JACKSON, Wyo. — In celebration of Black History Month, the National Park Service (NPS) recognized Robert Stanton as the first African American superintendent and director of Grand Teton National Park (GTNP), and for his nearly 40 years of service.
During his time with the NPS, Stanton served as a seasonal park ranger, management assistant, park superintendent, deputy regional director, regional director, associate director and director, giving him depth of experience matched by few others. Stanton served as the Director of the Park Service from 1997 until 2001.
According to an oral history from the NPS, Robert Stanton left his Texas home as a college student in 1962 to begin his NPS career. The Department of the Interior was actively recruiting more Black people under the leadership of a man named Stewart Udall. Stanton was recruited as a student at Huston-Tillotson, a historically Black college. At the time, there had been just one Black park ranger in the entire service.
Stanton needed $250 for a train ticket and a uniform. He took out a loan with help from a white farmer, and was off for Wyoming. Stanton arrived in Jackson Hole a day early.
“I thought obviously there must be one or two black families here that I could stay with, because I didn’t have money for a hotel room,” Stanton said in the NPS Oral History Interview. “I walked around and didn’t see any black faces.”
A gentlemen named George Lumley gave him a room for the night, trusting Stanton to settle up when he had some money.
After about a month working at the entrance station in Moran, Stanton and three other rangers, one another Black man, drove down to Jackson for an evening out. The bar they tried to patronize wouldn’t serve them.
“So there were still certain establishments in Wyoming pre-1964 Civil Rights Act that would not serve African Americans,” Stanton recalled.
Still, Stanton decided to pursue a career with the NPS.
“It was not so much the grandeur, the natural and magnificent beauty of Teton, year-round snowcapped mountains, etc.,” Stanton said in his oral history. “But what was really defined for me was the quality of the professional staff at Grand Teton… I can say without any hesitation that the three African Americans, including myself, working at Grand Teton in ’62 were warmly and truly welcomed to the workforce. It spoke volumes about the quality and the professional integrity of those who were there at Grand Teton in 1962.”
Stanton became the Park Service’s first African American superintendent in 1970 and its first African American director in 1997. Under Stanton’s leadership, NPS took steps to increase staff diversity and recognize and protect cultural and historic sites, particularly as they related to the contributions of historically underrepresented people in the United States. He also worked to strengthen the agency’s public programs in order to increase park accessibility and better serve historically underrepresented people.
Stanton received three honorary doctorate degrees, and numerous awards including the department of the interior’s highest award, the Distinguished Service Award. Though retired from the NPS, he continues to devote much of his time to various professional and civic affairs, serving in recent years as a leader in the Student Conservation Association, Inc., the National Audubon Society and the African American Experience Fund of the National Park Foundation.
Stanton was awarded the Murie Spirit of Conservation Award in 2020.
Buckrail publishes this article annually.
