Reckoning With Racism On The Blue Ridge Parkway

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America’s Favorite Drive. That’s what the National Park Service calls the Blue Ridge Parkway, and they have the numbers to back it up: 14 million visitors in 2020. But like the rest of the South through which it winds, the Blue Ridge Parkway wasn’t always welcoming - or even accessible - to all of America.

Host Will Michaels talks with Anne Mitchell Whisnant, Blue Ridge Parkway historian and director of the Graduate Liberal Studies Program at Duke University; and Cheryl Dong, assistant professor and Director of the Public History Program at the University of Northern Iowa, about the role that race played in the creation and construction of the Blue Ridge Parkway.