The first National Park Week was observed in August 1991 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the National Park Service. Since 1994, it has been an annual celebration organized by the National Park Service to highlight America’s national parks and the natural, cultural, and historical resources they protect. This year, the celebration runs from August 22 through August 30, 2026.
The National Park Week soundtrack curated by the National Parks Conservation Association includes James Brown’s “Living in America.”
Today, we are living in an America in which the President’s House, a National Park Service site, was desecrated and whitewashed interpretive panels installed under the cover of darkness.
The National Parks Conservation Association is calling for a Day of Action to defend America’s national parks from attacks on park staffing, funding, public lands, and the preservation of American history. Participants are encouraged to contact government officials, support National Park Service employees, sign petitions, attend demonstrations and community events, and publicly oppose policies that threaten the parks and the stories they tell.
It’s serendipitous that the Day of Action coincides with Avenging The Ancestors Coalition’s mass protest at the President’s House on August 25, 2026.
Attorney Michael Coard, founder of Avenging The Ancestors Coalition, told the Philadelphia Tribune:
We will have local, state and federal elected officials, along with civic leaders, clergy and community activists. We’ve gotten permission from the city to block off the 500 block of Market Street and 6th Street from Market to Chestnut and place a massive stage in the middle of Market Street, This is going to be big. We’re not just rallying to rally. We expect to make history.
[…]
We took a page out of the playbook of our activist ancestors in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, They sent attorneys into the courtrooms to raise issues and activists into the streets to raise hell. That’s exactly what we’re doing.
It ain’t over.