“Montgomery was a pioneer educator,” Berger explains. “She helped fund a state park along with the Washington Women’s Federation, and she sparked the idea of a Pacific hiking trail running from Canada to Mexico through the Cascades and the Sierras. She was an early and avid outdoorswoman.”
Right after the show aired, Berger received an email from a viewer, Ron Judd, who had written about Montgomery and college politics at Western Washington University in Bellingham. He pointed to his research in which a faculty colleague of Montgomery’s remembered her expressing some exceedingly racist thoughts at a public meeting.
“I can say my immediate response was extreme disappointment,” Berger said upon hearing Judd’s revelation. “I felt our segment was trying to bring more public notice to an early advocate of expanding the reach of the outdoors for more people.”
To discuss Montgomery and her legacy, Berger invited Alison Mariella Désir, host of Cascade PBS’s Out and Back, a series that explores the historical barriers that have come between marginalized communities and outdoor activities, through conversations with the change-makers who are reclaiming that space.
Berger: I probably should not have been surprised. Your show is dedicated to diversifying access to the outdoors. The outdoor and environmental movement has an exclusionary past, doesn’t it, Alison?
Désir: Absolutely. The outdoors has a history of exclusion that has laid the foundation for the nature or adventure gap that persists in communities of color today.
One of the stories that I share on my show is about a Black man, Armand Lucas, who is an avid birder and now has started his own community for BIPOC birders, called Urban Woods Collective. When people think of birding, they think of John James Audubon, whose name is almost synonymous with birds. But Audubon “was a complex and troubling character who did despicable things even by the standards of his day. He enslaved Black people and wrote critically about emancipation. He stole human remains and sent the skulls to a colleague who used them to assert that whites were superior to nonwhites.”
The history of the outdoors is full of examples like that – the architects of our national parks, our institutions, our sanctuaries may have been ahead of their time in some ways, but not when it comes to racism, unfortunately.
Berger: The early outing groups, like the Mountaineers in Washington and the Mazamas in Oregon, were pretty much all-white. Participants had to have money, equipment, leisure time and supportive peers to engage in hiking, mountain climbing, and outdoor recreation in the early 1900s. Women, though, were heavily involved. Also, as women’s clubs became important social and advocacy organizations, they were segregated early on as well.
Désir: Yes, you know the idea that white women – who had to fight to prove their worth to white men – were themselves upholding systems of oppression is a difficult pill to swallow. The same is true when we think of the suffrage movement, happening roughly around the same period as the founding of the Mountaineers and the Mazamas. The 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, allowed white women the right to vote. Women of color would not receive that right until the Civil Rights Voting Act of 1964.
Historical figures are complex and often incoherent – it makes it difficult for us to reconcile how someone like Montgomery who did so good could, at the same time, harbor so much prejudice.
Despite all the obstacles to participation in the outdoors, however, people of color have nonetheless participated in all aspects of the outdoors since time immemorial. What I love most about my show is that it gives me the opportunity to learn some of the hidden or erased stories of us in the outdoors [and] connect with contemporary folks engaging in that same activity, then share these stories with the world.
Berger: What have you learned doing Out & Back?
Désir: In season 2 of my show, I met with the founder of the Buffalo Soldiers of Seattle, an organization dedicated to preserving and uplifting the history of the Buffalo Soldiers … six all-African American United States Army regiments formed during the 19th century to serve on the American frontier. The Buffalo Soldiers were also among the first protectors of what would eventually become national parks, including Sequoia and Yosemite in the late 19th/early 20th centuries.
BIPOC people have created a path for ourselves in the outdoors really against all odds.