The 2023 U.S. Civil Rights Movement Sites Lecture will be delivered by the National Park Service Former Director Robert G. Stanton on Thursday, April 13, at Georgia State University in Atlanta. The topic will be “Preserving Sites of Our Heritage: A Noble Journey Toward Gratitude, Justice, and Dignity for All.” Free and open to the public, the talk will take place at 5:30 pm in Room 341 on the third floor of the GSU Law School with a reception following in the atrium.
Regarding his presentation, Director Stanton explained, “in a real sense, the preservation of our heritage is more than the protection of structures, artifacts, and landscapes. Preservation demonstrates the values of diversity and community that honors and links us with the heritage of our predecessors and furthermore represents our individual and collective heritage to our successors.”
Throughout his career at NPS, Director Stanton has lived this understanding of preservation and heritage. In many ways, Director Stanton desegregated the NPS as one of the first African Americans to work as a Park Ranger and then becoming the first African American to hold many of the leadership posts in administration including superintendent, regional director and ultimately the park service’s fifteenth director, holding the position from 1997 to 2001.
Born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1940, Stanton grew up in the African American community of Mosier Valley where he attended segregated schools, later being bused into town for high school. His parents set a high bar joining others filing a law suit over the inequalities of segregated education. While matriculating at Huston-Tillotson University, a historically Black college and university in Austin, the college president recruited Stanton for a pilot program started by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Lee Udall in 1962 to hire African Americans to work as seasonal park rangers for the NPS. Stanton joined two others at Grand Teton National Park. The experience changed his life.
As if the ordeal of getting to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, that summer did not provide enough challenges—foremost among them the costs of travel by train and purchase of a uniform—Stanton overcame these and other hurdles including experiences with racial discrimination “Up South,” to enjoy his initial interaction with the NPS. As he recalled the Black student rangers “were warmly and truly welcomed to the workforce,” by their white colleagues.
Returning to Texas and Huston-Tillotson, Stanton graduated in 1963 then undertook graduate training at Boston University. In 1966 the NPS hired Stanton for a GS-9 job in personnel management and brought him into headquarters in Washington, D.C. Over the next thirty years he rose through the ranks of administration. In 1970, NPS Director George B. Hartzog, Jr. appointed Stanton director of National Capital Parks-East making him the first African American superintendent of a park unit, then in 1971 Hartzog sent Stanton as superintendent of Virgin Island National Park to help improve relations with the residents. In 1974 Stanton served as Deputy Regional Director of the Southeast Region in Atlanta before returning to Washington during the Bicentennial to begin a series of administrative posts.
President Bill Clinton nominated Stanton as the new director of the entire system but Stanton confronted changed rules that now required approval by the U.S. Senate which promptly confirmed the selection making him the first African American director in 1997. The appointment put Stanton in charge of policy, planning and management of the 384 natural, cultural, and recreational areas encompassing 83 million acres that comprise the NPS and that attract 228 million visitors a year. Under his leadership, Stanton worked to diversify the NPS, creating ten new parks with twice that number authorized for further study. These included Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site, the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, Minidoka Internment National Historic Site, and the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park.
Having been a youth recruited into the NPS, Stanton implemented policies to expand such programs. As director he authorized the popular National Parks Pass Program, the Save American Treasures Program, and the Experience Your America Campaign. Under his leadership, the U.S. Congress authorized in 1998 the Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Act which created the Network to Freedom Program that has attracted more than 700 affiliates in over forty states.
In 2009, U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar tapped Stanton as Senior Advisor and as such he provided advice and support on a wide range of environmental, educational, organizational, and management challenges and opportunities, working to advance the Secretary and President Brack Obama’s goals for the Department of the Interior over the next five years. In 2014, he accepted an appointment by President Obama to sit on the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. Today he volunteers his time on other boards and as a Scholar-In-Residence at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
Previous keynote speakers at U.S. Civil Rights Movement Sites events have included Brent Leggs, Executive Director of the National Trust for Historic Preservation African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, and Professor Hasan Kwame Jeffries of Ohio State University.
Come join us at 5:30 pm on Thursday, April 13!
