Mapping & Public History: Segregated Girl Scout Camps

Hannah LeComte, George Mason University

Pocahontas State Park, located twenty miles southwest of Richmond, Virginia, is known for its Civilian Conservation Corps museum and New Deal-era history. What is less known about the park is that it was the home to one of Virginia’s only established camps for Black Girl Scouts—Camp Pinoaka. From the late 1930s through the mid-1950s, Black girls and women from eastern Virginia, Washington, DC, and Baltimore, spent their summers at Camp Pinoaka, forging relationships to the natural environment, building communities with other scouts and counselors, and practicing the patriotism in a period where Black women and girls were not afforded full civil rights. White Girl Scouts camped across a divide in the state park at Camp Pocahontas, which opened in 1928, one decade before Camp Pinoaka. Like the girls attending Camp Pinoaka in Virginia, Black girls across the United States camped in segregated portions of state parks, or in separate parks altogether. These camps, which served as important spaces for Black communities across the country, are largely absent from the historical record. This project maps the separate Girl Scout camps for Black and white girls across the country over time to explore both spatial and temporal relationships between segregated camps. The history of environmentalism in the United States often overlooks the participation and contributions of Black Americans. I argue that mapping these spaces that historically served to connect Black girls and women to natural environments, while recognizing the understudied history of segregation in the GSUSA, can help contemporary audiences recognize a more inclusive history of environmentalism in the United States. Further, spatially rendering these camps can help connect their histories to public historical sites—like Pocahontas State Park—to ensure more inclusive interpretations.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 65. HGIS for the Public