Park News
The Revolutionary War in the National Park Service
If you’re like me, you forget much of the details you may have learned in school about the American Revolution. I certainly didn’t remember the 1776 battle at Moores Creek in North Carolina, a state deeply divided between American patriots and loyalists still committed to Great Britain.
North Carolina’s British-appointed but recently exiled governor plotted to regain his position by raising his own loyalist army. The state’s patriots, however, were determined to repulse them.
On February 20, 1776, the loyalists drove the colonists to a bridge crossing Moores Creek, northwest of Wilmington, North Carolina. Unbeknown to them, however, the patriots had built a strong earthwork on a ridge overlooking the bridge, and took up a position behind it. On February 27, the loyalists advanced, but their adversaries were nowhere to be seen. Believing the patriots had retreated, the loyalist crossed the span, and were met with musket and cannon fire from the hidden colonists.
The battle of Moores Creek was over in about three minutes, and is noted as the first significant victory of the American Revolution.
This story is told at the Park Service’s Moores Creek National Battlefield. From Friday, February 27 through Sunday, March 1, the park is holding special events to mark the 250th anniversary of this encounter.
George Washington’s Birthday Commemorations
The Park Service celebrates Continental Army General (and our first president) George Washington’s birthday with two events this month:
At Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, a wreath laying ceremony will take place on Saturday, February 21 at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider of the American Revolution in Washington Square
Black History Month
February is Black History Month, and the Park Service manages over 25 sites dedicated to the subject.
One of them is the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument in Jackson, Mississippi, the modest home where the Evers family lived, and where Medgar Evers was assassinated in June, 1963.
Medgar Evers was Mississippi’s first field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and a prominent proponent of racial equality and social justice. He was the first major civil rights leader to be murdered, and his death was instrumental in getting the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 passed.
Marchers took to the streets across Mississippi in non-violent protest of Evers’ death. Perhaps you’ve seen the sign some of them carried, with this written on it: “EVERS DIED for YOU – Join N.A.A.C.P. FOR HIM!”
Yosemite’s fire fall
This month brings a spectacular sight to Yosemite National Park in California. Horsetail Falls, on the eastern edge of El Capitan in Yosemite Valley, is a thin waterfall that usually flows only during the winter. But in mid- to late February it puts on a show. On evenings with clear skies and water is flowing down the falls, the backlit sunset makes it seem as if the falls are glowing orange.
He Died for You
Medgar Evers certainly was killed because of his work on behalf of civil rights for American Black citizens. He deserves to be honored for that, as well as for his military service during World War II (he’s buried in Arlington Cemetery).
All of us are helpless in some way. We feel powerless, defenseless, and vulnerable in light of unrest and injustice in our families, nation, and the world.
Scripture says we’re also spiritually helpless (Romans 5:6). We’re unable to rid ourselves of sin—all the things we think, say, and do that are against God. The only way we can deal with our helplessness is to find peace in the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). Jesus, God come to earth in the flesh, actually did die for us because He loves us so much (Romans 5:8). In parsing Romans 5:6-8, the Wycliffe Bible Commentary puts it this way: “There are rare examples of a person’s dying for an upright man. That someone might dare to die for the good man because of the impact of his life is very plausible. But that God should demonstrate His love for us in that while we were sinners Christ should die for us is not only amazing but almost incredible.”
