Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
National park working to broaden its diversity
Buffalo seeks minority guests
HARRISON — When Kevin Cheri went to work for the Buffalo National River in 1978, he knew he’d be the only black resident within a 50-mile radius.
“There were people who didn’t want me coming here,” he said. “There were threats against my life.”
Despite the threats and a tire slashing, Cheri worked for 2 1 ⁄ years as a ranger at Buffalo
2 Point in Marion County and remembers the time fondly.
He left in 1980 for a better job as district ranger at Canyonlands National Park in Utah.
Four national parks and 27 years later, Cheri returned to Arkansas in 2007 to be superintendent of the Buffalo National River.
One of his goals is to attract more minority- group visitors to the park, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.
“I knew when people got to see me, when minorities did, they would be more comfortable,” said Cheri. “If I don’t take every opportunity to make minorities feel more at home and welcome here, I feel I’ve failed myself.”
Visitors to the country’s 397 national park sites are overwhelmingly non-Hispanic white people, according to surveys. Blacks and Hispanics are underrepresented based on their percentage of the overall population, according to the National Park Service Comprehensive Survey of the American Public, 2008-2009.
The survey indicated blacks accounted for about 7 percent of visitors to national parks. Whites accounted for the vast majority of visitors — 78 percent — while Hispanics accounted for 9 percent. Other races made up the remaining 6 percent, but the park visitation numbers for those races were consistent with their percentage of
the overall U.S. population.
Black and Hispanic visitors were much more likely than whites to feel that national parks were unsafe or were “unpleasant places for me to be,” according to the survey of 4,103 people. A study conducted in 2000 found similar trends.
“We have had decades of research on racial and ethnic disparities in visits to public lands, including national parks,” said James Gramann, a professor in recreation, park and tourism sciences at Texas A&M University and co-author of the study completed in 2009. “And we have had decades of research on why these disparities occur. What we need now is solid research on what strategies are effective in attracting a more diverse population to the parks.”
Minority-group members are becoming a larger segment of the U.S. population. As white Baby Boomers age, who will replace them as visitors to national parks, Gramann asked. Will national parks be protected and preserved in the future if visitation is declining?
About 285 million people visited national parks in both 2000 and 2009, according to the survey. Cheri said the Buffalo National River has about 1.5 million visitors a year.
Cheri said he has been working with schools to bring students to the Buffalo National River — inner-city kids who might otherwise never see the park. Groups of black students have come from Little Rock and Marshallese students have come from Springdale. For many of them, it was their first time in a canoe, he said.
Many people who aren’t used to the wilderness are concerned about animal attacks or have other exaggerated fears, Cheri said. Visiting the park helps alleviate those concerns.
“You start to impact a larger group of people that the environment is not something to fear,” he said.
Black people historically have been more comfortable in urban America, Cheri said. When they travel, it tends to be from city to city.
CROSS-CULTURAL INTEREST
Cheri, 57, said his fascination with other cultures overrode his desire to stay in his comfort zone. Besides, he needed a job.
A native of New Orleans of Creole descent, Cheri said he stumbled into a Parks Service job while a student at Xavier University in New Orleans. The school had a slot that would allow a student to work every summer from 1974-77 as a park technician at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. Even though he was majoring in health and physical education, Cheri took the job, and it changed his life.
“Being from the city, I had no idea what I was getting into,” he said.
Cheri was stunned by the size of the caverns and the darkness of New Mexico nights.
After he graduated from Xavier in 1978, Cheri went to work at the Buffalo. The Park Service embraced cultural diversity, he said.
“I came into a Park Service that was sensitive to me,” Cheri said. “They took an interest in me.”
Co-workers often asked Cheri about cooking Creole food. They would show up with a handful of crawfish and want him to boil them Louisiana style, a process that normally involves a much larger quantity.
The cross-cultural interest was mutual.
“I was interested in the Ozarks, these hillbillies,” Cheri said. “What do y’all eat? ... I’m a student of this experience of going from one culture to another. It’s what I enjoy. Now I understand a little about what they think. It’s something to learn from rather than fear. It’s one of the things that has given me a full life.”
Cheri said he was told in 1978 that he’d be the only black resident anywhere near Buffalo Point, but there was something he wasn’t told.
“They didn’t tell me about the history of the [Ku Klux] Klan,” he said.
Cheri referred to the Harrison Race Riots of 1905 and 1909, in which almost all black residents were forced out of Boone County, the county just west of Marion County, where Buffalo Point is located.
In the late 1970s, Cheri still felt racial tension in the Ozark Mountains.
Cheri said people would stare at him in grocery stores and there were occasional racial slurs. The tire slashing was the worst of it, but he didn’t let it bother him.
“I wasn’t in a rush to leave,” he said. “The thing is you don’t make changes running away from everything. But you put it in perspective. No place is perfect.”
‘AMAZINGLY DIFFERENT’
After Canyonlands National Park, Cheri was superintendent at Fort Davis National Historic Site in Texas, deputy superintendent at Big Bend National Park in Texas, deputy superintendent at Jean Lafitte National Historic Park and Preserve near New Orleans and superintendent at Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area near Atlanta.
Cheri, his wife, Laura, and three of their four children live in Harrison, where the Buffalo National River office is located.
Minority-group members are more accepted in Boone County now than they were in the 1970s, Cheri said.
“It was amazingly different,” he said of his return to the area. “I can go to the store and not get stared at by everybody.”
Jeff Crockett, the mayor of Harrison, said the perception of the city has changed considerably since he moved there 22 years ago. Crockett said he knew black people then who wouldn’t leave their hotel room after dark if they were spending the night in Harrison.
“People are not nearly as afraid to come here as they were,” he said. “I can imagine back in the ’70s how difficult it was for people of color to live here.”
Crockett said the city has been working to change its image and formed a task force in 2003 devoted to race relations.
Bob Reynolds, who was mayor of Harrison from 200008, said people there didn’t realize the reputation the city had in the rest of Arkansas.
The problem was exacerbated when Thom Robb, a resident of Zinc, 15 miles northeast of Harrison, became national director of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in 1989. Robb used a post office box in Harrison, so the city appeared as the return address on Klan material even though it was never the organization’s headquarters, said Reynolds.
Crockett said Robb is just one person, and his views aren’t those of the city of Harrison or its residents.
According to the 2010 census, Boone County had 674 Hispanic residents, 229 Asians and 131 black residents. Whites still make up the vast majority of county residents, though, with 35,624.
Neighboring Marion County had 287 Hispanics, 37 Asians and 30 black residents in 2010, compared to 16,246 white residents.
Cheri has hired three black employees at the Buffalo National River since he has been superintendent. Two of them live in Harrison. The park has about 60 full-time employees.
“Since I’ve come here, I’ve made it a point to recruit minorities,” he said. “Things are changing. By being here, that opens the door.”
Keith Jefferson, 37, who is black, came to work as a ranger at the Buffalo National River in 2008. He’s from Somerville, Tenn., about 45 miles northeast of Memphis.
“The main complaint when we looked at the 2009 Park Service study is minorities didn’t see people who looked like them,” Jefferson said. “You had other complaints, but that was the one that stood out when you looked at the statistics behind it.”
Jefferson said part of his job is to recruit minority-group members to work at the park. He has two black students from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff coming to work at the park this summer.
Jefferson said it can be difficult to recruit students from the Delta and south Arkansas to work at the Buffalo National River because of the cultural differences.
“Harrison has their famous history that most black folks in the state know about,” he said.
Jefferson said he has two daughters, ages 11 and 13, who attend school in Harrison.
“Overall it’s a good place to raise a kid,” he said. “This area doesn’t move that fast. That’s kind of good. Metro Memphis moves too fast. ... The culture is different, but overall I’m happy to be raising them over here instead of back home or in South Carolina, where my wife is from.”
Moving out of that comfort zone to the Buffalo National River area is a big step for members of minority groups who have come there to work, Cheri said. It sends a message to others.
“Sometimes the welcome sign is not enough by itself,” he said.