Memories of My Segregated American Swimming Pool

America used to be full of public pools. So, what happened? Take a wild guess — racism.

As Dulcé Sloan explains on The Daily Show, after World War I, public swimming pools in the U.S. soared in popularity. “Cities across the country started building them and these weren’t just any pools. They had sand, grassy lawns, some were even bigger than football fields and could hold 10,000 people,” says Sloan.

“Unfortunately Black people weren’t allowed into this national pool party,” she continues. “Cities didn’t build pools in Black neighborhoods and white people didn’t want us in their neighborhood pools.” Sloan goes on to explain that white people were “concerned about black men intermingling with white women in such a ‘sexual atmosphere.’” Many communities banned Black people from swimming in white pools.

“In some cities like Pittsburgh, the police just let white swimmers literally beat Black swimmers out of the water. At one pool in St Louis, white people got so violent beating black people that they eventually closed the whole pool for good,” Sloan says. “Imagine being so racist that you get your own pool shut down.”

With the Civil Rights Movement, people desegregated public pools with protests called wade-ins and dive-ins. With the introduction of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Sloan explains, pools were ordered to be desegregated, but things didn’t end there. Because the Civil Rights Act didn’t apply to private pools, racist swimmers flocked to members-only pools that only allowed white people to join as members — and this isn’t something that’s been left behind in history.

From the 1950s onwards, cities closed down many of their public pools while these private pools were created all over the country. This long history of unequal access has lasting impacts today. “Because of a lack of places to swim, black people don’t swim as much and that means that black children are at a higher risk of drowning.”

More than a decade ago I decided to interview an aging former neighbor, Mrs. Rosemary Moore, a lovely woman of great dignity. Maturing ever so gracefully, she personifies wisdom and experience. My hope was that our conversation would yield a unique story and perspective about her life’s joys and the challenges of raising and educating five children, while she managed to earn a degree as a Registered Nurse – no small fete as a single mom coping in an urban industrial rust belt community settled by a mixture of northern-born blacks, a stream of black migrants arriving from the south after WW II, Eastern European immigrants, and Hispanic families, seeking work in the steel mills and foundries dotting the industrial landscape of East Chicago, Indiana – a short commute from Chicago’s bustling Southside.

We sat on her lawn near the familiar sprawling empty lot that for 50 years had been the site of the George Washington Carver Swimming pool, a public facility constructed for the recreational use of the city’s sizable black and Latino population. The City of East Chicago possessed an excellent Parks and Recreation system with well-equipped swimming pools and access to specific reaches of Lake Michigan’s beach shorelines. However, there was an unwritten rule for years among black and white citizens that “Carver Pool” was the exclusive preserve of blacks. Thus for years a pattern of segregated swimming pools existed as a reminder of the northern racial divide and remained status quo in an arrangement of separate but dubiously equal swimming pools.

What stands out to me from my late summer conversation was the pride my dear neighbor exuded when she recalled being present at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, dedicating Carver Swimming pool in honor of the great African American Scientist Dr. George Washington Carver, as she spoke softly but proudly of the racial progress made on that glorious day when little black boys and girls would learn how to swim. And swim, we did!

Born into slavery and stolen and sold elsewhere, George Washington Carver would have never been able to guess how far his love of plants would take him. It was his work in crop rotation techniques and in agriculture of the south with peanuts and cotton that he won recognition. His invention of different consumer uses of these products helped boost the economy of the entire country.

Taken back to his original birthplace and following the abolition of slavery, he was raised by the family that had enslaved him. They knew he was bright for his age and encouraged him in his educational pursuits. He would go to Kansas for High School as schools farther south were not open to African American attendance yet.

When Carver applied to different colleges, he was rejected once they learned he was black. His name did not reveal his color. Disappointed, he moved even farther north to Iowa, where he would eventually attend Iowa State University as the first black student in that school. It was during this period that he adopted the name George “Washington” Carver since there was another George Carver in his classes and gained international recognition as a budding botanist. Carver graduated from Iowa State and went on to become a faculty member.

He was recruited and paid a substantial salary to teach at Tuskegee University, hired by Booker T. Washington, who promoted industry and labor as a way for his fellow African American brethren to rise in society. At Tuskegee, George Washington Carver completed research and taught for nearly fifty years. He discovered a variety of uses for the peanut plant, working on improved concoctions for glue, ink, makeup, oils, soaps, salts, and recipes for the home. It is even claimed that he invented peanut butter. Over the remaining years in his career and life, George Washington Carver did not publish his autobiography, but much has been written about his life. He gave advice to numerous presidents and was aided in his hopes that soy could be used for fuel by Henry Ford. He has had museums, schools, libraries, scholarships, and other awards named in his honor.

Dr. George Washington Carver, for whom Carver Swimming Pool was named, was present as the honored guest at the grand opening of one of the nation’s few black public-supported swimming pools. Carver Pool was located in the New Addition section of East Chicago, Indiana a predominately African American neighborhood. Dr. Carver noted, “It was a great day for Negro boys and girls to able to learn to swim.” (Source: Interview 2002 with Mrs. Rosemary Moore, RRN)