In the worst of America’s Jim Crow era, Black intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois found inspiration and hope in national parks

A view of the Grand Canyon after a snowfall. Tom Stoddart/Getty Images by Thomas S. Bremer, Rhodes College In his collection of essays and poems published in 1920 titled “Darkwater,” W.E.B. Du Bois wrote about his poignant encounter with the beauty of the Grand Canyon, the stupendous chasm in Arizona. As he stood at the canyon’s rim, the towering intellectual and civil rights activist described the sight that spread before his eyes. The Grand Canyon’s “grandeur is too serene – its beauty too divine!” Du Bois wrote. “Behold this mauve and purple mocking of time and space! See yonder peak! No human foot has trod it. Into that blue shadow, only the eye of God has looked.” But Du Bois’ experience undermined a widely held assumption that was reinforced by early conservationists like Theodore Roosevelt – that only White people could appreciate the landscapes of national parks. For Roosevelt and his progressive allies, saving nature was connected to saving the White race. My research on the history of national parks shows that these racial assumptions and federal policies contributed to making the parks unwelcome places for Black nature enthusiasts such as Du Bois. Du Bois traveled to national parks anyway,...