African-American Wildland Memories

Collective memory can be used conceptually to examine African-American perceptions of wildlands and black interaction with such places. The middleAmerican view of wildlands frames these terrains as refuges-pure and simple, sanciified places distinct from the profanity of human modification. However, wild, primilivc areas do not exist in the minds of all Americans as uncomplicated or uncontaminated places. Three labor-related institutions-forest labor, plantation agriculture, and sharecropping-and terrorism and lynching have impacted negatively on black perceptions of wildlands, producing an ambivalence toward such places among African Americans.