Meet The First Black Woman to Lead Maryland’s Park Service

By Kate Benjamin, the Washington Informer

After leading the agency as acting superintendent since April, Angela Crenshaw officially became the Maryland Park Service’s first Black woman director on Nov. 6. She told The Informer that she plans to give 137% to the role: 87% heart, 13% hair, and 37% grit and determination.

“I wanted it to be that awkward 137% because it shows that I thought about it, and that number matters — that grit and determination comes from knowing exactly where I come from,” she said. “I think it would blow my ancestors’ minds to think that I am the full-time director of the Maryland Park Service.” 

Crenshaw takes on the position after a decade with the park service, where she first began as a park ranger at Elk Neck State Park in 2013. She helped get the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park up and running, serving as assistant manager in 2017, the same year it opened. 

While there, she created a Junior Rangers program, which allows kids to earn a badge for completing a booklet of activities about Tubman’s story and being officially sworn in by a park ranger. Crenshaw said the program is one of her proudest accomplishments so far.

“We’ve had over 15,000 Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Junior Rangers, and they [each] have a personal experience with Harriet Tubman and then of course with a park ranger,” she said. “And it warms my heart to see how it has connected people with our history.”

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