Juneteenth, the recognition of the day that all slaves were finally informed they were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, didn’t get the national attention it deserved until relatively recently. However, we are making an effort to acknowledge the importance of this day to include the designation of Juneteenth as a newly created federal holiday. Acknowledging, or reacquainting, ourselves with our history is imperative and, just like with Juneteenth, the contributions of African Americans to forestry need to be shared.

African American history in the Forest Service is often viewed through the lens of achievements of people like Chip Cartwright, Leslie Weldon and Ellie Towns, who resisted cultural and organizational norms as they sought leadership positions within the agency. Yet they were not the first Black Forest Service employees; they were preceded by employees working in forestry, natural resources and fire positions from the agency’s early days.

African Americans have always had a presence on the landscape and forest lands as early-on agency hires, working in natural resource, fire and timber positions in the rural South. Groups like the Triple Nickles and Buffalo Soldiers were integral in shaping many of the Fire and Aviation programs and techniques we use today. African Americans worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression, as smokejumpers during World War II and in ever-expanding roles as the years progressed. In fact, by 1962, the agency employed 148 African American employees, a number that grew with passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the creation of the Tuskegee Institute Forestry Program for African American students interested in forestry and soil science, and passage of the 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act. Men and women of color entered the agency in greater numbers in the 1980s and 1990s as the agency intentionally moved toward a multicultural organization. Today, our story of leadership continues to grow with the 2021 appointments of Randy Moore and Angela Coleman as the first African American Chief and associate chief, respectively.

Our historical and cultural biases lead us to believe that African American experiences on forest lands and achievements within our agency are exceptions to the norm and did not exist. However, historical research reaffirms that African Americans were users and inhabitants of forest lands long before the agency existed.

Not only were African Americans forest land inhabitants, their experiences include stories of resistance. Regions 8 and 9 are capturing comprehensive accounts of resistance and civil rights on forest sites by rural African American farm communities and homesteads, Underground Railroad sites, industrial sites, churches, Depression era relief efforts, and 19th century resettlement communities. Learn more about the Sites of Civil Rights and Resistance through FS Talks (internal link).

We’ve told our agency story from a single perspective—the forester from Yale Forestry School—that has omitted African Americans graduates of Historically Black Colleges and Universities such as Southern University, Tuskegee University and Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University. By imposing that limited scope, we have failed ourselves and disregarded the impact, influence and perspectives of various people on the landscape.

We don’t know our complete history and, therefore, we lack comprehensive understanding of our agency history. To mitigate that, agency historians are working to document that history through national projects like the newly launched African American Oral History Project, Sites of Civil Rights and Resistance Program, and HerStory project. The next time you think about our agency’s storied past, reach for a more rounded view and be curious about what might be missing.