audrey-peterman Archives - Acadia National Park on My Mind

More than 200 years ago, a free African American named Thomas Frazer settled at what is now a picnic area in the Schoodic section of Acadia National Park. He fished, farmed and operated a salt works, and was the first non-Native American resident of the area.

A close-up of the Frazer Point Picnic Area wayside exhibit reveals a little bit about Thomas Frazer, a free African American who first showed up in the 1790 federal census. (Photo by Jana Matusz, NPS volunteer)

It’s a little-known aspect of black history in Acadia and surrounding communities, along with the rarely told stories of the Bar Harbor visits by NAACP founder W.E.B. DuBois and black educator Booker T. Washington in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Frazer’s story is briefly shared on a relatively new wayside exhibit at the Frazer Point Picnic Area.

While the National Park Service marks African American History Month every February by commemorating the civil rights struggles, it’s barely scratching the surface in relating other aspects of black history in Acadia and other national parks.

“Tell the full story,” said Audrey Peterman, an advocate of diversity in national parks, who has visited Acadia several times and had never heard about Frazer until contacted by Acadia on My Mind, and who only learned recently of DuBois’s visit to Bar Harbor.

“If you’re going to reach out to black people and brown people, you’re not going to reach them with the Rockefeller story…,” said Peterman, who blogs about diversity and parks for Huffington Post. “You reach them with the Thomas Frazer story, the W.E.B. DuBois story.”

Audrey Peterman became an advocate of connecting all Americans to public lands after visiting Acadia. But she didn’t learn of Thomas Frazer until now, and says his story needs to be told. (Photo courtesy of Audrey Peterman)

“It would be nice if the park could do more,” agreed Allen K. Workman, who included Frazer’s story in his 2014 book, “Schoodic Point: History on the Edge of Acadia National Park.” (NOTE: See sidebar about Amazon.com links)

But he said he didn’t fault the park for focusing more on rich Rusticators who gave land for the park, than on Frazer, the history of quarrying and Italian immigrants to the area, or other lesser known aspects of the past. “Their resources are spread pretty thin.” Continue reading →

On the eve of Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, in one of his last official acts, President Barack Obama directed the Department of the Interior and other top agencies to hire a more diverse workforce, and attract broader segments of the US population to federal public lands.

President Barack Obama hikes Acadia National Park

President Barack Obama, the first sitting president to visit Acadia National Park, hiked Cadillac with his family in July 2010 (White House photo)

Obama issued the edict in the form of a Presidential Memorandum, which is as binding as an Executive Order, according to legal specialists. The memo aims for greater diversity in Acadia and other national parks, national forests and other public lands and waters.

“That’s a big deal,” said Audrey Peterman, a member of the Next 100 Coalition of environmental and civil rights groups that petitioned Obama in 2016, the year of the National Park Service Centennial, to call for a more inclusive vision of stewardship of America’s public lands for the next 100 years. “We’re not going to be turned back.”

The memo by Obama, the first sitting president to visit Acadia, also comes after years of reports showing the National Park Service lagging in efforts to diversify its workforce, and less interest among some minority populations in visiting federal public lands, compared with white Americans or even foreign visitors.

Audrey Peterman was so moved by the beauty of Cadillac when she first visited with her husband Frank in 1995, she became an advocate of connecting public lands to all Americans, no matter their race, creed or religion. (Photo courtesy of Audrey Peterman)

A 2011 report, “The National Park Service Comprehensive Survey of the American Public,” found African Americans the most “under-represented” visitor group, with Hispanic Americans not too far behind. The “2016 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government®”, released last month, ranks the National Park Service 284 out of 304 agencies when it comes to support for diversity, a slight improvement over the previous annual survey sponsored by the non-profit, non-partisan Partnership for Public Service.

For Peterman, an American of African and Jamaican descent, her life’s work of pushing for diversity in Acadia and other public lands came to her on the top of Cadillac Mountain, on her first visit more than 20 years ago.
Continue reading →