled these interactions, easily securing our spot among the west coast trees and ferns. We were able to quickly set up camp and have our feet up by the fire within a couple hours of arrival. No one came over to politely question the presence of my White parents and I, only gazing from the distance with curiosity.

My parents’ Whiteness was an unexpected pass key into a White space. By being their child, my presence was not questioned. However, this had not been the experience for most Black Americans.

Shenandoah Valley from Pixabay by 12019

In her piece, Shenandoah National Park Is Confronting Its History, writer Kathryn Miles explores the national park’s dark history of segregation. While Lewis Mountain, a portion of the park, was created for Black visitors, Miles notes that, “…it was nonetheless understood that the rest of the park would remain the sole purview of white visitors.” Shenandoah is one of America’s most iconic parks, but despite belonging to the people of the United States, until 1950, it belonged to White Americans. Black Americans were allowed to participate in their own space, but full free access was denied.

The experience of segregated camping was not limited to Virginia. Out west, Black Coloradans could only find solace in nature at Lincoln Hills, a resort that welcomed those with melanin. Across the nation, camping was only allowed with other Black people, but not with White counterparts. Camping was an activity where Black people were allowed to participate, but never given full license to sit around a campfire with marshmallows and hot dogs. They had to be invited.

Segregation is key to understanding not just camping, but also the experience that went around it. By being segregated, Black people would not necessarily be able to enjoy the other parts of camping that make it an engaging experience: hiking, canoeing, and taking part in other adventures. (If you are regulated to a certain part of the park, it may not have all the services available.) For example renting a canoe for an afternoon on the lake may have been an easy experience for a White family, but for a Black family they could have been easily denied service by a company or had prices raised for the same experience. Outside of the stress of finding a campground where one could spend the nights, Black people had to also deal with the exhaustion of entertaining themselves and staying safe.

Segregation cemented camping as an activity for White Americans; it was something that they were encouraged to do with uninhibited access and freedoms. Their presence in nature was never to be questioned and camp sites, national parks, and other outdoor venues happily catered to their desires while placing limitations on Black adventurers. This inferred ownership of the outdoors and camping that has been carefully protected by White people.

As noted by Miles, in 1994, the National Parks Service experienced White backlash when they openly supported diversity in the national parks, receiving a letter to the editor of National Parks Magazine, from a anonymous author who anxiously stated, “If minorities do not like going to the parks, it is their loss. But please don’t let us be duped into thinking it is our loss. Many of us look to the parks as an escape from the problems ethnic and minorities create. Please don’t modify our parks to destroy our oasis.” The letter is a White plea to maintain the national parks as a haven where White people did not have to deal with the experiences or sights of minorities. Ironically, White people fled to stolen indigenous lands to be removed from any interaction with people who carried melanin in their skin. The 1994 letter also reinforces a key detail about the outdoors: desegregation of campgrounds did not end the the exclusion of Black people from participating in camping. It created a standard.