Pool Closed

We are embarking on the unit on racial inequality soon, and this story struck me as sad. After racial segregation of public facilities (aka Jim Crow) was banned by Congress in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it took some years for it to be seriously enforced. When it finally began to be enforced in the early '70s, whites across the South chose to close (or in this NY Times story, to bury!) their public swimming pools rather than risk their children sharing the water with black children.

With the mounds of freshly dug dirt now lining the sides of the partly unearthed pool, memories of a town’s lost summers have also emerged, along with painful recollections: a bygone era’s racism and children — white children — bewildered by the closing.

"It just hurt their feelings awful, because they couldn’t understand why they didn’t have a place to swim anymore,” said Ardell Covington, 87, a former mayor. Pools all over the South closed in that period; many, if not most, stayed that way.

It is interesting that the pools were not just abandoned to common use (as mandated by the federal government), but closed or filled. And still in my lifetime. Also in my lifetime (yes I am godawful old) was the integration of UT. It seems likely SEU was segregated as well--does anyone know? The Times story, however, tells of a philanthropist who is paying to excavate the pool for shared, public use in the struggling town.