Fairview Park: Pennsylvania's Only Black-Owned Amusement Park

Into the mid-twentieth century, racial segregation kept African Americans out of most amusement parks and public recreational facilities across Pennsylvania. To give Black families a place of their own, local Sunday school superintendents organized the Monongahela Valley Sunday School Association and pooled resources to buy this land in the mid-nineteen forties. What they built is described as the only Black-owned amusement park in Pennsylvania.

For years it offered rides, games, and summer recreation that white-owned parks simply refused to provide to Black visitors. The park has been recognized as a historic site, not just as a local gathering spot but as a monument to community self-determination in the face of exclusion.