Chickasaw Park in Louisville is home to the country's only nature based playground centered around black.

History.

The Sankofa Sanctuary opened this summer, and the creators from the Play Cousins Collective, a Louisville nonprofit, say the park provides families of peaceful space to connect with culture and community.

Metro United Way donated $160,000.

They're ready for K Alliance for us to build a children's playground, and we were able to partner with Jefferson Memorial Forest and Metroparks for a ten year lease in the Chickasaw neighborhood.

The Chickasaw Park, that is the only Olmsted Park in the nation that was created for black folks during segregation.

So this park has a lot of history and has been a place where our children and families can play for so long.

Sankofa means to go back and get it.

So getting back to our roots and as you can kind of see through here, it goes through a timeline of history of black culture.

But starting starting from where our ancestors were.

You know, it's very important for our children to know that their history does not begin with slavery.

So going back to the continent of Africa, pre-colonial Africa, you know, looking at Timbuktu and Mansa Musa Emotet, we wanted our children to know that they have a rich and a rich past and a rich future, that they come from an international people and that the world really belongs to them.

A traditional playground tells you exactly how to play with it, whereas out here nature, you can be anything, do anything, and it really encourages children and adults to use our play and imagination.

And then being a part of nature, seeing ourselves as a part of the land and a piece of the land, will we respect it better when we see ourselves as a part of nature?

Each of the play features focuses on a different communal value a pillar.

The first is where we talk about birth.

So we want our kids to know that they are born to a people and to a place.

And that's really great too, because we know that black people in general can often feel divorced from the land.

And there's so much that goes into that redlining, you know, lack of access to buying property.

So for our kids to come to a place and say that this is my park and to see maybe their actual footsteps or footsteps that represent you know them is huge.

Everyone from this whole park is from Kentucky, but it's really exciting to learn about Samuel Plato, who built the West over neighborhood, which is in Chickasaw and the West over neighborhood, was the first single unit family homes for black folks in Louisville.

And we have Plato's Playhouse to honor him.

And then we have Willa Brown.

We have the zip line here honoring her.

She was a famous aviator, and she taught the Tuskegee Airmen.

Then we have Garrett Morgan.

Garrett Morgan built the traffic light.

So we have a traffic light here for him.

And then Frederick McKinley Jones innovated in speaker technology.

So we have the talking tubes here for him.

A lot of people really love the park, because there's not a lot of natural play spaces that are accessible to folks that are in the West End.

A lot of those spaces, you have to go kind of further out to, to find in the system, and that's just right here.

And then learning more about the history and the purpose of life with the park is a lot.

We've got a lot of really good feedback and people keep coming back.

We know that when families have access to experiences like this, that helps to prevent or bounce back from aces adverse childhood experiences.

And we know that adverse childhood experiences down the line can contribute to physical illness, to violence, to addiction, to all the things that we say as a community that we are against.

And so the experiences that we give the child, if we're able to stop and parent to support parents and come together as a community the way we are meant to, then we will see so much more healing.

We'll see our community thriving.

We'll see strong adults, right?

But it takes valuing the vulnerable in our community.

The Olmsted Park Conservancy recently donated money so Sankofa Sanctuary can add more play features and permanent signs.

The new additions will be ready by next Juneteenth.