Saving our best places

Among the many things I have admired about President Obama is his concern for America’s historical places and his willingness to protect them.

By invoking the Antiquities Act of 1906 to designate the sites, Obama has now used the act more than any other president. He has created or expanded 34 national monuments, two more than Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The sites he designated this week include the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL, the building which was bombed in 1963, killing four little girls and injuring 22 other people. Next there’s the Freedom Riders Monument meant to commemorate

the May 14, 1961, attack on a bus in Anniston [AL] that was carrying an interracial group of young men and women who were challenging the segregation that existed at that time on public transportation. The former Greyhound bus station on Gurnee Avenue where the riders attempted to board, as well as the site where the bus was firebombed and burned shortly afterward, will be part of the monument.

The other non-wilderness site designated this week is the Reconstruction Era National Monument at a site in Beaufort, SC, which has several historical sites nearby which tell the story of the period.

Most of our Presidents have designated wild lands and territories using the Antiquities Act. Obama has done that too, but he’s also named historical and cultural sites where people did things, like Stonewall in NYC and Honouliuli internment camp in Hawai’i, like the César E. Chávez National Monument in California and the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument in Maryland. One of the things that’s done, I imagine, is give urban children the chance to see a National Park without having to fly or drive hundreds of miles using money their families might not have.

I’m going to miss this President.