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6. "More Sensitive Than Schools": The Struggle to Desegregate Municipal Swimming Pools
- The University of North Carolina Press
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CHAPTER 6 “MORE SENSITIVE THAN SCHOOLS” THE STRUGGLE TO DESEGREGATE MUNICIPAL SWIMMING POOLS Backed by Supreme Court decisions a powerful trend is breaking down segregation of the races. In this area, so far, the changes have been taken in stride without the racial trouble that many persons had feared. . . . But joint use of the city’s major pool proposes a sudden jump all the way to one of the touchiest problems in race relations.—Editorial, Kansas City Star (1952) On a hot summer day in 1952, seventeen-year-old Mamie Livingston and two younger sisters walked the ten blocks from their East Baltimore home to Clifton Park municipal swimming pool. The three had never plunged into the pool even though they grew up so very near to it. Mamie did not expect to enter that day either, but she hoped. A rather rude attendant turned the girls away “with scorn,” according to Mamie, but added that the city would soon build a pool nearby that they could use. Mamie eagerly waited out the summer and her senior year at Carver High School but saw no evidence of a new pool. Finally, in late July 1953, she wrote to the AfroAmerican , Baltimore’s leading black newspaper, asking if it knew what had happened to the pool for black swimmers. “As of yet,” she lamented, “we have heard nothing more of this.” At the end of her letter, Mamie linked the lack of an accessible municipal pool to the larger issue of civil rights: “If this country is ever going to have equal rights, why not start here?” For her, equal rights was not an abstract principle; it meant having a pool in which to swim just like her white neighbors.¹ Baltimore operated seven outdoor pools at the time—six for whites and one for blacks. The whites-only pools were distributed throughout the city in Druid Hill, Patterson, Clifton, Gwynns Falls, Riverside, and Roosevelt Parks. Most were resort pools with large tanks, concrete decks, and sand beaches Struggle to Desegregate Municipal Pools 155 or grassy lawns. In contrast, the city’s only municipal pool for blacks, located in Druid Hill Park, was “quite small,” according to the Department of Recreation , and provided virtually no leisure space. The tank was surrounded by a narrow concrete walkway enclosed by fencing. There was no sand beach, no pool deck, and no lounge chairs.² Furthermore, Druid Hill Park was located several miles northwest of downtown and not easily accessible from East Baltimore, where many black families lived. The park was four and a half miles, for example, from the Livingstons’ home at 1027 North Washington Street. Mamie and her siblings could not reasonably walk the nine miles round trip to the pool, nor could Vonzella Livingston, their mother, afford to send them by car or bus.The Livingstons were not poor; they were just saving money to buy a house.³ Mamie’s letter to the Afro-American prompted the paper to investigate “Outside Looking In”—Mamie Livingston, Baltimore, 1953. Afro-American Newspapers Archives and Research Center, Baltimore. [3.91.176.3] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 10:05 GMT) 156 Struggle to Desegregate Municipal Pools the city’s pool-building plans and publicize the unequal provision. It contacted recreation department officials and learned that the city did not plan to build a Jim Crow pool in East Baltimore. Shortly thereafter, three black boys drowned in two separate incidents while swimming in natural waters around the city. In one incident, Tommy Cummings and Bernard Hipkings were swimming with two white friends in the Patapsco River when Tommy slipped beneath the water and never came back up alive. The surviving trio later explained that they swam in the river because it was the only place in the city where they could all swim together.⁴ In the wake of the deaths, the Afro-American and the Baltimore branch of the NAACP lobbied the city to end segregation at its swimming pools. The city’s park board discussed the issue at a meeting in early September 1953 but “unanimously agreed not to change our policy at this time.” Within days, Linwood Koger, a lawyer affiliated with the local NAACP, filed suit against the city in federal district court seeking an injunction “to restrain defendants from operating on a segregated basis any swimming pool established, operated, or maintained by the city of Baltimore .”⁵ What began with Mamie Livingston’s ten-block walk to Clifton Park Pool had expanded into a...