Civil Rights & Social Justice in Cultural Landscapes

Stonewall National Monument commemorates an important site and historic event in the the movement for LGBTQ rights. The Stonewall Inn was popular with the African American and Latinx LGBTQ community, and the crowd that gathered to demonstrate in the early hours of June 28, 1969 included many people of color. Today the site is recognized for its connection to LGBTQ history, African American history, and the history of civil rights for all in America.

The Stonewall National Monument cultural landscape includes the streets and locations of the Stonewall Uprising, which took place from June 28 and July 3, 1969. While it was not the start or end of the fight for gay rights, the events at the Stonewall Inn and the surrounding streets of Greenwich Village in New York City were a major catalyst in organizing the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement. The streets, parks, and buildings of the landscape help reflect this history.

In 1956, the same year that Medgar and Myrlie Evers purchased a home in the middle-class African American subdivision of Elraine in Jackson, Mississippi, a group of neighborhood women formed the Spade and Fork Garden Club. Residential gardens clubs were a forum for women to invest in their homes and neighborhoods, demonstrating both creativity and middle-class domesticity. Garden clubs were also a source of individual and community empowerment in an unequal society.

The yard, home, and driveway of the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument are a memorial to Medgar and Myrlie Evers' lives and work in in civil rights. The landscape, located in the Elraine subdivision of Jackson, also reflects their pride and attention toward their home, commitment to resisting oppression, and investment in their community.

Attu was one of the remote Aleutian villages left behind during World War II. After the Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor, the U.S. Government evacuated Unangax̂ (Aleut) residents of the islands and took them to camps in the Southeast Alaska for protection. In Attu, residents were held prisoner by Japanese forces, and many died from malnutrition and starvation. They were not permitted to return to Attu when they returned.

The hilltop residence where Frederick Douglass spent his final years, known as Cedar Hill, is surrounded by a sprawling landscape and expansive views toward the Capitol. The landscape reflects both his ascendance in the civic world and his deep appreciation for the natural world. Here, Douglass took nature walks, planted trees, and cultivated a vegetable garden. He also brought the natural world into his home through flower pressing and the display of botanical paintings.

In 2016, a team from the University of Pennsylvania's program in historic preservation visited East Potomac Park Golf Course in Washington, DC. Through research and fieldwork, they explored the challenges of documenting and preserving an ever-changing landscape. The course, opened in 1920, is associated with the "Golden Age of Golf." It is also linked to civil rights history in the city; in 1941, three African American golfers played a round to protest segregation.

Now a gentle green hilltop in West Virginia and part of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, Camp Hill has transformed from a barren Civil War landscape to the home of an African American institution of higher education. In 1867, Storer College was founded to train African American teachers. Former armory buildings became educational buildings, surrounded by over 40 acres of picturesque grounds.

Lincoln Park is significant as part of the L’Enfant Plan for Washington, D.C., as a prominent African American cultural site, and as a neighborhood park that functions as a community gathering place. As it exists today, the park is mostly the result of National Park Service work conducted in 1934 and 1969-1971. The park’s major features are its two memorials, which illustrate themes of African American freedom and progress.

The Frederick Douglass National Historic Site landscape preserves the home and property where Frederick Douglass lived from 1877 until 1895. The house stood strong on a prominent knoll in what is today the neighborhood of Anacostia, overlooking the city of Washington, D.C. During the years that he and his family lived at the "Cedar Hill" property, they made many of the improvements and additions that still define the landscape today.