Twin Lakes State Park | |
---|---|
Location | Virginia, United States |
Nearest city | Green Bay |
Coordinates | 37°10′26″N78°16′25″W / 37.17389°N 78.27361°W |
Area | 495 acres (2.00 km2) |
Governing body | Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation |
Twin Lakes State Park | |
NRHP reference No. | 12000906 [1] |
VLR No. | 073-0070 |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | October 31, 2012 |
Designated VLR | September 18, 2008 [2] |
Twin Lakes State Park (formerly known as Goodwin Lake Park and Prince Edward State Park for Negroes), is a state park in Virginia, United States. It is located in Central Virginia in Prince Edward County. Twin Lakes State Park, centrally located in Virginia's Piedmont region, provides visitors from all over the Commonwealth with a variety of lakefront activities in a secluded setting. Swimming, camping, fishing, biking, canoeing and hiking are popular activities. The park is home to Cedar Crest Conference Center, a perfect facility for group meetings, family reunions, birthday parties, wedding receptions and company picnics.
The land for Twin Lakes State Park was initially bought from struggling farmers by the federal government during the Great Depression. Two parks, Goodwin Lake and Prince Edward Lake, were founded in 1939 and until the early 1960s were run as two racially segregated parks.
In 1948, businessman Maceo Conrad Martin and his family embarked on a vacation to Staunton River State Park. As expected, Park authorities denied the Martins entry to the state park based on their race. The Martins consulted the Richmond, Virginia-based civil rights law firm of Hill, Tucker and Robinson, led by Oliver Hill. Hill's firm filed a civil suit against the Commonwealth of Virginia under the “separate but equal” doctrine. The suit alleged that Staunton River State Park's policy only allowed white citizens to use its facility, with no accommodations for African Americans. The Virginia Department of Conservation and Development first responded by converting a segregated African-American/"Colored Only" recreation area into a state park facility: the "Prince Edward State Park for Negroes" (now the Twin Lakes State Park). In 1949, Virginia Governor William Tuck allotted $195,000 to create 6 housekeeping cabins, an expanded swimming area, expanded parking, a bathhouse, and concession stand. [3]
Opened to the general "Colored Only/African-Americans Only" public in June 1950, Prince Edward State Park for Negroes became Virginia's eighth state park and the only pre-Civil Rights Era state park for African-Americans. [4] African Americans from across the mid-Atlantic states visited the park for its swimming, recreation, camping and dancing. [5]
The parks merged in 1976 and became Twin Lakes State Park in 1986.
In 1995, Virginia erected a marker to acknowledge his lawsuit's contribution to desegregating the park. [6] The marker reads:
Prince Edward State Park for Negroes was established in 1950 one mile west on the site of the former Prince Edward Lake Recreation Area for Negroes. Maceo C. Martin, an African American from Danville, sued the state when he was denied access to Staunton River State Park. Governor William M. Tuck funded the new park to provide "similar and equal" facilities in lieu of access. The park, with a black superintendent, was operated separately from neighboring Goodwin Lake Recreation Area until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The two parks merged in 1986 to form Twin Lakes State Park.
Prince Edward County is located in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 21,849. Its county seat is Farmville.
Burkeville is an incorporated town in Nottoway County, Virginia, United States. The population was 432 at the 2010 census. The source of the town name is disputed. The town is located at the crossroads of U.S. routes 360 and 460.
Staunton is an independent city in the U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 25,750. In Virginia, independent cities are separate jurisdictions from the counties that surround them, so the government offices of Augusta County are in Verona, which is contiguous to Staunton. Staunton is a principal city of the Staunton-Waynesboro Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had a 2010 population of 118,502. Staunton is known for being the birthplace of Woodrow Wilson, the 28th U.S. president, and as the home of Mary Baldwin University, historically a women's college. The city is also home to Stuart Hall, a private co-ed preparatory school, as well as the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind. It was the first city in the United States with a fully defined city manager system.
First Landing State Park offers recreational opportunities at Cape Henry in the independent city of Virginia Beach, Virginia. As the first planned state park of Virginia, First Landing is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Seashore State Park Historic District. A portion of the park is listed as a National Natural Landmark as part of the Seashore Natural Area.
Oliver White Hill, Sr. was an American civil rights attorney from Richmond, Virginia. His work against racial discrimination helped end the doctrine of "separate but equal." He also helped win landmark legal decisions involving equality in pay for black teachers, access to school buses, voting rights, jury selection, and employment protection. He retired in 1998 after practicing law for almost 60 years. Among his numerous awards was the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which U.S. President Bill Clinton awarded him in 1999.
The John H. Kerr Reservoir is a reservoir along the border of the U.S. states of North Carolina and Virginia. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constructed the John H. Kerr Dam across the Roanoke River between 1947 and 1952 to produce hydroelectricity as well as for flood control. Kerr Lake is the largest lake in Virginia, with 850 miles (1,370 km) of shoreline located in Vance, Granville, and Warren counties in North Carolina, as well as Mecklenburg, Charlotte, and Halifax counties in Virginia. At its maximum capacity, it covers approximately 50,000 acres (200 km2) and is one of the largest reservoirs in the Southeastern United States. The name honors its Congressional sponsor, John H. Kerr, a North Carolina Democrat who supported creation of the lake. The lake supports recreational tourism in North Carolina and Virginia as described below.
Bear Creek Lake State Park is a 326-acre (132 ha) state park located in Cumberland, Virginia, United States. It is a recreational and camping facility that surrounds an artificial 40-acre (16 ha) lake situated in the 16,000-acre (6,500 ha) Cumberland State Forest. As of 2013, the yearly visitation was 78,288.
Staunton River State Park is a state park in Virginia. One of the Commonwealth's original state parks, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps and opening in 1936, it is located along the Staunton River near Scottsburg, Virginia. It is an International Dark Sky Park.
Staunton River Battlefield State Park is a state park located in Virginia. The park straddles the Staunton River in Halifax and Charlotte counties. The Roanoke visitor center in Randolph, Virginia is a railroad depot which now holds exhibits on Native Americans and railroad history. The Clover visitor center has exhibits on the American Civil War and the battle which took place on this site. It also includes information about the production of electric energy. The park also includes the Mulberry Hill plantation, given to the state in 1999.
The Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation is a department of the government of Virginia, United States; it oversees all Virginia state parks and Natural Area Preserves.
Green Bay is an unincorporated community in Prince Edward County, Virginia, United States located on US Highway 360 between Burkeville Virginia and Keysville Virginia. Peach growing in the area was very successful during the 1930s and 1940s, but finally succumbed to the advancement of larger growers and the change in technique and labor availabilities. Rail access was a mainline by Norfolk and Western Railway and also the Southern Railway which have merged to form Norfolk Southern.
Maceo Snipes was a veteran and civil rights leader who was murdered in Taylor County, Georgia on July 18, 1946 after Snipes, a black WWII veteran, voted in the Georgia Democratic Party primary. He was the only black person to vote in the entire county.
Hocutt v. Wilson, N.C. Super. Ct. (1933) (unreported), was the first attempt to desegregate higher education in the United States. It was initiated by two African American lawyers from Durham, North Carolina, Conrad O. Pearson and Cecil McCoy, with the support of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The case was ultimately dismissed for lack of standing, but it served as a test case for challenging the "separate but equal" doctrine in education and was a precursor to Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
The Royal Ice Cream sit-in was a nonviolent protest in Durham, North Carolina, that led to a court case on the legality of segregated facilities. The demonstration took place on June 23, 1957 when a group of African American protesters, led by Reverend Douglas E. Moore, entered the Royal Ice Cream Parlor and sat in the section reserved for white patrons. When asked to move, the protesters refused and were arrested for trespassing. The case was appealed unsuccessfully to the County and State Superior Courts.
Antonio Maceo Smith was a civil rights leader in Dallas, Texas, whose years of activism with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other civil rights and community groups led Texans to dub him "Mr. Civil Rights" and "Mr. Organization".
Rosewood Neighborhood Park is a public park in East Austin, Texas. The park features tennis courts, playscapes, swimming pool, splash pad, as well as the Delores Duffie Recreation Center and the Doris "Dorie" Miller Auditorium. Combined, they comprise a 31,500 square feet facility with a gymnasium. They offer year round classes, workshops, special events, tournaments, performances, and demonstrations.
Martin Armstrong Martin was an American criminal and civil rights attorney from Danville, Virginia who became the first African American trial attorney in the United States Department of Justice on May 31, 1943. He also became known for his appellate work for Odell Waller in 1942 and the Martinsville Seven in 1950-1951, and as a partner with Oliver Hill and future federal judge Spottswood Robinson in a law firm which assisted the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in civil rights litigation in Virginia.
The Anacostia Pool riot took place on June 29, 1949, at a recently-desegregated public swimming pool in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C. After two days of tense confrontations between white and black patrons of the pool, a two-hour large-scale disturbance involving 450 people resulted in five arrests and at least four serious injuries. Bill Mabry, one of the black swimmers involved, called the incident “Washington’s first race riot.” Despite pressure to relax the enforcement of the federal government's nonsegregation policy, the Department of the Interior stated that “no backward step of any sort should be made in effectuating the President’s Civil Rights program,” specifically with respect to Washington, DC.
Prior to the civil rights movement in South Carolina, African Americans in the state had very few political rights. South Carolina briefly had a majority-black government during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War, but with the 1876 inauguration of Governor Wade Hampton III, a Democrat who supported the disenfranchisement of blacks, African Americans in South Carolina struggled to exercise their rights. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation kept African Americans from voting, and it was virtually impossible for someone to challenge the Democratic Party, which ran unopposed in most state elections for decades. By 1940, the voter registration provisions written into the 1895 constitution effectively limited African-American voters to 3,000—only 0.8 percent of those of voting age in the state.
Maceo Conrad Martin Sr. was an American banker and civil rights activist.