Underground Tourists/Tourists Underground: African American Tourism to Mammoth Cave

This paper uses structuration theory and the methods of historical geography to explore the conditions in which a Jim Crow-era hotel run by and for American Americans flourished at the edge of one of the nineteenth century's most popular tourist destinations, Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. It identifies structures, legal and customary, that hindered African American travel, but also, in this particular region, other structures linked to early twentieth-century capitalism that allowed room for agency on the part of the hotel's proprietors. It demonstrates the importance of understanding networks of social relations when undertaking micro-scale structuration analysis and contributes to our understanding of a little-studied aspect of Jim Crow-era tourism, the use of temporal and spatial strategies to create separate places within white tourist destinations for African American tourists. Key Words: TourismAfrican AmericansJim Crowstructuration theoryhotelresortMammoth CaveKentuckyUnited States National Park Service Acknowledgements The author would like to thank the generosity of Charles Silbereisen and the Silbereisen Fund in providing financial support that made this project possible and Western Kentucky University for generously allowing a sabbatical year during which much of the research was done.