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Our job is to write an administrative history of the unit, describing how it came to be established, and examining all the major decision points in its subsequent development and management. We knew very little about Dr. Carver beforehand, so we began our project by learning about this fascinating man who was so widely acclaimed in the first half of the twentieth century. When Congress established the national monument shortly after Carver's death in 1943, there were just two other birthplace national monuments and those were the birthplaces of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. It was the first National Park System unit to commemorate the achievements of an African American.
In writing this report, it has been interesting to place the story of the national monument in the context of the civil rights movement. A major argument for commemorating Dr. Carver with a national monument in the midst of WWII was to shore up African American support for the war effort and also to appeal to nonwhite peoples around the globe by countering Nazi propaganda that the U.S. was a racist country. As the Park Service developed this unit in the 1950s, it took deliberate steps to create a racially integrated park staff and public space in a racially segregated state.
