Damarius Johnson
This afternoon I’m speaking with Dustin. So I just wanted to know if you could say a bit about yourself, introduce yourself as a researcher, and any professional affiliation you’d like to also mention.

Dustin Meier
Hi, so yeah, my name is Dustin Meier, I recently finished my PhD in history at Ohio State. I studied the urban, environmental, and social history of the 20th century United States. I’m interested in the intersection of race and the environment and sort of looking at the sort of environmental history of marginalized populations. I’m currently working as a visiting professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati, teaching American environmental history and global environmental history. And I’m looking to, you know, at some point in my career become a full time professor.

Damarius Johnson
Talk in particular about “Wade in the Water” and this particular story? You could talk about maybe how you found the images. What was it about the story that you thought is significant to share?

Dustin Meier
Yeah, so I, I came across this essay, I was trying to find images that really relay the importance of the intersection of the natural environment with the wider African American experience in American history. And so in my own research, I look at the history of summer camps. And so I was looking at summer camps, I was looking at city parks and state parks and other sort of natural spaces. Resorts play sort of an important role in the African American community in the 20th century. And so I was looking at different natural spaces, and I stumbled upon upon this image of a beach. And, you know, for people living in the Jim Crow South in the early 20th century, you know, the beach was a very important part of life, both as an economic resource as well as sort of a source of recreation. And so I came across this image, and I thought it was really powerful image, because it sort of highlights an untold moment in the history of the Black freedom struggle. You know, we think about bus boycotts and public schools and we think about lunch counter sit-ins and things like that. We don’t always think about the natural environment, sort of how that interacts with the Black freedom struggle. And so I was attracted to that image, specifically for you know, what it does in that way, sort of unveiling an aspect of the Black freedom struggle that isn’t always told in contemporary narratives. And so that was, you know, what kind of drew me to the picture, and then it was also just a really powerful image. It was an image that was, had a lot going on, and a lot of different things that you could sort of pinpoint and analyze, you know, larger, larger big picture stuff.

Damarius Johnson
Yeah, so I wanted to know if you could talk a little bit more about the kind of environmental access, because one of the themes that you wrote about, and I would be interested if you could talk more about, is travel. And one of the things you mentioned is that travel is unsafe. So having access to local beaches, is a really important struggle to have access to local leisure. So I was wondering if you could talk a bit about why travel would have been unsafe in that time?

Dustin Meier
Yeah, so for African Americans, you know, traveling during that period, it was always unsafe to stop at, you know, certain gas stations, or certain diners where they might not have, you know, been welcomed. And so for African Americans planning their vacations or planning, you know, large, long distance trips throughout the American South, it was always a struggle. There was always, you know, trouble to sort of plan out their route and make sure that they didn’t end up in certain areas that were unsafe after the sun went down and things like that. And so yeah, travel was unsafe for African Americans and access to natural spaces was also sort of a matter of life and death in a time when people didn’t always have, you know, before air-conditioning, access to sort of a cool environment was sort of difficult and so you know, going to the beach and going to other parks, you know, being outside was a way to cool down in the South. And so for African Americans, they had to travel a lot more than the white population. And so that was sort of a, sort of another element that, you know, contributes to sort of their, you know, racial oppression in the, in the Jim Crow South.

Damarius Johnson
Yes, and another aspect of the kind of environmental context is thinking about access on one end, and then also exposure to unsafe environments. So, I wonder if you could talk a bit about kind of how that is also disproportionate.

Dustin Meier
Yeah, and so you know, the the contrary, the other side of African Americans’ lack of access to certain spaces was the spaces that they had to go to, right? And so you know, everyone wanted to find a place where they could play, a place where they could cool off. The white population, you know, usually had ready access to beaches in the Jim Crow South, but they also had access to certain parks and certain places where they could get some fresh air, spend time in the grass, spend time away from the asphalt and things like that. For African Americans, a lot of times, they had to go to parks that were, you know, polluted by, you know, nearby industry or streams that were polluted. They didn’t always have access to the same sort of clean water, clean air, clean soil that, you know, the white population did. And so that’s, you know, what historians have called environmental racism as sort of another aspect of Jim Crow segregation that isn’t always told. But it’s an important part of that story, because, you know, it sort of makes up where people spend their time, whether they’re at home or at work, or at play, if your environment is toxic, or environmentally dangerous, that can be detrimental. And in the Jim Crow South, it was overwhelmingly detrimental for African Americans.

Damarius Johnson
Could you give us some sense of whether or not this context of environmental racism is specific to the Jim Crow South, or is this also present in northern cities in access to leisure space?

Dustin Meier
Environmental racism is a very pervasive thing in the 20th century history of the United States, both for people in the Jim Crow South, but when African Americans, you know, migrate north to places like Chicago, or New York City, or if they go west to Los Angeles, they’re still experiencing this, especially in these larger industrial cities, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, where they’re, you know, due to housing discrimination or job discrimination, they’re living and working next to factories, next to industry, that’s sort of polluting their environment. So they’re experiencing, you know, disproportionate amounts of asthma and other sort of, you know, environmental diseases. And so environmental racism, the history of environmental racism is not just a product of the Jim Crow South, but it’s sort of a product of sort of every, every context throughout the United States in the post Civil War period and certainly before as well.

Damarius Johnson
You mentioned the, kind of, typical ways that we understand civil rights history, the civil rights movement in terms of like these serious political contexts, but could you talk about some of the ways that thinking about leisure helps us to think more broadly about what protests meant in this time period?

Dustin Meier
When you look at the access to leisure and the access to recreation as an element of the Black freedom struggle, it really helps you to understand how pervasive Jim Crow segregation was. African Americans weren’t just prevented from being able to vote or to express their political rights or their economic rights, they were also unable to enjoy their free time as much as white America. So it helps you to sort of realize that Jim Crow segregation wasn’t just this economic and political system and structure, it was also something that impacted sort of every minute aspect of daily life that we might not think about. I also think one thing about the Black freedom struggle that I really learned in graduate school was sort of how chronologically diverse it is. And so it’s not just the middle decades of the 20th century, when we, you know, when we talk about Martin Luther King and other sort of like, major figures, but you know, African Americans had been fighting for their, you know, political, economic, social freedom, you know, since the 1600s. And when you look at the natural environment, as sort of an aspect of that, I think it sort of broadens our scope, because the natural environment is always there. And it’s always an element of either racial oppression or racial empowerment. So it provides, I think, a lens for giving us that, that wider chronological scope.

Damarius Johnson
Yeah, so just to be clear, I know that you addressed this in your answer, but just just so that it’s maybe obvious or explicit, could you talk about whether or not this access to leisure and this, kind of these movements to have greater access to recreation is also part of a longer Black freedom struggle that’s not just about beaches in the particular story, but could be thought about more broadly? Could you give us a sense of whether that that’s an accurate characterization?

Dustin Meier
I think a big part of looking at the wider history of access to leisure spaces is looking at the wider history of African Americans’ relationship with the natural environment. And so if we go all the way back to the mid 19th century, when people, when white Americans are sort of romanticizing nature and the natural environment as a place outside of civilization, and a place where you can go to find recreation or to find spirituality or things like that, you know, African Americans who were enslaved in the south knew it as a place of terror and a place of labor and a place of having their families, you know, separated and things like that. And so African Americans have historically not had the same relationship with the natural environment that white Americans had. And when you get to the 20th century, and African Americans are either, you know, trying to make their way in the Jim Crow South, or traveling north to places like Chicago and New York and Cleveland, Pittsburgh, they’re sort of flipping that relationship. And they’re learning how to find the natural environment as a space where they can sort of escape white supremacy and to escape racial oppression and sort of enjoy spending time in nature building community, sort of, you know, using their free time to sort of enjoy themselves. And so there’s sort of a shift from the pre-Civil War period to the 20th century. And obviously, that’s an oversimplification, but like, the way that African Americans engage with nature and sort of think about nature changes in that period. So I think that is sort of an important aspect of the story.

Damarius Johnson
Sure, and is there an element of interracial collaboration? So we can think about areas, kind of, spaces of protests, like schools or polls, and we see this kind of interracial coalition building as part of this larger resistance struggle. I wanted to know if these leisure spaces are spaces where you see the coalition, or is there a concern about, kind of, sex and recreation, which also seems to be in the air in this period. So I just wanted to know if you could talk more about that?

Dustin Meier
Yeah, that’s a good question. I think that there are a lot of histories of, like I said, I kind of study the history of summer camps, there are a lot of summer camps that are interracial as early as, you know, the 1930s, 1940s. Whether they’re hosted by groups like the Camp Fire Girls, or social settlement houses, which are sort of, you know, social service agencies in cities, there are a lot of interracial summer camps as early as the 1940s. You know, before, before Brown v Board, there are also, you know, a lot of beaches that becomes sort of interracial pretty early on in places like New York City, which are, you know, very interracial places at that time. And so there certainly are interracial spaces, there aren’t as many as you know, you know, maybe we think there should be. The natural environment, still, for the most part is a pretty segregated space in the 20th century United States, and, you know, some would argue, is still today. But there are certainly, you know, examples of interracial spaces in the natural environment and interracial shared spaces. And, of course, you know, as I sort of tried to argue in my piece, you know, that is something that, you know, upset people, white people in power, was the sort of interracial commingling of, you know, Black men and white women, and vice versa, for a lot of people. And so the the interracial aspects, sort of, you know, there are a lot of like, moments of hope and like, you know, we can have this interracial space, and then there are a lot of moments of, you know, clamping down oppression that we see elsewhere throughout society.