To begin, when public pools became a fad in the early twentieth century, they were mostly built in urban and suburban white neighborhoods. Because the black population was still being severely marginalized, the idea to put public pools in majority black neighborhoods was not profitable. Then the roaring 20's came. The extravagance of the time demanded for somewhere to lay out a lawn chair and swim with strangers. The boom of public pools also brought up the issue of race. Pools quickly became segregated, and with that the quality of the pool.
For example, in St. Louis in the 30's black americans made up about 15% of the population. However, only 1.5% were allowed to use one pool, whereas all the white people of St. Louis had access to 9 different pools. In many areas it was not an official rule to segregate pools. But they were indeed segregated. Many policemen would prevent black people from entering pools and they even encouraged swimmers to beat people out of the pool. In an interview with NPR, Dr. John Wiltse observed that racial tension around pools was so severe because "swimmings pools were very intimate spaces" and that white people had the fear of "being exposed to the dirt and disease of other swimmers."
When public pools were finally desegregated (slowly, through the fifties and sixties) it was met with extreme backlash. Many southern counties simply closed down pools. Or they may fill the pool with concrete. One of the most extreme actions is depicted here:
this photo shows a white man pouring muriatic acid into a pool whilst black people are swimming in it. So when this stereotype is next heard, or even said, consider the racist, terrible, and unjust background it has with it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/06/10/americas-swimming-pools-have-a-long-sad-racist-history/?utm_term=.82df37a8815b
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90213675
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/06/09/412913702/who-gets-to-hang-out-at-the-pool
Interesting post Drew! I've heard of the stereotype that black people couldn't swim, but I was always curious why it was even a stereotype. Your analysis was very clear and interesting, and helped show how extreme segregation and injustice led to stereotypes we see even today. This further struck my curiosity and I wanted to see if there was background around the stereotype that African Americans like watermelon. I found that the stereotype was actually derived from less cruel situations, and is actually a symbol of African American freedom. After being freed from slavery, many African Americans grew and sold watermelon on their own markets, so in a way, it was a way to show their new found rights.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/12/how-watermelons-became-a-racist-trope/383529/
Drew, this is a really interesting post. I had no idea that there was a history behind this widely assumed stereotype. Your analysis of the situation in the context of the Civil Right and desegregation movement was very well done, and I appreciated how you talked about the different mentalities apparent in the South. I think it is so interesting that policemen intervened in order to get black people out of a pool- just because the white population thought they were "dirty" or "filthy". When you mentioned that people were often weary of swimming together because of the intimacy there would have to be between blacks and whites, I was reminded of the story of Emmett Till. Just by talking a a white waitress- not even touching her or being outright nasty- he was brutally beaten and abused before his death. Worse, his perpetrators were not even jailed, and the woman he had "flirted with" even admitted to perjury. The idea of blacks being sub-human was a sad theme that was commonly seen throughout the 1960s.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-death-of-emmett-till
It's crazy that something so basic in our lives as a pool was once segregated by race, and frustrating that racial stereotypes are still living on today as a lasting effect of segregation. I was wondering how long pool segregation lasted, as there are not many stories about pool sit-ins or gaining the desegregation of pools. When I went to look it up, I found out that privately owned swim clubs were not ordered to desegregate until 1973, 10 whole years after the March on Washington.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.adl.org/blog/swimming-pools-and-segregation-a-long-history