Yosemite Buffalo Soldiers Essay Portfolio

Yosemite Buffalo Soldiers Essay Portfolio

THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA UNTOLD STORIES DISCUSSION GUIDE MOUNT RUSHMORE NATIONAL MEMORIAL AND NATIONAL PARK SUPERINTENDENT GERARD BAKER For more information, visit www.pbs.org/nationalparks/for-educators/untold-stories-discussion-guide/ Mount Rushmore National Memorial and National Park Superintendent Gerard Baker American Indians and the Black Hills On June 25, 1876, more than fifteen hundred Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne Indians rode across the Little Bighorn River. In less than thirty minutes, General George Custer and his group of 208 soldiers from the 7th Cavalry had been annihilated; not a single man from the detachment survived. Among the Lakotas were Sitting Bull—the Hunkpapa chief and spiritual leader who did not fight—and the Oglala war chief, Crazy Horse, who most certainly did. “Hoka hey!” Crazy Horse, it is said, called to his warriors at the beginning of the battle. “It is a good day to fight! It is a good day to die! Strong hearts, brave hearts, to the front! Weak hearts and cowards to the rear!” (Frommer 2). The Lakotas and Cheyennes fought that day for the right to keep their tribal lands, specifically the Black Hills: the all-important spiritual center of the Great Sioux Reservation, granted to the Lakotas in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. Just months prior, the US government had offered the Lakota $6 million for the land, having discovered gold there. When the Indians refused, the government threatened “sell or starve” legislation, cutting off all subsistence to the tribe if they refused to comply. Some tribal leaders eventually caved in. Those who did not—including Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse—chose to fight (Nabokov 209). The

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Paha Sapa (“Black Hills” in Lakota) were—and still are—a sacred landscape for the Lakota. The Sioux were late-comers to the area, having arrived in the Hills at the end of the eighteenth century, migrating from the woodlands of Minnesota and driving out the Arikara, Kiowas, and Crows, who—in turn—had displaced earlier groups: the Shoshones, Poncas, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and others. For more than 13,000 years, American Indians have traveled through and hunted in the Hills. Archaeological evidence indicates that the area has been sacred land for centuries (Albers 14–15; Nabokov 207–208). The Battle of Little Bighorn was a day of unmitigated victory for the Lakotas and Cheyennes and—as a Native woman told National Park Service Superintendent Gerard Baker—“we’ve been paying for it ever since.” Sensational and widely reported tales of the defeat of Custer and his men resulted in public outrage throughout white America. Thousands more cavalrymen were dispatched to the area by General Phil Sheridan and, over the next year, the Lakota were relentlessly pursued. By the fall of 1877, all the Lakotas and the majority of Cheyennes were effectively under federal control, settled on reservations controlled by federal agents. The Black Hills had been lost to them forever (Baker; Albers 128–130). Mount Rushmore National Memorial The idea for carving a colossal monument in the Black Hills came from South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson. In late August 1924, he proposed the idea to sculptor Gutzon Borglum, hoping to entice him to carve heroes of the Old West—Redcloud, Custer, and others— on the Needles, eroded granite pillars just south of Mount Rushmore in what is now Custer State Park. The Needles, it turned out, were too soft to carve, and Borglum had different ideas about what figures should be memorialized. He was not interested in regional heroes, but men who epitomized the flowering of our nation—Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt (Larner 90-91). THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA Discussion Guide: Baker and Mt. Rushmore 1 Borglum took his work seriously; he considered himself to be “providing a formal rendering of the philosophy of our government into granite on a mountain peak”—a rendering that would last for all time: Borglum carved Washington’s nose one foot larger than scale to add another 100,000 years to the sculpture’s lifetime. The National Park Service and the Mount Rushmore Preservation Society are more conservative in their estimates, guaranteeing the integrity of the work for just 20,000 years (Larner 12; 125). The initial dedication of the memorial was held in 1925, before funding or workers had been secured. Two years later, a second dedication was held on August 10, 1927, this one officiated by President Calvin Coolidge and including a ceremonial first blasting of Mount Rushmore—a rocky outcropping the Lakota had called “The Six Grandfathers,” named for the earth, the sky, and the four directions (Larner 241–244). For many American Indians, the carvings on Mount Rushmore have come to epitomize the loss of their sacred lands and the injustices they’ve suffered under the US government. In the summer of 1970, members of AIM — the American Indian Movement — mounted a “siege” of the memorial, occupying the ledge above the presidents’ heads for nearly a month. Although such protests are not as common today, the Memorial can still be a focal point for Indian protest and contempt. At the same time, it is a monument to the best principals of our nation— democracy, freedom, enterprise—and each year millions of Americans are moved to tears when they visit (Larner 278–286; Albers 180). Superintendent Gerard Baker In 2004, Gerard Baker inherited this complicated situation when he was appointed the first American Indian superintendent of Mount Rushmore. A Mandan-Hidatsa, Gerard grew up on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota and was no stranger to controversy. He’d served as superintendent at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, arriving in the wake of the park’s name change (from Custer Battlefield to the more neutral Little Bighorn Battlefield) and bringing American Indian tribes with him—as participants in the annual battle commemoration ceremony, as seasonal rangers in the park’s interpretive program, and as visitors. Gerard left the battlefield in 1998 amidst death threats from detractors and praise from his NPS supervisors. He considers both a measure of his success in bringing the Indian story back to Little Bighorn (Larner 175–176; Baker). But taking the job at Mount Rushmore was different. It was very challenging to accept the job here, because growing up I understood what Mount Rushmore meant. And for us, for Indian people, it doesn’t mean “Success of America.” It means the desecration of the sacred Black Hills; it means the losing of the Black Hills to the United States government, to white people that came in and shoved everybody out of here and put us on a reservation. So it meant a lot of negative things. —Gerard Baker Gerard thought about the offer for four days. He consulted with his family and the elders of his tribe. He decided that, if they told him not to take the post, he wouldn’t. THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA Discussion Guide: Baker and Mt. Rushmore 2 It was just the opposite. I’m the first American Indian here as superintendent and the people back home were saying, “Man, what an opportunity to educate people. And what a time period to educate people.” So, I took the job. —Gerard Baker True to form, Gerard began making changes at Mount Rushmore, bringing the Indian perspective to the interpretive program and bringing more Natives into the park—as visitors and employees. Coming here was a challenge in that Mount Rushmore’s enabling legislation has us only tell the first centuries of America and these four presidents. And this is a challenge for me because I believe that we should go back before that time. I want to show what life was like before George Custer found gold in the Black Hills, before Borglum came in and started carving the sculptures here. —Gerard Baker As at Little Bighorn, Gerard met with resistance to his changes—particularly given Mount Rushmore’s prominent place as a symbol of American patriotism. This is a very big challenge, especially after 9/11. When I first came here, I’d go out in the park and I would watch people. They would look at those four presidents and they’d get teary-eyed. This place draws emotion. And it should! But again, we were only telling half the story. What we’re doing now is we’re telling all the story. But the challenge is: I don’t want to make those four guys look bad, but I want to be real. How do you tell the real story? That’s my challenge here. Well, the way you tell it is: You tell it. —Gerard Baker Baker began by erecting one teepee, simply to remind visitors of the ancient and ongoing presence of American Indians in the Hills. I remember one day I went out there and there were like 20, 30 people gathered, and so I said, “What the heck, I’ll just start talking about this.” So I started and when I got through there were about 200 people there. And so that made me think, “Let’s do something else. Let’s start talking about this.” —Gerard Baker In 2008, the park opened its “Heritage Village,” a place where Sioux interpreters, hired as seasonal rangers, interface directly with the public, educating visitors about Sioux culture and history and about their understanding of the Black Hills. We have stories that are very hard to tell; we have stories that are very hard to listen to. Primarily the reactions have been very positive but there are always those few that condemn; they didn’t want to hear about the American Indian plight, or they don’t want to hear about the breaking of treaties. Because it happened a long time ago, it doesn’t affect us today. And I believe it still affects us today. —Gerard Baker The addition of Native voices in the interpretive program has imparted a more complex and complete understanding of the National Parks and the legacies they protect and has brought more Indian visitors to the park. The park now offers its popular audio tour not only in European languages, but also in Lakota. And Gerard has expanded his vision to embrace not THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA Discussion Guide: Baker and Mt. Rushmore 3 just Native stories and traditions, but the vast diversity of cultural traditions and stories that make up our national heritage. It’s not just a teepee here. We’re promoting all cultures of America…. That’s what this place is! For goodness sake, this is Mount Rushmore! It’s America! —Gerard Baker The new interpretive policy at Mount Rushmore encourages programs reflective of all cultures in America. The park sponsors a “Roots of American Music” series, with performances ranging from Rapid City’s Faith Temple Choir to rockabilly-inspired Gail and the Tricksters to a German “oompah” band. And throughout the year, cultural groups like the Sons of Norway demonstrate traditional dancing and crafts. According to Gerard, encouraging this sort of resurgence is critical to our cultural survival. We’re losing who we are culturally. The Germans don’t share their stories with their children anymore. The Irish don’t share their stories; the Norwegians; everybody. We have all these cultures that come and make up America. But we’re losing it really quickly. America’s losing it. And in 200 years, if everybody looks the same, everybody speaks the same, we’ve failed as a human race. And we’re getting to that point. When people say to me, “Well, I don’t know what I am. I’m Heinz 57,” I tell them, “Well, pick one then! And concentrate on that.” —Gerard Baker Pride in who we are, no matter what our backgrounds, is what Gerard believes Mount Rushmore is all about, and is the message he wants visitors to leave with. What that does is it helps everybody understand, “Hey, I’ve got a culture, too. How come I don’t know about my culture? It’s about time I start learning about it! Because I’m proud of being Welsh; I’m proud of being British; I’m proud of—“ whoever you are. This is what makes up America! Everybody’s something different here. We’re all different. We’re human beings, is what that says. And so what we want is to have people open their eyes when they come in here— especially young kids open their eyes. And maybe go back to the idea that we need to start sitting down at our tables again in the evenings—turning off the TV, turning off the computer—and start telling stories again. Maybe a kid asks, “Who were those four presidents on the hill?” And Mom and Dad have to answer that, right? And just maybe it gets us talking again as human beings, as Americans. —Gerard Baker * * * * * Works Cited and Consulted Albers, Patricia. The Home of the Bison: An Ethnographic and Ethnohistorical Study of Traditional Cultural Affiliations to Wind Cave National Park. National Park Service, Department of the Interior. 29 Sept. 2003. Baker, Gerard. Interviews with author. 13 Sept 2006; 17 Aug 2008. Duncan, Dayton. Out West. New York: Viking, 1987. THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA Discussion Guide: Baker and Mt. Rushmore 4 Frommer, Frederic. “Black Hills Are Beyond Price to Sioux; Despite economic hardship, tribe resists U.S. efforts to dissolve an 1868 treaty for $570 million.” Los Angeles Times 19 Aug. 2001. The 2004 American Indian Film Festival, Bellevue Community College. 8 Oct. 2007 Larner, Jesse. Mount Rushmore: An Icon Reconsidered. New York, NY: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2002. Nabokov, Peter. “The Heart of Everything.” Where the Lightning Strikes: The Lives of American Indian Sacred Places. New York, NY: Penguin, 2006. THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA Discussion Guide: Baker and Mt. Rushmore 5 THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA UNTOLD STORIES DISCUSSION GUIDE SUE KUNITOMI EMBREY AND MANZANAR NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE For more information, visit www.pbs.org/nationalparks/for-educators/untold-stories-discussion-guide/ Sue Kunitomi Embrey and Manzanar National Historic Site On December 7, 1941, the Japanese Air Force attacked the American Naval base in Pearl Harbor. Sue Kunitomi, a Japanese American teenager living in Los Angeles, heard the news on the radio. It was around lunchtime when the radio announced the bombing of Pearl Harbor. My mother was making lunch next door and // she said, “That’s not true. They can’t do that.” She was very, very upset. And she said, “What’s gonna happen to us? They’re gonna take us all away.” She felt that right away, because she was not a citizen. Then she said, “They’ll take ALL of us away.” And my brother said, “No, WE’RE American citizens. They won’t take US.” And she said, “You don’t know that.”—Sue Kunitomi Embrey (Shumaker) Mrs. Kunitomi’s worst fears were soon realized. By nightfall, 2,192 Japanese had been arrested. A series of proclamations issued later in December 1941 declared non-citizen Japanese, Germans, and Italians “alien enemies” and laid down regulations governing their behavior (Tours 2; Daniels 87; Burton 29–30). Anti-Japanese sentiment grew rapidly, typified by an editorial in the Los Angeles Times: “A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the eggs are hatched—so a Japanese American, born of Japanese parents—grows up to be a Japanese, not an American.” On January 2, 1942, Henry McLemore, a Hearst syndicated columnist, wrote: I’m for the immediate removal of every Japanese on the West Coast to a point deep in the interior . . . let ‘em be pinched, hurt, hungry . . . let us have no more patience with the enemy or with anyone who carry his blood. Personally, I hate the Japanese. — Henry McLemore (Tours 3) Executive Order 9066 On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the Secretary of War to “prescribe military areas . . . from which any or all persons may be excluded” and to “provide for residents of any such area who are excluded therefrom, such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary . . .” On March 2, Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona were divided into two such military areas. Within a few months, Japanese American immigrants living on the west coast and their American-born children—citizens of the United States—had been removed from their homes and relocated to internment centers, known informally as “camps.” They lost their homes, their businesses, their pets, their friends, and most of their belongings. (Burton 30–33; Shumaker). In April we were told to start packing; that we had to be evacuated. And I thought, “Oh, my gosh, we have this grocery store, and we have our house with all our furniture, and we have our cars.” We just left everything behind. . . . Overnight we were completely impoverished, not just in terms of money, but in our whole life. —Sue Kunitomi Embrey (Shumaker; Levine 23) THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA Discussion Guide: Sue Embrey and Manzanar 1 In all, more than 120,000 Japanese Americans, over two-thirds of whom were American citizens, were incarcerated in ten camps, located throughout the western United States. The only cabinetlevel officials in the Roosevelt administration to oppose the camps were Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, who sought to end them as soon as possible, and Attorney General Francis Biddle (Daniels 88; Armor xviii). Manzanar The camp to which Sue’s family had been assigned was Manzanar, located 212 miles northeast of Los Angeles on the site of a former Spanish settlement in Inyo County. At its peak, Manzanar housed a population of over 10,000 evacuees, held within a one-mile-square enclosure. The camp was surrounded by barbed wire fencing and overlooked by eight guard towers. Its layout was based on a modified military “theater of operations” plan, with families housed in 36 blocks of 20′ X 100′ barracks, separated into four to six units, depending upon family size. Construction was minimal, designed to meet the requirements of low cost and rapid fabrication, and conditions were harsh. Even in late spring, the nighttime temperatures routinely dropped below freezing. In the summer, temperatures rose above 110 degrees. And, as one internee described it, “The main thing you remembered was the dust, always the dust,” created by a land that was artificially made barren (Tours 6, 15–16; Armor xi, xiii). Eventually, the people of Manzanar made the camp into a home—gardening, organizing dances, and going to school. They held citizenship ceremonies, never forsaking their new country, despite feeling forsaken themselves. Their young men enlisted in the army, joining an all-Japanese regiment, the 242nd, which would become the most highly decorated unit in the history of our nation. And, late at night, a few of them crawled under the fence to fish the trout streams of the High Sierra. We never had permission to go, we just snuck out of camp by ourselves (and tried) to avoid the guard towers. It was pretty exciting to get out of the camp. To be sneaky to get out of the camp was one challenge, and then to go fishing was another challenge! —Sets Tomita, Former Internee† Leaving Camp Following a Supreme Court decision in December of 1944, detained Japanese Americans were free to return to their West Coast homes. Internees had to leave on their own and those with assets of less than $600 were given one-way train or bus fare, associated meals, and $25.00 for expenses. Many evacuees found their boarded up homes vandalized and their goods stolen. When the Kunitomi family returned to Los Angeles, they found their home and grocery store demolished (Last Witnesses 175). For years, Sue didn’t spend much time thinking about camp. She worked as a political activist, married, had two children, and went back to school for bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education. Then, in late 1969, a student driving Sue home from class at UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center invited her to join a group on a pilgrimage to Manzanar, nearly 27 years after she’d left. The invitation came in the midst of anti-Vietnam war demonstrations and the Free Speech movement, and Sue—although she was an activist on campus—had never confronted her memories and experience in the camp. She accepted. Thus in December 1969—on the coldest day of the year in Inyo county—Sue began what would become a lifelong journey to † Unless otherwise noted, all interviews conducted by Roger Sherman, 26 Apr 2008. THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA Discussion Guide: Sue Embrey and Manzanar 2 understand what happened at Manzanar and to bring public attention and recognition to the site. After the pilgrimage, Sue and a group of others established the Manzanar Committee. The committee began in 1971 as a small ad hoc group under the auspices of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) and was formed with a two-fold purpose: to raise public awareness regarding the significance of the Manzanar site and to establish Manzanar as a state historic landmark. Pilgrimages to the site became an annual event, sponsored by the committee, and since 1973 have been held on the last Saturday of each April (Levine 190; Unrau 821). Sue very rapidly became the powerhouse behind the Manzanar Committee and its activities. Her home was the committee’s official address and her telephone the official committee number. Sue Kunitomi Embrey was really the driving force behind the creation of Manzanar Historic Site. She was very patriotic—not someone whose patriotism was mindless nationalism, but making your country stand for what its constitution says it stands for. —Alisa Lynch, Manzanar Chief of Interpretation National Recognition for Manzanar and a National Campaign for Redress Throughout the ensuing decades, Sue Embrey, attorney Rose Ochi, and many others fought to have the Manzanar site recognized—first by the state of California and then by the United States as a whole—as a place that should never be forgotten, and a violation of citizens’ rights that should never be repeated. On February 19, 1992, the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066, the bill was brought forward in the House and got a roll-call vote of 400 to 13—a resoundingly supportive endorsement and, for us, the maraschino cherry to top the whipped cream. All that we had struggled for since the 1970s had been won—an impossible dream. —Sue Kunitomi Embrey (Last Witnesses 183) President George H. W. Bush signed the bill into law on March 3, 1992. The 23rd annual pilgrimage, held on April 25th, brought more than 2,200 participants to celebrate the designation (Tours 36). At the same time, the community began to discuss more actively how to deal with the violation of their rights as citizens and legal residents. The National Coalition for Redress/Reparations began campaigning for Congressional legislation that would mandate an apology from the U.S. government and monetary compensation. The lengthy and arduous campaign for redress was eventually successful, resulting in 1988 legislation that required a $20,000 tax-free payment and a formal governmental apology to each of the 80,000 surviving victims (Tours 12; Daniels 161). Manzanar National Historic Site The inclusion of Manzanar in the National Park Service system was, in the beginning, somewhat controversial, both locally and nationally. Shortly after the designation of Manzanar, Yale historian Robin Winks weighed in on the debate. THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA Discussion Guide: Sue Embrey and Manzanar 3 With the recent addition of Manzanar National Historic Site to the National Park System, the public has been introduced more dramatically than ever before to a fundamental debate. Should the national parks commemorate and protect only places and events in which we take pride, or should the parks strive to mark events and places that many agree represent shameful episodes in our national experience? . . . The question is, should we commemorate or should we strive to forget, indeed should we bury from the national consciousness, these fearful times in our history? . . . Education is best done with examples. These examples must include that which we regret, that which is to be avoided, as well as that for which we strive. No effective system of education can be based on unqualified praise, for all education instructs people of the difference between moral and wanton acts and how to distinguish between the desirable and the undesirable. If this premise is correct, we cannot omit the negative lessons of history. —Robin Winks (22) In order to bring the lessons of Manzanar into sharp relief for a younger generation, the Manzanar Committee launched a new program, Manzanar at Dusk (MAD), begun in 1997 and now held directly following the pilgrimage program each year. MAD was the brainchild of Jenni Kuida, a young, politically active student who’d been inspired by a similar program at Tule Lake interment camp and by Sue. Sue was a big role model for me. She was passionate about Manzanar. She was supportive of young people getting the story and, from her early years, she was involved in progressive politics. There’s a lot of talk about Nissei who were silent. The word they used is gaman, which means, “We are resilient; we can withstand anything— and remain silent about it.” Sue was the opposite of gaman! She said, “I don’t care about what you think. This needs to be remembered!” She was a leader. —Jenni Kuida (Shumaker) As part of the MAD program, participants break up into small groups, each including a former internee. During the discussions that ensue, Japanese American youth hear first hand—and often for the first time—about the injustices suffered by their grandparents’ generation. Americans from other minority groups also participate, sharing their own experiences of being marginalized and stereotyped. Former Superintendent Tom Leatherman encouraged such exchanges. “How the Government treats its citizens—that’s our story,” he says. “So if we don’t have that conversation, we’re not doing what we should be doing here at Manzanar.” Alisa Lynch concurs. A lot of people think of the national parks as the great natural areas and the great recreational areas and we all love the National Parks for those reasons. But I think one of the really neat things about the National Park System is that we also preserve our history and not just the glowing parts of our history, but in some of the newer parks like Manzanar, like some of the civil rights sites, we are actually talking about some of the not so wonderful parts of our history. —Alisa Lynch For the Manzanar Committee and all who worked to create the site, it has always been about protecting our citizens’ rights, especially in times of national crisis. THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA Discussion Guide: Sue Embrey and Manzanar 4 I wanted people fifty years from now to remember what was there. Although it was a negative place, we wanted to turn it around to be positive, so that people will always remember that America is a democracy. We want to shout to the world that we are a great nation, willing to say that we’re sorry about what we did; that we are willing to make the change. And not only that we are a democracy but that we work at it. We work very hard at being a democracy—for all of us, for everybody who lives here. The working at it is the important part. —Sue Kunitomi Embrey (Shumaker) * * * * * Works Cited and Consulted Armor, John, and Peter Wright. Manzanar. New York: Times Books, 1988. Bahr, Diana. Excerpts from unpublished interviews with Sue Kunitomi Embrey. —. The Unquiet Nisei. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Burton, Jeffrey F., Mary M. Farrell, Florence B. Lord, and Richard W. Lord. Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites. Tucson, AZ: Western Archeological and Conservation Center, 1999. Daniels, Roger. Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants Since 1882. New York: Hill and Wang, 2004. Embrey, Sue Kunitomi. “From Manzanar to the Present: A Personal Journey.” Last Witnesses: Reflections on the Wartime Internment of Japanese Americans. Ed. Erica Harth. New York: Palgrave, 2001. 167–186. —. Interview by author. 2 Sept 2005. —. Three Self-Guided Tours of Manzanar. Los Angeles: Manzanar Committee, 1998. Hersey, John. “A Mistake of Terrifically Horrible Proportions.” Manzanar. John Armor and Peter Wright. New York: Times Books, 1988. 1–66. Kaufman, Polly Welts. National Parks and the Woman’s Voice. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996. Kuida, Jenny. Interview by author. 28 Nov 2007. Levine, Ellen. A Fence Away From Freedom: Japanese Americans and World War II. New York: GP Putnam’s Sons, 1995. Sue Kunitomi Embrey Archives. National Park Service Western Archeological and Conservation Center, Tucson, AZ. THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA Discussion Guide: Sue Embrey and Manzanar 5 Unrau, Harlan D. The Evacuation and Relocation of Persons of Japanese Ancestry During World War II: A Historical Study of the Manzanar War Relocation Center, Vols. I and II. Washington, DC: US Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1996. U. S. Congress. House of Representatives. Subcommittee on National Parks and Public Lands of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. Hearing to Establish the Manzanar National Historic Site in the State of California and for Other Purposes. 102nd Cong., 1st sess., 1991. U.S. Congress. Senate. Subcommittee on Public Lands, National Parks and Forests of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Hearing on S. 621, H.R. 543, S. 870, S. 1254, S. 1344, and H. R. 848. 102nd Cong., 1 st sess., 1991. Winks, Robin. “Sites of Shame: Disgraceful Episodes from Our Past Should Be Included in the Park System To Present a Complete Picture of Our History,” National Parks, LXVIII (March/April 1994), 22–23. THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA Discussion Guide: Sue Embrey and Manzanar 6 THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA UNTOLD STORIES DISCUSSION GUIDE YOSEMITE’S BUFFALO SOLDIERS AND NATIONAL PARK RANGER SHELTON JOHNSON For more information, visit www.pbs.org/nationalparks/for-educators/untold-stories-discussion-guide/ Yosemite’s Buffalo Soldiers and National Park Ranger Shelton Johnson On July 25, 1958, Shelton Johnson was born at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. His father, James O. Johnson, Jr., joined the army and before Shelton was six, he’d lived in California, Germany, England, South Carolina, and Kansas City, finally returning to Detroit for elementary school. Growing up in a working class, inner-city neighborhood of northwest Detroit, Shelton was about as far from wilderness as one could get. When I was a child in Detroit, national parks really didn’t exist, except on television, on PBS. There were no family trips to national parks. They really didn’t exist for me and for my friends. We didn’t sit around saying, “Boy, can’t wait to get to the Grand Canyon!” You know? That didn’t come up as a topic of conversation in Detroit. But always somewhere inside me there was this desire to see Yellowstone. There was a desire to see the Grand Canyon. —Shelton Johnson (Shumaker; Burns) Shelton finally got his chance to visit a national park as a graduate student in an MFA writing program. Looking for a quiet place to write over the summer, he applied for work as a seasonal ranger in Yellowstone. “My intention was to write a book,” Shelton says. “Then, Yellowstone happened” (Shumaker). I remember the first time I arrived in Yellowstone. I got off a bus and we were in Gardiner, Montana, right outside the north entrance where there’s that wonderful stone arch that says, “For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People.” And it doesn’t say “For the Benefit and Enjoyment of Some of the People” or “a Few of the People.” It says “All of the People.” And for me, that meant democracy; that meant I was welcome. I stepped outside and as I was stepping down onto the ground, there was a bison—a 2,000-pound animal—walking by. There was no one else around and the bison was just strolling by! I looked up at the driver and I said, “Does this happen all the time?” and he looked at me and said, “All the time.” And I said to myself, “I’ve arrived.” Once I stepped off that bus, I never got back on. And I’ve been in national parks ever since. —Shelton Johnson (Burns 3) From washing dishes at the Old Faithful Inn to running a dorm for other seasonal workers, that summer was a defining time for Shelton. In 1985, Shelton applied to enter the park service and become a ranger. From that moment on, he was hooked. “Once I had the uniform on,” Shelton says, “Wow—that was it!” (Shumaker). African Americans in the Parks During that first summer in Yellowstone, when he was still washing dishes, Shelton and a friend found themselves at Old Faithful. “I don’t understand,” she said, noticing something missing from the boardwalks crisscrossing the geysers and hot springs. “Where are all the black people?” (Shumaker). That question stuck with Shelton. While working as an interpreter at Fort Dupont Park (NPS National Capital Parks East), in 1992–1993, he had the opportunity to speak with inner city THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA Discussion Guide: Ranger Shelton Johnson 1 school kids in Washington, DC. “These were kids living in Anacostia, southeast DC,” Shelton says, “in the middle of the crack wars.” 1993 was the peak of violence in the area, with 133 homicides recorded (“Anacostia”). I remember talking to them about my experiences in Yellowstone and Grand Teton and it was like I was talking about Mars or Jupiter. It was as far-flung from their experience as if I was Neil Armstrong talking about what it felt like to be on the moon. They had never seen mountains; they had never seen anything having to do with nature. That’s when I first made the resolution that I had to figure out how to connect these kids with nature, to get them to have a nature experience. —Shelton Johnson (Associated Press 3; Shumaker) Buffalo Soldiers Shelton was eventually transferred to the place he has worked for more than a decade: Yosemite. In his early work as an interpreter, Shelton presented a number of programs to Yosemite visitors, but he was always searching for a way to reach kids who felt they had no link to the parks—kids of black ancestry and kids in inner cities. Although he’d heard from his predecessor, Ranger Althea Roberson, about buffalo soldiers patrolling the park, it was almost by accident that he found a picture of them. Shelton says it was “like stumbling into your own family while traveling in a foreign country” (Associated Press 3–4). I took a closer look at the picture and read the caption. It was a photograph of the 24th Infantry taken somewhere in Yosemite in 1899. The 24th, along with the 25th Infantry and the 9th and 10th Cavalry, were African-American army regiments that during the Indian War period became known as Buffalo Soldiers. They were African-American soldiers who were part of the Western Frontier, who were part of that great American mythology. So when you have a longing to be part of this mythology and part of this history, and you see an African American staring out at you wearing that uniform, it anchors you and roots you into a past you didn’t even know you had. I knew—in the instant that I saw that—that I was looking at the most significant thing that I had to do in my career as a park ranger. I saw the bridge that would tie wilderness to the African-American community right there in the faces and in the eyes of those dead soldiers who were looking at me from across a distance of 100 years. — Shelton Johnson (Shadows in the Range of Light; Shumaker) In the years before the creation of the National Park Service, the U.S. army patrolled the parks, building and maintaining trails and wagon roads, and keeping out poachers and grazing animals. During three of those years—1899, 1903, and 1904—African American cavalry and infantry, stationed at the Presidio in San Francisco, spent their summers on “park duty,” patrolling Yosemite, Sequoia, and General Grant national parks. The Buffalo soldiers here in Yosemite built what is considered to be the first museum in the National Park System. In 1903, the 9th Cavalry in Sequoia National Park built the first usable wagon road into Giant Forest, which is the most famous grove of giant sequoia in the world, and the first trail to the top of Mount Whitney, which in those days was the highest mountain in the United States. If that’s not worthy of being remembered, I don’t know what is. —Shelton Johnson (Shumaker) THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA Discussion Guide: Ranger Shelton Johnson 2 Shelton got to work, in archives and libraries and in the park itself. He enrolled in Yosemite’s Mounted Horse Patrol School, graduating in 1996, so he could understand more fully the soldiers’ experience. He conducted extensive research, looking at period uniforms to discover what the buffalo soldiers wore while on patrol and perusing Army Muster Rolls from the late 19th and early 20th century. In the process, Shelton proved that African Americans had served in the park in much greater numbers than previously believed (“About” 1–2). Elizy Boman Since 1998, Shelton has told the story of the buffalo soldiers in the national parks—in print, on camera, and in person. During evening programs and daytime ranger walks in Yosemite, he tells the story of the buffalo soldiers in Yosemite through the eyes of a character he’s developed: Sergeant Elizy Boman.† The real Elizy Boman was a private in Company A in Sequoia and later was a deserter. I started thinking, “Elizy was a deserter and this history has been deserted; this history has been abandoned.” I reassigned Elizy to Troop K in Yosemite so I could tell his story here in the park. I also figured that, after all these years, he deserved a promotion, so I made him a sergeant. —Shelton Johnson (Shumaker) Shelton grafted his own family history onto Elizy so that, when he told the story, it would be more authentic, both for himself and his audience. It’s very emotional being Elizy and much more challenging than anything else I’ve done—becoming a person from a different time period and, on top of that, the son of slaves. For an African American to take that on—talk about being a slave and a sharecropper in South Carolina—is not easy. —Shelton Johnson (Shumaker) In the park, Shelton’s audience is primarily white Euro-American tourists, but he also works with students in Yosemite Institute’s WildLink program. WildLink brings at-risk and underserved high school students into the park, many for their first wilderness experiences. Shelton is able to span generations with his program. He’s Elizy Boman, which really grounds them in a history of stewardship of this place. But they also get to meet Shelton, who’s somebody who’s here now and who can share with them his story—how he grew up in an urban city and how he found his way here; that you can live here and work here and it can be an amazing, wonderful life. —Mandy Vance, WildLink Program Director (Shumaker) Shelton has also taken Elizy on the road, performing in dozens of schools around the country. Students are engaged and excited by Elizy who—Shelton hopes—becomes a conduit for getting them out into nature. If we forget a Yosemite or a Yellowstone or a Grand Canyon what we’ve actually forgotten is who we are. We’ve forgotten the very forces that have shaped us as a people and as a culture. † Pronounced “uh-LEEZ-y BOW-mun.” THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA Discussion Guide: Ranger Shelton Johnson 3 Everyone needs beauty. African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans—whatever group that you happen to be referring to—they all need beauty. —Shelton Johnson (Burns 2, 11) Throughout, Shelton has remained true to the reason he started this work: I can’t forget that little black kid in Detroit, who knew nothing about the national parks. No one ever told me anything! And I can’t not think of the other kids, just like me—in Detroit, Oakland, Watts, Anacostia—today. How do I get them here? How do I let them know about the buffalo soldier history, to let them know that we, too, have a place here? Every time I go to work, and put the uniform on, I think about them. —Shelton Johnson (Shumaker) Today, Shelton is the only African American ranger in Yosemite, but tomorrow he hopes to be joined by many others. And for him, it all goes back to a few precious moments in nature. One of the last jobs I had in Yellowstone was delivering the mail on snowmobile. And as I dropped down into Hadyn Valley, there were bison crossing over the road and it was so cold that the bison, as they breathed, their exhalation seemed to crystallize in the air around them. There were these sheets, these ropy strands, of crystals kind of flowing down from their breath. I remember stopping the snowmobile and turning it off, and listening. And I felt like this was the first day; this morning was the first time the sun had ever come up. I was all alone but I felt I was in the presence of everything around me. It was one of those moments when you get pulled outside of yourself into the environment around you. I forgot completely about the mail! All I was thinking of was that a single moment in a place as wild as Yellowstone can last forever. —Shelton Johnson (Burns 13) These experiences, Shelton maintains, are universal, regardless of skin color. National parks provide a doorway into a transcendent experience—a sense of something that’s greater than yourself; a place that’s greater than yourself; a way of being that’s greater than yourself. And all you have to do is often pay an entrance fee. You pay that fee and you pass over that threshold into that national park and it’s a place that’s bigger than the name. It’s like going to another world, to a wonderland. And I think that all people feel that transition. But the irony is that where they’ve gone is the place where they’ve always been. It’s just now they understand it. Now they see it. Now they feel it. Because parks are like going home. —Shelton Johnson (Burns 1) * * * * * Works Cited and Consulted “Anacostia.” Wikipedia. 18 Oct 2006. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anacostia. 27 Oct 2006. Associated Press. “Ranger Discovers History in Shadows of Yosemite.” The Olympian 2003. peacecorpsonline.org/messages/messages/2629/1011709.html. 5 Sept 2006. Johnson, Shelton. “About the Buffalo Soldiers from Yosemite National Park.” Unpublished document. Summer 2001; revised Aug 2006. THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA Discussion Guide: Ranger Shelton Johnson 4 —. Interview with Ken Burns. 29 March 2006. —. Interview with Susan Shumaker. 7 Sept 2006. —. Shadows in the Range of Light. shadowsoldier.wilderness.net/. 1 Sep 2006. THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA Discussion Guide: Ranger Shelton Johnson 5
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