City parks reflect history of segregation

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Editor’s Note: This article, distributed by The Associated Press, originally appeared on The Conversation website. The Conversation is an independent, nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.

Montgomery, Alabama, bills itself as the birthplace of the American civil rights movement. But while Montgomery now embraces its history of bus boycotts and protest marches, it remains one of the most segregated American cities and still struggles with racial inequality.

Today, Montgomery’s population is nearly 60% black. The poverty rate for black residents is 30.8%, compared to 10.6% for white residents. The city’s infrastructure is deteriorating and its tax base is shrinking.

Cities with a history of segregation are more likely to suffer from systemic racism that still runs in the veins of their planning laws and policies. As a scholar of urban design and planning, I wanted to know more about how Montgomery’s history has affected access to parks and public spaces there. My research explains how the city’s history continues to influence modern planning and create unequal access to parks.

Separate and unequal parks

During the Jim Crow era, from the 1870s through the mid-20th century, southern cities enforced segregation in schools, transportation, recreation facilities, and parks to prevent racial mixing. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed such practices, but they still had consequences.

In 1957, Montgomery passed an ordinance making it a crime for anyone to use public parks or other places except those designated for their race. Four of the city’s 14 parks were designated as black-only and 10 as white-only, even though the population was nearly 44 percent black.

Parks for black residents were in much worse condition than those for white residents. Some white-only parks, such as Oak Park, were located in black neighborhoods, but black residents were arrested for entering them.

The silent maintenance of segregation

In 1958, residents of Black Montgomery filed a class action lawsuit challenging the park’s segregation policy. Montgomery officials responded by closing all city parks, although they continued to maintain them.

After a federal court in Alabama ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in 1959, the city reopened some parks but gave private schools exclusive use of certain sites. It also changed the name of the Parks and Recreation Department to the Recreation Department, allowing the city to direct funding to recreational facilities such as swimming pools that restricted access by requiring paid memberships.

Plaintiffs reopened the desegregation case in 1970, and it reached the Supreme Court in 1974. There, Justice Harry Blackmun described the city’s response to the 1959 ruling as “an elaborate ruse to anticipate and evade the court’s order.”

In the years that followed, desegregation laws encouraged white flight to the suburbs. As Montgomery lost white residents and their tax payments, it annexed surrounding areas. This left the central city and its existing parks primarily in black hands, while white residents moved to suburbs with new parks.

Urban renewal initiatives in the 1950s and 1960s demolished, privatized, or repurposed some of Montgomery’s prime parks. For example, Interstate Highway 85 was routed through Oak Park, a middle-class black neighborhood. Urban planner Rebecca Retzlaff calls this a deliberate attempt to drive out civil rights leaders and middle-class black households. The construction of highways through black neighborhoods in Montgomery and elsewhere also exposed these areas to increased noise and air pollution.

Montgomery’s Parks Today

Today, black Montgomery residents have unrestricted access to the city’s 65 parks. However, in a 2019 report, the Montgomery Recreation Department stated that while “overt and systematic regulatory structures based on race or ethnicity have been eliminated, the legacy of this framework remains visible in many ways.”

To examine current park facilities in Montgomery, I surveyed 63 city parks using five criteria to measure access, quality, and park conditions.

• Accessibility: The number of residents living within a half-mile walking distance of a park
• Recreational facilities: facilities such as playing fields, playgrounds and swimming pools
• Other facilities: non-sports facilities, such as picnic tables and toilets
• Natural features: landscaped areas, flower beds and ponds
• Rudeness: The presence of trash, graffiti, noise, or evidence of drug or alcohol use, such as empty liquor bottles and used needles

I found that 36 of the parks I reviewed were within a half-mile of predominantly black neighborhoods. This increased access partly reflects the growth of the city’s black population as white residents moved to the suburbs.

However, my score indicated that 83% of parks targeting black residents were rated poor quality, with only 8% rated fair quality and 9% rated good quality. For parks targeting white residents, the comparable numbers were 50% poor quality, 31% fair quality and 19% good quality. The primary factor driving this disparity was maintenance, as measured by the amount of trash, noise, vandalism and evidence of illegal activity.

The size of the park also matters. Most Black Montgomery residents live near small neighborhood parks, which my research showed were in the worst condition. Larger community parks generate revenue from community and sporting events, so city officials tend to direct more money to these locations.

Park Access and Environmental Justice

Research shows that access to nature is important for people’s physical and mental health. This makes public parks essential resources, especially in urban areas. Poor people and people of color often have less access to parks, which are often located in areas with high housing prices.

My research shows how systemic disinvestment can perpetuate unequal park access in cities with a history of segregation. With limited funding, cities like Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia tend to invest in large community parks. Many small neighborhood parks, which are crucial for equal access, need to be improved.

Montgomery’s comprehensive plan, Envision Montgomery 2040, calls for upgrading parks and recreation facilities and maintaining them more effectively. Involving residents in prioritizing park projects can help make those investments more equitable, especially if they’re focused on small parks in disadvantaged neighborhoods where the legacy of segregation persists.

Binita Mahato is an assistant professor of community planning at Auburn University.