Hello! I'm Ranger Elizabeth coming to you from
underneath the redwood trees at Muir Woods National Monument.
Recently, I've been researching the early conservation movements that helped save Muir Woods,
and started the environmental movement as we know it today
that I want to share with you.
By the early 1900's only 10 percent of redwood forests had been cut down,
but the rate was starting to pick up as the growth of cities like San Francisco
started to demand more lumber.
People knew if they didn't do anything, all of the redwoods would soon be logged.
In this photo, a man is holding a saw at the base of a massive redwood tree he just cut
and the forest behind is decimated.
One problem was that logging companies
had deep and powerful political connections,
and weren't willing to give up their profits without a fight.
How could people stop them?
Logging companies were willing to fight hard and had a lot of money and time at their disposal.
What made it even more complicated
was that a lot of the people fighting to save redwood forests
were women.
In this photo four white women dressed in old-fashioned clothes
stand in front of a car that reads 'Save the Redwoods'.
Now, back in the early 1900's
women did not have the right to vote, and gender stereotypes were even stronger than today.
In 1904, one group of White women called the California Club
turned their time and attention to saving Muir Woods,
then known as Redwood Canyon.
They didn't have voting power, but they had people power.
And most of them were elite, upper class women,
with money and resources at their disposal.
They put on public information campaigns, pledged to raise money,
and increased public support around the idea of saving the trees at Muir Woods.
In this 1904 newspaper article, the headline reads:
"The Ladies Want Redwoods Saved"
"Women are behind the movement and it looks like
the redwood forest near Mill Valley would be preserved."
Without their support there's a good chance that Redwood Canyon, the trees I'm under right now,
would never have been preserved.
Women recognized nature as a healing place, and a place worth saving and connecting to.
White, upper-class women like the ones from the California Club,
had the privilege and power to fight for preservation movements
at a national level.
They generally were pretty comfortable in their lives already.
Black women, who lacked this comfort, generally turned that national attention
towards protesting against segregation, lynchings, or other violations of their rights.
Despite these hardships, Black women were still involved
in environmental movements, but typically at a more local level.
In this 1915 photo, almost 100 women of color,
members of the California State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs,
sit on the steps in Oakland, California, just across the bay from us.
In the early 1900's,
Black women raised money to improve sanitary conditions at home,
cleaned up cities, created playgrounds,
and raised money to send their youth to experience nature.
Those fights today have become to known more broadly as the fight for environmental justice,
the idea the environment you live in shouldn't be worse
just because of your identity, like your race-
which today is an important part of the environmental movement.
Not everyone agreed about this idea though,
and also clubs of women of color were purposefully excluded.
Do you remember the California Club I mentioned earlier?
It was a part of a network called the General Federation of Women's Clubs,
shown here as a group of well-dressed White women who are all a part of that network.
In 1902, the General Federation of Women's clubs
voted on whether to allow clubs of women of color to join their movement.
The California Club members voted 'Sure!'
'Let's allow clubs of women of color to join!'
But the leadership of the California Club felt so strongly against that inclusion
that they resigned rather than allow.
In this historic newspaper article from 1902,
"Mrs Lovell White's Action",
the leader of the California Club, Laura Lyon White, is quoted as saying:
"those who have been so ambitious to admit colored women
are fanatics and visionaries,
and that the change in the regulations governing qualifications for membership
will only result in a disruption of many clubs."
Many leaders of the General Federation of Women's Clubs were concerned that
if they allowed clubs of women of color to join,
other White women's groups might leave.
So they sided with a group they thought had more power,
which they thought would give their message a better shot at succeeding.
The vote failed and clubs of women of were excluded until much later.
We can still feel echoes of that act of racism today.
It can feel hard to make real change happen,
especially when your voice feels powerless.
I focused on Black and White women but there is no doubt that women of all races
were a large force behind many of the environmental legacies,
both national and local that we see today.
Okay, so we learned a lot about the women that helped save beautiful places like
Muir Woods, with its towering redwood trees,
as well as looked at the foundations for the environmental movement.
We met women who had to fight twice as hard to make their voices heard
who overcame racism, sexism, and powerful industries.
Where do you see changes around you happening today,
and how are those changes happening?
The National Park Service, and Rangers like myself,
we exist to protect these places and tell these stories
that our nation has deemed important for future generations.
For example, girl scout troops at Muir Woods
have worked with Rangers to learn more about the women's history at this park,
at your park.
It's possible that what you fight for today,
the changes we see around us, the fights worth fighting for,
may very well be a story told by some future Park Ranger.
With that I hope you enjoy the rest of your day,
and that you help make the change that you want to see in the world