Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America

5 Building a National Movement: Students Confront Recreational Segregation

C H A P T E R 5 Building a National Movement: Students Confront Recreational Segregation SOON after Disneyland opened, a real estate developer from Texas, Angus G. Wynne, Jr., visited the park. Impressed by its popularity, Wynne decided to create his own theme park between Dallas and Fort Worth. Wynne’s theme centered on the history of Texas. He flew six flags over his park representing the six flags in Texas history—those of Spain, France, Mexico, the Confederacy, the Republic of Texas, and the United States. Wynne divided the park into different themes corresponding to each flag, including a Confederacy section featuring a Confederate recruiting station and reenactment of romantic “old South” scenes. Confederate reenactors even demonstrated an execution of a captured Union spy at the park in its opening year.1 Wynne ’s use of theming at his new park reinforced its racial exclusivity. African Americans were unwelcome at Six Flags, although there was no official policy of segregation as there was in Playland in Houston. Armed Confederate soldiers underscored this reality. Like Disneyland, Six Flags was accessible only by automobile, and Wynne promoted the park as a clean and safe alternative to older amusements in urban areas. In its unproblematic promotion of a Confederate past, Six Flags looked back to a southern history marked by racial apartheid; but in its location and amenities Six Flags was on the cutting edge of new suburbia.2 Wynne was not the only entrepreneur to be influenced by Disneyland. Rock ’n’ roll pioneer Chuck Berry purchased land thirty miles outside St. Louis in 1957 to create Berry Park, which he opened in 1960. “I’d imagined it to be a place where people both black and white could mix together harmo- 159 National Movement niously,” remembered Berry in his autobiography. “I was thinking of a place like Six Flags, but maybe only ‘One Flag’ in my case, to accommodate families for fun and entertainment.” Berry wanted to create his “own mini Disneyland ” outside the city limits with sprawling, well-groomed grounds. But this Disneyland would invite black consumers and promote interracial mixing .3 Berry Park sported a large guitar-shaped swimming pool, nightclub and dance floor, and an assortment of rides.4 These modern amusement parks drew from Disney’s innovative theming and his placing of parks outside cities . But they offered dichotomous models of racial democracy within recreational spaces in the South. Through its celebration of a Confederate past, Wynne’s Six Flags signaled to white consumers the safety and pleasure of a new generation of amusement parks. Berry Park, in contrast, invited all races to enjoy the fruits of a new rock ’n’ roll subculture, a youthful racial democracy inscribed in the landscape of the park. These competing visions of the theme park presaged a new decade of racial conflict over recreational space in the South and nationwide. While Six Flags, Disneyland, and Berry Park distanced themselves from urban problems, older amusement parks throughout the country confronted growing racial strife in the early 1960s. Most parks in southern and border states were at least partially segregated, and they increasingly faced direct challenges from a growing militant youth movement. Outside the South, where historians have generally considered integrated public accommodations a settled issue by the early 1960s, struggles over access to recreational facilities continued and in some cities became more violent.5 The rhetoric of regionalism, with African Americans shaming cities like Los Angeles or Chicago by comparing them to Alabama, demonstrates that there was significant continuity across state lines. White thugs brutalized blacks in both Birmingham and Chicago when they threatened white-only pools and parks. Nationally student activists deployed the nonviolent direct action techniques pioneered by CORE in the 1940s to resist this brutality. Although racial liberalism continued to play a role in the African American freedom struggle, particularly within interracial commissions on the local level, it had largely become supplanted by more militant demands for immediate access to public accommodations rather than gradual negotiations. Joining the student activists were ordinary black citizens who occupied beaches, parks, and pools without deploying the well-honed techniques of nonviolence. In both cases direct action inspired brutal white attacks on demonstrators and citizens. White proprietors of recreational facilities also responded to direct action 160 Chapter 5 and legal challenges by privatizing and closing their pools and parks. These actions denied urban dwellers access to basic recreational facilities and would have long-ranging effects on American cities and towns. Combined with...