UNITY PARK IN GREENVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA

EIGHTY-TWO YEARS WE waited for the park," says City Councilwoman Lillian Brock Flemming. "The little children don't know the history, but they know they'll have a good time when they get there."

- Lisa Kanarek

Opened in 2022, Unity Park is a 60-acre, $60 million marvel of modern landscape architecture in the Southernside neighborhood of Greenville, South Carolina. The city, at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains and cleft by the Reedy River, has equipped the park with every bell and whistle imaginable for its 72,000 residents. But the true transformation isn't one of Greenville's facilities-it's of Greenville's spirit.

Unity Park now stands where two formerly segregated parks, Mayberry Park and Meadowbrook Park, stood off for nearly a century. Back in 1927, Mayberry Park was the only place in Greenville where Black children could play.

"It was all we had," says Mary Duckett, president of Southernside Neighborhoods in Action.

But the city treated the park as its spare room. Greenville took a portion for a police shooting range (kids knew to steer clear during Saturday target practice), and then some more for a Public Works facility, which housed a landfill, trash incinerators and a parking lot for garbage trucks.