High Country News
Mariss Ortega-Welch
Historian Donna Graves looks at the LGBTQ+ exhibit at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historic Park in Richmond, California.
Marissa Ortega-Welch
Donna Graves couldn’t believe it when she heard that the LGBTQ+ exhibit she created at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historic Park in Richmond, California,
was in jeopardy. Walking through the airy brick building in mid-June, a former World War II factory turned visitor center, she stopped in front of the exhibit’s three tall free-standing signs. One of them read “Changing History” in big, bold letters on top.
Sunlight streamed through the windows behind them, while the sound of archival newsreels wafted over from the next room.
Graves, a historian, helped found this national historical park, which focuses on Americans’ involvement in the WWII war effort, 25 years ago. The visitor center opened
in 2012, and in 2016 Graves added this exhibit, telling the stories of queer people in the Bay Area during the war. Though homosexuality was illegal, queer folks found ways to be themselves, even if they had to live under the radar. “It was, as far as we know,
the first permanent exhibit on LGBTQ history at a national park,” Graves said. The exhibit includes an old advertisement for Finocchio’s, a popular drag club in San Francisco, and a more recent photo of a Pride parade, with marchers holding a banner paraphrasing
a famous Martin Niemöller quote: “The Nazis first came for the Jews and I said nothing.”
In January, President Donald Trump issued executive orders dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion programs and banning the use of the word “transgender” in federal
communications. Fearing the visitor center would be seen as in violation of these orders, a Rosie the Riveter staffer quietly took down the LGBTQ+ exhibit. Word about this reached Graves, and after she got over her disbelief, she got angry. She and others
made their concerns known to staff, who put the exhibit back up a few days later.
“It was, as far as we know, the first permanent exhibit on LGBTQ history at a national
park.”
But it was only the first time the Trump administration issued directives about how national parks communicate history. Now there’s a sign on the counter near the museum
entrance and gift shop inviting visitors to report any “negative” information they see presented. All national parks were required to post these signs by June 13 and staff must review and evaluate each piece of feedback. National parks must also report any
content that “inappropriately disparages” Americans to the Department of the Interior by July 18. (In a statement, the Department of the Interior said the order is a step toward ensuring history presented at places like national parks is “free from ideological
distortion” and that the goal is “not to erase history but to correct inaccuracies and omissions, ensuring that all Americans are represented fairly and truthfully.”)
For years, Graves has worked with the National Park Service to share the rich diversity of American stories, even those parts of U.S. history that could be seen as “negative.” The Rosie the Riveter park tells how the U.S. came together to fight in WWII but
also how some Americans faced discrimination from their own government, including how Black Americans could only hold certain jobs and Japanese Americans were incarcerated after the Pearl Harbor bombing. It was important to Graves to tell these stories not
just because they are factual, but also so that all Americans could see themselves reflected in the nation’s history. That wouldn’t be possible under these new policies, Graves said.
Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site in Kiowa County, Colorado.National Park Service
THE WAY THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE presents history has evolved
over the last few decades. At Civil War sites like Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania, the Park Service shifted from giving a blow-by-blow account of battles to addressing slavery as a root cause of the war. It acquired new sites such as Sand
Creek Massacre National Historic Site in Colorado, where American soldiers ambushed and murdered hundreds of Arapaho and Cheyenne civilians, and Cesar Chavez National Monument in California, which honors leaders in the struggle for farmworker rights.
“These are complicated issues, but it’s all a part of our shared national narrative,” said Alan Spears, the senior director for cultural resources at the National Parks
Conservation Association. And if the highest levels of government refuse to talk about it, “then we are basically ignoring the stories of a significant part of the population. And I actually think I would go so far and be so bold as to say I feel like that’s
a civil rights violation.”
Spears said asking visitors to inform on interpretive rangers could be seen as harkening back to more restrictive times, such as when the government investigated people for being associated with communism. “Are you now or have you ever been a historian?”
he quipped. Spears said he is worried about a chilling effect from the new policies, but, he added, “I also know that there are some people in the National Park Service who are committed to maintaining truth, accuracy and inclusion.”
“These are complicated issues, but it’s all a part of our shared national narrative.”
Indeed, park staff across the country are finding ways to resist. Over a thousand off-duty park rangers have formed an ad hoc group called the Resistance Rangers, which
organizes protests in person and on social media and is archiving park websites that are being edited to remove references to queer and trans people and climate change. The group communicates on an encrypted texting app, with members often using only their
initials — a level of security more typically associated with political activists than people whose day jobs include giving campfire programs about the night sky.
Many people who work for the Park Service are eager to talk, though not on the record. Rangers report feeling sad or angry about having to outwardly comply with recent
orders. However, those orders also leave room for interpretation, and many staffers are taking advantage of this. “An important thing I’ve learned is that in the federal government, you only take action when you’re directed to,” one interpretive ranger in
the Bay Area told me, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect their job. “I can’t spend time worrying,” the ranger said, especially amid deep staffing and budget cuts. “There are literal emergencies, like people getting lost. I’m grateful I don’t have
to waste my time parsing out these convoluted directives that have not been thought through.”
The
entrance to Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historic Park in Richmond, California.Bill Abbott/CC via Flickr
The most important thing to the Bay Area ranger is continuing to help people connect to these places. “There’s a unique privilege to being one of the ‘storytellers of
America.’” they said. At this time, their park unit isn’t removing any exhibits that might be deemed “negative,” and it is continuing to deliver its programs, although workers are being strategic in what they promote online. “I try to balance what it means
to be visible and do the work,” the ranger said.
A few weeks after Rosie the Riveter staff put the LGBTQ+ exhibit back up, Graves was visiting the center and saw an older man reading the signs and looking at the photos
for quite some time. “I finally went up to him and said, ‘You look so interested in this,’” Graves said. “And he said, ‘Well, I better be. I have one kid who’s trans and one who’s gay.’” Graves thought, what if the signs had still been down? And he hadn’t
been able to read those stories and feel a connection to his own children? “That really moved me,” she said.
Graves said that what happened at Rosie the Riveter is ultimately a hopeful story. “The community said, ‘This is important to us.’ And park leadership said, ‘We’re going to put it back up.’” But as federal directives continue to play out, the future of the
LGBTQ+ exhibit is unclear.
Email us at editor@hcn.org or
submit a letter to the editor.
Want to receive TOM BUTT E-FORUM delivered to your email address?
Click here to sign-up to receive the E-Forum. Tom Butt is the former mayor of Richmond, CA, having served 27+ years until January of 2023, eight of those as elected mayor. Tom Butt is an architect and founder of the 50-year
old Richmond architecture-engineering firm Interactive Resources. He serves on the board of two Richmond nonprofits,
Rosie the Riveter Trust and
East Brother Light Station, Inc. Visit the
Tom
Butt website for additional information about Tom Butt’s activities and a digest of past E-FORUMS going back to 2000,
http://www.tombutt.com. Subscription to this service is at the personal discretion of the recipient and may be terminated by selecting “unsubscribe from
this list” at the bottom of this email. This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental,
political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section
107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml.
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
|