A Keystone Dam and Georgia’s New Ocean - Southern Water, Southern Power - page 70

Amidst all of this physical activity and parkscaping, Georgia's newly organized Depart-
ment of Natural Resources and other state and federal agencies assembled a recreation sur-
vey in 1939. The Report on Outdoor Recreation in Georgia ultimately highlighted the ne-
cessity of preservation and a state park system. Acquiring or setting land aside earlier rather
than later would ultimately save “large sums of money” needed to research, relocate, and
establish state parks, monuments, and historical sites. The authors wanted to learn from
other states' experiences, “where rapid development and growth of population, business
and industry” had “outstripped the love for recreation.” The study's authors concluded, “It
appears entirely logical and feasible to anticipate future trends, and look ahead, by at least
acquiring, preserving and partially developing areas, which future generations will need for
recreation, and probably will appreciate even more than today's generation.” Recreation,
apparently, was “alive in the hearts of Georgians.” 41
When the authors of Georgia's state park report recognized that recreation was alive
in citizens' hearts, they also acknowledged that those hearts were in black and white
bodies. Recreation conversations among leisure-seekers, state planners, elected officials,
and federal bureaucrats always included discussions about race, class, and gender. Numer-
ous writers have argued that private recreational opportunities were central to the formation
of African American identity and community throughout the Jim Crow era. Another has re-
vealed that even the NPS system planned in the 1930s to racially segregate users when they
began building southern national parks—including the Great Smoky Mountains and Shen-
andoah—only to reverse course in 1942 after African Americans lobbied the NPS. 42 State
parks—areas not considered by these studies—also became contested ground for outdoor
recreation at southern water and energy projects in the Jim Crow era. State park systems
throughout the South chose different paths to exclude or include African Americans. And
plans for segregated state parks in Georgia and South Carolina—and eventually the Savan-
nah River valley at Clarks Hill—were not without precedent.
North Carolinians may have operated the first state park in the American South—Jones
Lake—for African Americans to leisurely interact with the environment in a Jim Crow set-
ting in 1939. 43 While African Americans built and operated numerous private coastal recre-
ational areas and communities, no other southern state legislatures or park systems appear
to have created segregated parks for African Americans before 1940. 44 Georgia planners
thought a lot like the federal and state officials in North Carolina. Throughout the State
Planning Board's Report on Outdoor Recreation in Georgia (1939), the writers advocated
for segregated recreational facilities based on racial and socioeconomic categories. Due to
Georgia's demographics and assumed Jim Crow-segregated future, the authors declared
that “separate areas and facilities for education, welfare, recreation, and other activities
were required for” white and black residents.