Are We There Yet? North Carolina's Variety Vacationland 1930s-1970s

Roanoke Island Festival Park starts the summer off with the opening of Are We There Yet, on display through September 26. This traveling paneled photography exhibit, on loan from the Museum of the Albemarle, “looks back at an era when tourism boomed thanks largely to a state-run marketing effort called “Variety Vacationland.” The Variety Vacationland campaign was successful in creating a unified tourism industry in North Carolina from the 1930s to the 1970s by depicting our state as both modern and progressive, but with strong ties to its past. However, true to the Jim Crow era, most sites promoted were marketed (and accessible) to White tourists only; people of color were neglected and even exploited at times, an attitude this exhibit attempts to point out where possible.”