In 1962, former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall was recruiting from historically black colleges and universities. He recruited Stanton to be a seasonal park ranger in the summer of 1962, launching Stanton’s federal career with the National Park Service. It was the summer of his junior year in college. He borrowed $250, bought a train ticket to Wyoming and a park ranger’s uniform, and worked at Grand Teton National Park. He also worked at Grand Teton National Park again in the summer of 1963.

In 1966 he took a full-time position as a Personnel Management and Public Information Specialist at the National Park Service headquarters in Washington, D.C. Three years later, he moved to National Capital Parks-Central as a Management Assistant. The Park Service’s National Capital Region covers many historic and cultural monuments, buildings, and parks. The National Capital Region also manages large visor groups and significant public events like presidential inaugurations and mall demonstrations. It is also responsible for maintaining the White House grounds.

After a year as a management assistant, in 1970, he became Superintendent of National Capital Parks-East. The following year, he accepted an appointment as Superintendent of the Virgin Islands National Park, St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, gaining experience in the Caribbean.

In 1974, Stanton was promoted to Deputy Regional Director of Southeast Region in Atlanta, Georgia. He returned to Washington in 1976 as Assistant Director of Resource Management. In 1977, he became the Assistant Direct of Park Operations at the NPS headquarters. Shortly after, in 1979, Stanton became Deputy Regional Director for the National Capital Region, where he served for eight years. He was then the Associate Director of Park Operations at the NPS headquarters for 18 months before returning to the National Capital Region as Regional Director. He was Regional Director until 1997, when he briefly retired.

His retirement was short-lived. August 1997, the Clinton administration restored Stanton to active duty, making him the first NPS careerist since Russell E. Dickenson to head the bureau since 1985. Stanton has taken a particular interest in increasing the diversity of the service’s staff and public programs to serve minority populations better. On August 4, 1997, National Park Service swore in Stanton as the 15th director. He was the first director to undergo a Senate confirmation process and the first African American director.

He is cited in several professional and technical publications. He has given several keynote speeches at university convocations and major national and international conferences. He has served on several committees and boards, including the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Board of Trustees, the National Park Foundation, the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts Board of Directors, and the Committee for the Preservation of the White House.

Stanton also serves on the board of several environmental organizations, including the Student Conservation Association, Inc., the National Audubon Society, Accokeek Foundation at Piscataway Park, Unity College Woods Hole Research Center, Environmental Law Institute, Casey Trees Endowment Fund, and Eastern National and Guest Services, Inc. He is an American Academy for Park and Recreation Administration fellow, an associate of the Roundtable Associates, Inc., a National Trust for Historic Preservation Diversity Council member, and Chair of the Trustees of the African American Experience Fund of the National Park Foundation. Stanton is an executive professor at Texas A&M University in the Department of Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Sciences.

He has been nationally recognized with numerous awards for meritorious public service, conservation leadership, youth development, and diversity in employment and public programs. These include The Distinguished Service Award (from the U.S. Department of Interior, 1987), The President’s Rank of Distinguished Senior Executive Award(from the Office of the President of the United States,1993), The Frederick Guthiem Excellence in Planning Award (from the American Planning Association, 1997), the Fred M. Packard International Parks Merit Award(IUCN’s World Commission on Protected Areas, 2001)and the Carter G. Woodson History Maker Award (from the Association for Study of African American Life and History, 2002).

During his distinguished career, Mr. Stanton received three honorary doctorate degrees and numerous awards, including the Department of the Interior’s highest award, the Distinguished Service Award. He remains actively involved in professional and civic affairs, teaching and serving in leadership capacity of the Student Conservation Association, Inc., National Audubon Society, Guest Services, Inc., the African American Experience Fund of the National Park Foundation, and others. Though retired from the Park Service, he continues to promote his life-long interest in national parks and advancing opportunities for young people.

The following quotes are from an interview with Mr. Stanton by Mills (2020):

“I grew up in rural, segregated Texas, and we came from very meager means, so we did not vacation. I was in the cotton fields or the hay fields during my young adulthood. But I was not a stranger, if you will, to the out-of-doors, you know, with bare feet running through the woods, fishing in the lakes, gravel pits, taking a little dip in our birthday suits and what have you, and watching out for the copperheads and water moccasins. But so, no, the out-of-doors were not a stranger to me.

In terms of my exposure to the National Park Service and other land management agencies and putting it in sort of historical context, you recognize the courage on the part of Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, and Roosevelt, when he issued his secretarial order in 1945, saying that there will not be any discrimination in the national parks. My understanding is that when he made the decision that the proprietors of restaurants and overnight accommodations surrounding the gateways to the parks, they raised holy hell. “You mean you’re going to allow them colored folks to come in and eat and sleep where they want to in the park?”

But the thing I would bring to your attention, which was not widely advertised, is that he had the counsel of two prominent, forceful, unrelenting Black executives who were promoting the integration in full accessibility of not only to Park Service citizen programs but throughout the breadth of the programs at Interior. The first one was Robert Weaver, who became the first African-American to serve as a Cabinet Secretary at HUD, appointed by President Johnson. He was followed by William Trent Jr., and it is William Trent Jr. who was really a strong advocate that here you have young men returning from World War II, and they need to have some way in which they could just sort of relax themselves. Coming from the war, even though we were coming back to places they were not permitted to enter, such as cafes and restaurants, but still they should have an opportunity to enjoy some of the benefits of being an American citizen.”