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- 🥾 Black women have been outside
🥾 Black women have been outside
How the outdoors shaped the women who challenged a nation
Just Pchy
February 02, 2024
Hi friends, it’s Friday. It’s February. It’s Black History Month. It’s 2024.
How are you?
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Black women have been outside
Accounts we love to follow
Out and Back with Alison Mariella DĂ©sir
Black women have been outside
It’s a common stereotype and narrative that Black people don’t like the outdoors. When the reality is a lack of diversity and inclusion in outdoor spaces that can be traced back to the very beginning of national parks. Especially in the individuals and systems that were created around national parks.
John Muir, for example, is often credited with the creation of the National Park System and the conservation movement but has recently been exposed for his long history of racism.
In 2009, Rue Mapp, a former Morgan Stanley analyst was asked by her mentor, “If you could be doing anything right now, what would it be?”
The answer for Rue was being outdoors. She loved nature and community and she wanted to connect with other Black people that liked the outdoors.
Two weeks later she launched Outdoor Afro with a blog and a Facebook. She started writing about her experiences being the only Black person at hiking and camping meetups and activities. She would get comments and stories from other Black people who would say, “I’m tired of being the only one too.”
Outdoor Afro grew to span 18 cities and over 7,000 active members and continues to grow.
“Outdoor Afro uses social media and volunteers to organize outdoor recreational activities like camping, hiking, birding, biking, and skiing for Black people. The group’s tagline? Where Black people and nature meet.”
Tiya Miles, in her beautiful book, Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged the Nation works to uncover the history of women in the outdoors.
In a recent article by Gloria Liu for Outdoor Magazine they write of Wild Girls:
“In Wild Girls, Miles focuses on women of the 19th century, when, she writes, indoor spaces represented both literal and psychic confinement. White women were relegated to the domestic sphere at a time when performing physical work or playing sports was considered unfeminine. Enslaves Black women working in the house endured the surveillance of the women who controlled them and sexual predation by the men, even as the outdoors connoted both the toil and forced labor and the beauty of nature.”
We’re definitely going to read this one for book club. 📚
Accounts we love to follow đź‘Ť
Rue Mapp (Isn’t it funny she’s an adventure babe and her last name is Mapp?)
Outdoor Afro - National not-for-profit organization celebrates and inspires Black connections and leadership in nature.
Hike Clerb - Healing together through nature
an intersectional women’s outdoors clubThe Unpopular Black - Educating & inspiring Black adventure through the American outdoors
Alison Mariella DĂ©sir - Author Running While Black
Out and Back with Alison Mariella DĂ©sir
Alison Mariella Désir is the Author of Running While Black: Finding Freedom in a Sport That Wasn’t Built for Us.
“Runners know that running brings us to ourselves. But for Black people, the simple act of running has never been so simple. It is a declaration of the right to move through the world. If running is claiming public space, why, then, does it feel like a negotiation?”
Alison is also the host of Out and Back a PBS streaming show that looks at activities that have been fiercely gatekept by membership fees, expensive equipment, land restrictions, and discriminatory rules and regulations.
The show follows groups and individuals who are challenging and dismantling those restrictions.
Go Alison Go! đź’Ş
