parks

History Matters: Debates About Monuments Reflect Current Divisions

How should local governments approach the question of memorials? Historians can advise about the significance or meaning of historical figures, but community values and state laws are subject to partisan politics. 

The Right to Breathe Free: A Showdown Over Race and Nature (Part II)

by Douglas C. Sackman

Over time American nature has been retrofitted with an infrastructure of racism, one that gives some people open access to land, clean water, and good air while constricting the access of others to these vital natural resources, or takes them away altogether.

Centuries of Protest at City Hall Park

by Marika Plater

Closed gates around City Hall Park in New York not only restrict access to the park as a site for protest, but ignore the site's history as a theater for political expression. 

In the “Bramble” of Central Park, a Showdown Over Nature and Race

by Douglas C. Sackman

The viral video of the confrontation between birder Christian Cooper and dog walker Amy Cooper in Central park illuminates how nature and race have been constructed in America, giving privileged access to some while turning others into eternal trespassers. 

’A Black Man in a White Space’: America has a Long and Troubled History of Segregated Public Parks

by Victoria W. Wolcott

Public spaces are infused with the power of history: the legacy of segregation, police brutality, and white supremacy. If there was ever a time that called for compassion in our shared spaces, it is now.

Saplings from tree outside Anne Frank’s hiding spot take root at schools, museums, parks in U.S.

INDIANAPOLIS — Saplings from the chestnut tree that stood as a symbol of hope for Anne Frank as she hid from the Nazis for two years in Amsterdam are being distributed to 11 locations in the United States as part of a project that aims to preserve her legacy and promote tolerance.The tree, one of the Jewish teenager’s only connections to nature while she hid with her family in a Secret Annex in her father’s company building, was diseased and rotted through the trunk when wind and heavy rain toppled it in August 2010. But saplings grown from its seeds will be planted starting in April, when the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis will put the first one in the ground....