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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 Liv- ingston and two younger sisters walked the ten blocks from their East Balti- more 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 atten- dant 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 Afro- American, 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

Wiltse, Jeff. Contested Waters : A Social History of Swimming Pools in America, University of North Carolina Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/buffalo/detail.action?docID=515703. Created from buffalo on 2017-10-11 08:40:35.

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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 Recre- ation, 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.

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156 Struggle to Desegregate Municipal Pools

the city’s pool-building plans and publicize the unequal provision. It con- tacted 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 Balti- more.”⁵ What began with Mamie Livingston’s ten-block walk to Clifton Park Pool had expanded into a legal assault on racial segregation at Baltimore’s municipal pools.

While the case should have hinged on questions of constitutional rights and legal precedents, the real issue was interracial intimacy. During the hear- ing in June 1954, city solicitor Edwin Harlan argued that racial segregation must continue at swimming pools—despite the Supreme Court’s recent rul- ing in Brown v. Board of Education that school segregation was unconstitu- tional—because swimming brought males and females into “physical” and “intimate” contact. “There must be segregation,” Harlan exhorted, “in fields of intimate contact or else there may be trouble.” Harlan predicted that whites would riot if black men were permitted to swim with white women. This rea- soning convinced Judge Roszel Thomsen to uphold segregation at the city’s pools. In reconciling his decision with Brown, Thomsen explained that swim- ming pools were “more sensitive than schools” because of the visual and physical intimacy that accompanied their use.⁶ The NAACP quickly appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, where a three-judge panel unanimously overturned the ruling and ordered the city to desegregate its pools. The justices concluded that “segregation cannot be justified as a means to preserve the public peace.” The city appealed to the Supreme Court, but the nine justices effectively upheld the ruling by de- clining to review the case.⁷

City officials abided by the ruling and opened all seven outdoor pools to

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Struggle to Desegregate Municipal Pools 157

blacks and whites on June 23, 1956. Despite the dire predictions of race riots, desegregation occurred “without incident,” according to the Afro-American. Local newspapers even portrayed the pools as harmonious racial melting pots. The Baltimore Sun printed a picture of two boys, one white and one black, clasping hands as they plunged into the water from a high dive.⁸ The Afro-American ran a picture of two male sunbathers laying side by side with the caption: “This scene showing colored and white swimmers basking in the sun together in a relaxed manner shows how amicably the changeover was effected.”⁹ Attendance statistics, however, indicate that these snapshots of racial harmony were misleading.

Desegregation did not really integrate the city’s municipal pools. Rather, it transferred use of some pools to black residents. The three pools located in overwhelmingly white sections of the city—Riverside, Roosevelt, and Patter- son—continued to attract only white swimmers. The pools located near black or racially mixed neighborhoods attracted almost exclusively black swimmers. That first summer of “integrated” use, the total number of swims citywide by whites dropped 62 percent from the previous year. Even more revealing, the number of whites swimming at pools now frequented by blacks plum- meted more than 95 percent. In 1955, the summer before desegregation, the whites-only pool in Druid Hill Park attracted 23,320 swimmers during the season’s first thirty days. The next year, only 870 whites entered the pool during the same month-long period, but 700 of them came on opening day. Once local whites realized that blacks were using the pool, an average of only six whites swam in it each day. The previous year, before desegregation, daily attendance averaged 775. “The white people in Druid Hill Park and Clifton Park areas have deserted [these pools],” noted Director of Parks and Recre- ation R. Brooke Maxwell, “because of the integration policy.”¹⁰

The racially divided use of Baltimore’s municipal pools continued for many years. In 1963 Floyd Stevens, director of the Clyburn Home for Or- phans, brought a group of parentless children to swim at Riverside Pool. As the group approached the water, swimmers began to shout, “Nigger, get out of here.” Two of the children—a ten-year-old boy and thirteen-year-old girl—were black. Stevens let the white orphans enter the pool but took the unnamed black boy and girl back to the orphanage. As a newspaper account of the incident explained, “municipal pools in Baltimore have been declared integrated, but the one visited by the orphans has been used only by whites.”¹¹ In response to racial desegregation, many white swimmers simply retreated to pools that were difficult and threatening for black Americans to access.

The desegregation of Baltimore’s municipal pools occurred a few years

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158 Struggle to Desegregate Municipal Pools

later than in most northern cities, but the process and social effects were the same. Between 1945 and 1955, progressive-minded Americans, both black and white, challenged racial discrimination at municipal pools throughout the northern United States. The protests were local in orientation but na- tional in scope. They were frequently organized by branch chapters of organi- zations such as the NAACP, the Young Progressives, and the American Youth for Democracy, but many protests were spontaneous and individual, like Ma- mie Livingston seeking entry to a whites-only pool on a hot summer day. These efforts to integrate municipal pools were opposed by determined and often violent resistance. Groups for and against segregation threw rocks and tomatoes at one another, swung bats and fists, and even stabbed and shot at each other. And so, the process of desegregating municipal pools was just as contested as the process of segregating them had been back in the 1920s and 1930s. When social protest proved ineffective, local NAACP chapters sought court orders forcing city officials to open pools to black swimmers. Unlike the earlier period, they usually triumphed. By the mid-1950s—the period when most accounts say the civil rights movement began—local protesters and plaintiffs had successfully desegregated municipal pools throughout the northern United States.

Several factors account for their success. The experience of fighting tyr- anny in Europe and the Pacific during World War II emboldened black Ameri- cans to fight racial discrimination at home. After the war, many steadfastly refused to accept exclusion from municipal pools or their inequitable distri- bution. Also, black swimmers received institutional support in their efforts to desegregate pools. After Mamie wrote her letter, the Afro-American and the local NAACP both joined the fight, eventually carrying it to federal court. World War II also brought about an important shift in the attitude of many northern whites. The horror of seeing deterministic views of race carried to extreme ends by Nazi Germany caused many Americans to question their own racial assumptions. Furthermore, the impassioned and heartfelt asser- tions that the nation was fighting the war to defend freedom and democracy forced many white northerners to grapple with the contradiction between American ideals and the nation’s treatment of black citizens.¹² After the war, some progressive-minded whites joined blacks in their fight to desegregate swimming pools. Many more northern whites simply concluded that bla- tant forms of public discrimination were wrong. Finally, state and federal judges became much more sympathetic to charges of racial discrimination than they had been before the war. Rather than conjure tenuous legal logic to sustain discrimination, the courts, in many cases, forthrightly upheld the

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Struggle to Desegregate Municipal Pools 159

law.¹³ Federal courts in particular played a critical role in desegregating mu- nicipal pools during this period.

Although many northern whites no longer condoned public forms of dis- crimination after World War II, most still refused to swim with blacks. When black Americans began using a pool that had been desegregated, whites gen- erally abandoned it. In large cities, desegregation transferred use of some pools from white swimmers to black but rarely led to meaningful interracial swimming. In smaller communities, desegregation was more consequential. Public officials in many one-pool cities, especially those in the southern tier of northern states, closed their pools rather than permit interracial swim- ming. When one-pool communities kept their desegregated pools open, many whites retreated to private pools or simply stopped swimming. One consequence of desegregation was that white attendance at municipal pools plummeted in many northern cities.

Americans began protesting pool segregation in the North as soon as World War II ended.¹⁴ Two of the most significant early desegrega- tion struggles occurred in Warren, Ohio, and Montgomery, West Virginia. In both cities, public officials had leased their municipal pool to a private organization in order to circumvent state civil rights laws that prohibited racial discrimination at public facilities. When the private operators refused to admit black swimmers, local branches of the NAACP sued. Unlike the New- ton, Kansas, case ten years earlier, the black plaintiffs triumphed in court and established legal precedents that tipped the scales of justice in the favor of black swimmers throughout the North. The social outcomes of the Warren and Montgomery cases, however, show that racial prejudice persisted long after the public discrimination ended.

The struggle to desegregate Warren’s Packard Park Pool began early in the summer of 1945. Representatives from the Warren NAACP chapter and leaders of the Warren Inter-Racial Committee asked Mayor Robert Roberts to ensure black citizens equal access to the city’s one municipal pool. Roberts refused but did offer black residents exclusive use of it one day a week. The biracial group rejected the offer, claiming that any form of segregation vio- lated black citizens’ civil rights. The group’s uncompromising position put Mayor Roberts in a difficult spot. He recognized that the city could no longer openly violate Ohio’s civil rights law, but he did not want blacks and whites to swim and sunbathe together. Perplexed by the dilemma, he decided to close the pool to all swimmers that summer.¹⁵

The swimming pool was a much-debated topic during the municipal elec-

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160 Struggle to Desegregate Municipal Pools

tions that fall. Roberts held to his position of segregation or closure, while challenger Henry Wagner promised to reopen the pool and admit “all citi- zens regardless of race or color.” Wagner won the election. As promised, the new mayor opened Packard Park Pool to all citizens during the 1946 swim- ming season. Some local whites willingly swam with fellow black residents, but most would not. Overall attendance plummeted that summer. As a re- sult, the city lost $3,500 operating the pool, whereas in past years the deficit had never exceeded $1,000.¹⁶

Wagner was committed to ending public forms of discrimination, but not so much that he would let it bankrupt the city. As the deficit mounted that summer, he approached the Inter-Racial Committee, the local NAACP, and the Warren Urban League asking if they would accept segregated use. He explained that the pool was losing so much money that the city would have to close it “unless separate days could be designated for Negroes and Cau- casians.” Again, the civil rights groups refused, explaining that they would not sacrifice the legal rights of black residents for a few thousand dollars of savings. When the segregation talks failed, the Warren City Council pursued an alternative solution. Late in the summer, it passed Emergency Ordinance 3518 authorizing the city to lease the pool to a private swim club. By doing so, the city sought to relieve itself of the financial burden of operating the pool as well as the headache of regulating its use.¹⁷

In January 1947 the newly formed Veterans Swim Club leased the pool from the city. City officials required no up-front compensation for use of the $100,000 facility, only 10 percent of any profits. The club implemented an elaborate process for screening applicants. All members had to be veterans or related to one, be recommended for membership, and pass a two-thirds secret ballot vote by the executive board. Despite the stringent requirements, the club quickly enrolled 4,600 members. Not one was identifiably black. Many black veterans and their families applied for membership, but all were rejected. The Warren branch of the NAACP complained to Mayor Wagner that this was obviously racial discrimination, but he had washed his hands of the pool “problem.” Local black leaders finally decided that the courts were their best recourse.¹⁸

James Culver, president of the local NAACP, hired Youngstown attorney William M. Howard to sue the city and the Veterans Swim Club. Howard quickly wrote to Thurgood Marshall, head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, asking for advice on the matter. The response by Marshall’s associate, Marian Wynn Perry, never made it to Howard, which caused a bit of a rift between

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Struggle to Desegregate Municipal Pools 161

them.¹⁹ Without advice from the more experienced civil rights attorneys in New York, Howard proceeded on his own, filing suit in the Trumbull County Court of Common Pleas. The case involved two principal questions. Did the city lease the pool to the swim club with the intent to deprive black residents use of it? If so, the lease was clearly illegal. Second, did the swim club exclude applicants based solely on their racial identity? If so, was that illegal?

Howard focused his case on the validity of the lease, an approach that at first seemed ill-fated. He argued that the real purpose behind the lease was to exclude black residents from the pool, which, under Ohio law, made it ille- gal. Howard called several witnesses to substantiate this point, but they gave rather weak testimony. William Burd, a member of the Warren Inter-Racial Committee, testified that city officials had approached the group, prior to au- thorizing the lease, asking it to support segregated use or risk having the pool closed entirely. Other witnesses gave similar testimony. Howard concluded that the either-or proposition—accept segregation or closure—showed that, from the start, the city was searching for a way to separate black swimmers from white.²⁰ On cross-examination, however, each of the witnesses ad- mitted that city officials had always presented the pool issue as an economic problem, not a social one. City Solicitor Donald Del Bene used these admis- sions to bolster the city’s argument that it had leased the pool not with the intent to exclude blacks, but because the pool was “economically unsound and a financial loss to the City.” As such, Del Bene asserted, the lease was per- fectly legal. Del Bene next claimed that the Veteran’s Swim Club was solely responsible for the administration of the pool, and the city was therefore not legally liable for its membership decisions. In its defense, the Veteran’s Swim Club denied excluding applicants based on their racial identity, but went on to claim that, as a private organization, its board could admit or exclude ap- plicants based upon any criteria it chose.²¹

In his decision, Judge J. Graham focused on the discrete legal issues of the case and refused to speculate on the motives of city officials. First, he ruled that the swim club could indeed admit and exclude prospective appli- cants at its own discretion: “If the Veteran’s Swim Club holds a valid lease, that club, being a private club, can determine who its members are to be and can refuse use of the pool to nonmembers.” The pertinent legal question therefore was whether the city leased the pool with the intent to deny black swimmers access or to avoid financial loss. Judge Graham accepted the word of city officials and ruled that their decision to lease the pool was based solely on financial considerations. “The court,” he explained, “cannot delve into the

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recesses of the minds of the councilmen for the purpose of discovering any [malicious] motive.” The lease therefore was legal, and Graham dismissed the case.²²

Howard was eager to appeal and again wrote Thurgood Marshall asking for advice. After attorneys in the national office scrutinized the case “back- ward and forward,” Marshall advised Howard not to appeal. The national NAACP was dedicated to fighting discrimination, even at swimming pools, but it did not want to argue weak cases that might add another precedent to the bulwark of case law that sanctioned racial segregation. Marshall did not doubt that the city leased the pool in order to exclude black residents, but city officials had been careful not to leave any evidence that proved this was their intent.²³ Even though the prospects for reversal seemed slim, Howard appealed the ruling anyway and soon benefited from a federal court decision on a similar case that originated in Montgomery, West Virginia.

Montgomery, a small community located in the southwest corner of the state, constructed its municipal pool in 1942 but did not open it until 1946. The delay had nothing to do with the war, however. During construction, local black leaders met with city officials on several occasions to ascertain whether black residents would be guaranteed equal access. On one occasion, the city attorney replied that he “would resign rather than advise the city to permit [interracial] use.” Members of the city council held similar views but realized that officially excluding black citizens would clearly violate West Vir- ginia’s civil rights law. Unwilling to permit interracial swimming or brazenly defy the law, they decided not to open the pool. The summers of 1942, 1943, 1944, and 1945 all passed without anyone using it.²⁴

Early in 1946, a less scrupulous city administration took office. Mayor R. M. Holstine devised a strategy for excluding black swimmers without, at least on the surface, violating state law. That summer, he leased the pool to the Montgomery Park Association for one dollar. Like the Veteran’s Swim Club in Warren, the park association was a private corporation formed solely for the purpose of administering the pool. The pool finally opened in June 1946, four years after it had been built. The racial discrimination that oc- curred at the Montgomery pool was much more blatant than in Warren. Pro- spective swimmers simply came to the pool and paid $7.50 for a season pass. Every white person who paid the “membership fee” was admitted, while every identifiably black person was turned away. Shortly after the pool opened, Paul Lawrence, Dr. R. A. Mead, Colbert Coleman, and Willard Divers, all members of the local NAACP chapter, walked into the pool office and handed thirty dol- lars to the pool manager for four season passes. The manager slid the money

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back to the men, explaining that he “didn’t have any orders to sell tickets to colored people.” Rather than argue with the manager, the group complained to F. B. Eberhart, president of the Montgomery Park Association. Eberhart responded that the association “hadn’t made arrangements to sell colored people tickets.” While both carefully avoided associating themselves person- ally with the policy, the pool manager and Eberhart freely admitted that the association was excluding black residents because of their racial identity.²⁵

The following summer, the same four men returned to the pool and at- tempted to purchase season passes. Again, the manager refused to accept them as members. This time Lawrence, Mead, Coleman, and Divers called on Mayor Holstine and threatened to sue the city if it did not open the pool to black residents. Holstine responded, rather colloquially, “That won’t do for you to use the pool.” Shortly thereafter, Dr. Meade—who was a longtime dentist in town—hired Charleston attorney T. Gillis Nutter to file suit against the city on behalf of Paul Lawrence in particular and all black residents of Montgomery in general. Nutter was an experienced civil rights attorney who had been fighting racial discrimination in West Virginia since 1928, when he successfully desegregated Charleston’s public library.²⁶

Nutter recognized that the choice of venue was critical both to the out- come of the case and the significance of the decision. He filed suit in U.S. District Court in part because he believed that black plaintiffs could not get a fair hearing in local court, especially involving a dispute with public officials. “We have been absolutely unable to gain a single victory in Fayette County,” Nutter wrote Thurgood Marshall, “although we have had two killing scrapes by officers and other matters but we have lost every effort we have made to protect Negroes in their rights.”²⁷ Nutter also filed suit in federal court because he hoped that victory in the Montgomery case would strike a blow for black swimmers across the nation. “I had in mind,” he wrote Marshall on another occasion, “that the present use of swimming pools had become almost a nation wide question and I thought possibly that we might be able through the Montgomery suit to establish the right of Negroes to use swim- ming pools without discrimination or segregation, throughout the country.” Only a federal court ruling, Nutter believed, would have such a far-reaching effect.²⁸ But, the potential reward was offset by considerable risk. Defeat in federal court would hinder other pool discrimination cases as much as vic- tory would help.

In his complaint, Nutter repeated the facts of the case—describing the multiple times Lawrence had been denied access to the pool—and focused on two arguments. First, he claimed that the city could not escape lawful

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administration of the pool by leasing it to a private group. Second, he argued that Lawrence had the right to sue on behalf of all 600 black residents of Montgomery. Both arguments harkened back to issues raised in the Kern v. Newton case from the late 1930s, which Nutter had studied in preparation for the Montgomery case.²⁹ Although Kern had lost the earlier case, Nutter hoped to take advantage of the Kansas Supreme Court’s ruling that cities could not lease away their legal obligation to ensure black citizens equal ac- cess to public pools. He also filed suit on behalf of the whole black commu- nity in an attempt to preempt the legal sophistry the Kansas court used to dismiss the Kern case. Nutter concluded the complaint by asking the court to permanently enjoin the city and/or park association “from denying plaintiff, and all other citizens of Montgomery, West Virginia, equal access to and en- joyment of the aforesaid recreation facilities.”³⁰

Both the city and the park association did their best to ignore or com- plicate the central issue of racial exclusion. As in the Warren case, the city argued that it had leased the pool because it did not have sufficient funds to operate it, not as a means to exclude black residents. Next, the city claimed that it bore no responsibility for the park association’s administration of the pool. In its defense, the Montgomery Park Association argued that it did not “unlawfully discriminate” against black Americans, which was not to claim that it did not discriminate, but that the discrimination was lawful because the association was “a private corporation and in no sense a [public entity].” The association further argued that no “actual controversy” existed between it and the plaintiff because the pool lease had expired on September 30, and it no longer operated the pool. The combined arguments of the city and park as- sociation suggested that there was no one for Paul Lawrence to sue. The city was not liable because it did not operate the pool when the discrimination occurred, and the association could not be sued because it did not operate the pool when the suit came to trial.³¹

Unlike previous judges faced with swimming pool discrimination cases, Federal District Judge Ben Moore focused more on the larger issues of jus- tice and equality than discrete questions of law. Whereas Judge Graham in the Warren case was not willing to “delve into the recesses of the minds” of public officials to divine their motive, Judge Moore was. “Justice would indeed be blind if she failed to detect the real purpose in this effort of the City of Montgomery to clothe a public function with the mantle of private responsibility. ‘The voice is Jacob’s voice,’ even though ‘the hands are the hands of Esau.’ It is clearly but another in the long series of stratagems which governing bodies of many white communities have employed in attempting

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to deprive the Negro of his constitutional birthright; the equal protection of the law.” In an opinion issued February 11, 1948, Moore instructed Nutter to prepare an order in the form of a declaratory judgment stating that the park association’s refusal to admit Lawrence “was an exercise of governmental power by the city of Montgomery” in violation of the Fourteenth Amend- ment. Conforming his ruling to the Supreme Court’s 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, Moore ruled that the order should include an injunction restrain- ing the city “from again denying plaintiff the right to use the swimming pool at any time when the pool is open for public use, unless there be provided by the City other and equal swimming facilities available to persons of the Negro race.”³² Lawrence v. Hancock therefore did not necessarily desegregate the pool, but it did ensure that black residents would have a pool in which to swim if the city provided a pool for whites.

Montgomery city officials were amenable to neither option. They would not permit interracial use but could not afford to build a second pool. So, they closed the pool and kept it closed until 1961. For fourteen years, the unused pool stood as a conspicuous reminder of the city’s racial divide.³³

Despite its bittersweet outcome for local blacks, the Montgomery de- cision set a historic precedent. It was the first substantial legal victory for black Americans fighting swimming pool discrimination in the courts. One hopes that Samuel Ridley, who brought the Kern v. Newton case to the Kansas Supreme Court, learned of the Montgomery legal triumph and realized that his earlier odyssey provided Nutter a map for navigating the tricky waters of swimming pool discrimination cases.

As Nutter intended, the Lawrence v. Hancock decision immediately bene- fited black plaintiffs in other cases—particularly William Howard’s fight to end discrimination at Packard Park Pool in Warren. Nutter immediately sent Moore’s ruling to Thurgood Marshall, who quickly forwarded it to Howard.³⁴ In this way, the New York office not only provided legal advice to civil rights attorneys across the country but also served as a clearinghouse of the latest legal opinions, which proved invaluable. When Howard received the corre- spondence, the Warren case was before Ohio’s Eleventh District Court of Ap- peals. Howard introduced the Montgomery decision to the court, and it im- mediately tipped the scales of justice in his favor. In its eventual ruling, the court liberally paraphrased from the Montgomery decision and even quoted Moore’s reference to Jacob and Esau verbatim. “Many cases have been cited as authority for the proposition herein discussed. The case most nearly analo- gous is the case of Lawrence v. Hancock. Except that the names of the parties are different and the locale is different, the opinion of the court in that case

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could well be the opinion in this case.” The court determined that the city and swim club “quite obviously conspired to prevent the use [of the pool] by plaintiffs and other colored persons,” and then ordered the city to admit black swimmers to Packard Park Pool on an equal basis with all other citizens.³⁵

By the time the court of appeals issued its ruling, Warren mayor Harold Smith had already decided to desegregate Packard Park Pool. He declined to renew the Veteran Swim Club’s lease and announced in early June 1948 that the pool would be open to all citizens. It was probably no coincidence that the change in policy occurred immediately after Howard gave a copy of the Montgomery decision to city attorneys. The local Warren newspaper covered the June 15 pool opening and published a front-page picture showing a dozen kids waiting to enter. The last two children in line were clearly black and the caption read, “Last one in the water is a monkey.”³⁶ Attendance at the pool plummeted as a result of desegregation. Although it did not provide exact numbers, the Warren Tribune Chronicle reported that “records indicate that no where near as many persons are using the pool this year as last.”³⁷ The attitudes and prejudices that led to racial exclusion at the pool were much more difficult to eradicate than the discrimination itself.

The Montgomery and Warren cases were important precedents, but they were not as widely applicable as Nutter had hoped. Both dealt spe- cifically with the question of racial exclusion—cases where whites had ac- cess to a municipal pool, but blacks did not. The judges ruled that racial exclusion was unconstitutional but explicitly affirmed each city’s right to seg- regate black swimmers at separate-but-equal pools. Desegregation became an issue only because neither city could afford to build a second pool. Dis- crimination cases in larger cities, which did provide separate pools for black residents, would be more difficult to prove. They would hinge on the more subjective question of whether the Jim Crow pools were in fact equal to the pools open only to whites. The first such case originated in St. Louis in 1950 and dealt with access to Fairgrounds Park Pool, the earliest segregated pool in the northern United States. The story of its desegregation, however, begins several years earlier, when black swimmers directly challenged segregation by repeatedly seeking admission.

At the end of the World War II, the provision of municipal pools in St. Louis was decidedly unequal for black residents. They had access to two in- door “bathhouse” pools, whereas whites could choose to swim at any of six pools, including two gigantic resort pools in Fairgrounds and Marquette Parks.³⁸ The wartime experience predisposed black residents to question

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public forms of discrimination, but it was the city’s changing demography that prompted the swimming pool protest. The black population of St. Louis increased 42 percent during the 1940s as migrants flooded into the mid- western metropolis from the South and the surrounding hinterland.³⁹ Tradi- tional black neighborhoods could not absorb all the migrants, so black fami- lies gradually pushed the boundary of residential segregation both north and west from the city’s Central Corridor. As they moved into new areas, local blacks demanded access to neighborhood recreation facilities. In 1946, for example, black residents living in south central St. Louis informed Com- missioner of Parks and Recreation Palmer B. Baumus that they intended to use the Buder Recreation Center with or without the blessing of the city. The Buder facility, which contained a playground, athletic facilities, and an indoor swimming pool, was “designated” for white use because the surrounding neighborhood had been overwhelmingly white when the recreation center opened back in 1930. The area was now inhabited predominately by black Americans. Commissioner Baumes acquiesced to black residents’ demand, desegregating the playground and athletic fields but not the pool. He could accept black and white children playing on swings and slides together but not swimming together. While Buder playground was now ostensibly inte- grated, the reality was that its use passed almost completely to blacks. When black children stepped onto the grounds, whites walked away in protest and did not return. Angry parents sent petitions to the mayor, and a few locals even burned a cross on the contested playground but to no avail. City officials would not resegregate the facility, and the flaming cross did not scare black children away. The city did, however, quickly construct a new whites-only playground nearby. Eventually, the city opened Buder pool to black children as well.⁴⁰

Black St. Louisians next sought to integrate Fairgrounds Park Pool. The park was, as one black resident recalled, “right on the cutting edge of [resi- dential] segregation” during the late 1940s.⁴¹ As more and more black fami- lies moved into this area northwest of downtown, they periodically sought admission to the pool. Whereas pool segregation had been official city policy during the 1920s and 1930s, it had become more a matter of custom in the postwar period. Sometimes pool attendants told prospective black swim- mers outright that they could not enter, whereas at other times the atten- dants strongly discouraged them but added, “If you really want to swim, you can get in line.” If the swimmers did not yield to the implicit threat and actually got in line, they were explicitly denied admission once they reached the gate. Commissioner Baumes considered each of these episodes to be of

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such importance that he instructed pool officials to notify him “immedi- ately” whenever a black swimmer sought admission to the pool.⁴² Although no black swimmers entered Fairgrounds Pool as a result, this social protest was nonetheless effective because it forced the city to enforce its segregation policy. Segregation was strongest and most viable when it was an accepted and uncontested habit of community life. Black residents upset this habit in St. Louis by repeatedly seeking entry to Fairgrounds Pool and eventually forced the city to rethink its policy.

The rethinking occurred in 1949, when a new city administration under the direction of Mayor Joseph Darst took over the offices at city hall. A real- estate man who had been involved in Missouri politics for twenty-five years, Darst was a close friend of President Harry Truman and shared a likeness to him as well. Darst was bald on top with a ring of gray hair around the sides and back of his head. He had a warm, round face, accentuated by round steel- rimmed glasses. Darst’s election ended eight years of Republican control in St. Louis.⁴³ The new mayor brought in his own staff and department heads, but retained many high level civil servants. He appointed his campaign man- ager, John J. O’Toole, to direct the Department of Public Welfare, which over- saw the Division of Parks and Recreation, but retained Palmer Baumes as the Commissioner of Parks and Recreation.

Early in the spring of 1949, Baumes asked O’Toole what the new adminis- tration’s policy would be regarding black citizens seeking admission to Fair- grounds and Marquette Pools. O’Toole responded, “Why do you ask this ques- tion? What is the problem?” Baumes informed him that black citizens were causing “trouble” by challenging the traditional practice of racial segregation. “It’s a question,” he told O’Toole, “that comes up every year that is difficult to handle and we ought to decide on a policy.” For several months leading up to the pool openings, O’Toole avoided deciding. He later recalled: “Frankly, I did not know what to do. I couldn’t see where there was any basis for ex- cluding Negroes under the law. I kept postponing giving an answer. I really thought that the man who had been the commissioner of parks for a long time should know what to do.” O’Toole never consulted with Mayor Darst, which suggests he did not recognize the sensitivity of the issue. Finally, four days before the pools were set to open on June 21, Baumes sought a definite answer from O’Toole. “I told him I could see no basis for keeping Negroes out of the pools,” O’Toole recalled. “They are citizens like everybody else and have every legal right to enter any public facility.”⁴⁴

The day before the pools opened, a reporter from the Post-Dispatch found out about O’Toole’s decision. He and a reporter from the Globe-Democrat

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asked the director for a statement. O’Toole denied integrating the city’s pools but added that blacks would not be denied admission. Unsure of the distinc- tion, the reporters asked him to clarify. O’Toole explained that the city was not inviting blacks to swim in the outdoor pools, but, if they sought admis- sion, attendants would let them enter. Mayor Darst finally became involved when the same reporters asked him to comment on the new policy. Caught by surprise, Darst declined, saying he needed to consult with his advisers. Later that day, Darst contacted the papers to confirm O’Toole’s directive but asked them to give the story “only factual and routine coverage.” He no doubt realized this was an explosive issue but, as subsequent events would show, did not realize just how explosive.⁴⁵

The next morning, June 21, the Globe-Democrat plastered across its front page the headline, “Pools and Playgrounds Opened to Both Races.” The opening line of the article read: “Negroes and whites hereafter may swim together in all of the city’s nine pools . . . , Director of Public Welfare John J. O’Toole announced yesterday.”⁴⁶ More in line with what the mayor had hoped, the Post-Dispatch buried the story on an inside page with the less arousing title, “Negroes Will Not Be Denied a Swim in Any City Pool.”⁴⁷ If Darst or O’Toole wondered how the new policy was being received by the public, they merely had to ask local insurance executive John O’Toole. Mis- taking him for the director of public welfare, scores of angry citizens made threatening phone calls to his home. Concerned that the callers would soon be ringing his bell, the businessman quickly asked for police protection. For- tunately for the welfare director, his phone number and street address were listed in the city directory under his nickname, Jack O’Toole.⁴⁸

That afternoon, 30 black swimmers and about 200 white swimmers waited outside the male entrance to Fairgrounds Pool. A much smaller number of girls, all of them white, waited outside their entrance. When the gates finally opened, the young swimmers entered the facility without incident but did break into separate racial groups in the water. Black swimmers tended to gather in one area of the enormous pool and whites in another. This was the first time in the pool’s thirty-six year history that the city permitted identifi- ably black swimmers to enter its expansive waters. The lifeguards considered quitting in protest but decided to stay on.⁴⁹

As the boys and girls tentatively played in the pool, a large crowd gathered in the park. About 200 teenagers and young men peered in from outside the fence and began shouting threats. More menacing than their words, however, were the bats, clubs, bricks, and knives they carried in their

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hands. Neither Darst nor O’Toole had informed the police about the pool- integration order, so no officers were on hand to quell the angry crowd. The pool custodian eventually called the police to get them to escort the black swimmers out of the park. Seven officers arrived but did little to protect the boys. As the swimmers walked through a human gauntlet, white youths would, according to an eyewitness, “dart in and strike the Negro children from time to time . . . and this was not prevented by police action.” Nor did the police disarm the protesters, except for one young man who brandished a large hunting knife.⁵⁰

Over the next couple of hours, the police and the mob chased after small groups of blacks that approached the park. The officers sought to turn them

Black Swimmers at Fairgrounds Park Pool, St. Louis, June 21, 1949. These were the first

identifiably black swimmers to enter Fairgrounds Park Pool, pictured here before they were

assaulted by a mob of angry white residents. From the St. Louis Globe-Democrat Archives

of the St. Louis Mercantile Library at the University of Missouri—St. Louis.

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away so as to avoid violence, while the protesters sought to pummel them. The mob eventually tired and dispersed, perhaps going home for dinner. By 6:45, twenty more black youths had lined-up outside the pool waiting to enter. White swimmers also waiting in line warned, or perhaps threatened, “You’d better get out of here if you don’t want trouble.” The boys heeded the warning and left the park. Shortly thereafter, the mob reconstituted itself outside the pool fence, and, again, the police did not disperse it. When a small group of black youths approached, someone shouted, “there’s some niggers,” and the rioters chased after them. The mob surrounded the boys, shouted a few epithets, and then beat them, according to the St. Louis Star- Times, with “clubs, bats, bricks, sticks, and their fists.” One of the victims, Arthur Goodin, pulled out a knife to protect himself and stabbed Rolland Er- bar, a twenty-year-old white cement finisher. The mob shouted—“He’s got a knife.” “He cut him.”—and then intensified its assault. The onslaught ended only when the mob took off after two other black children approaching on bicycles. The young bicyclists escaped, but an unsuspecting man exiting a streetcar was attacked and beaten.⁵¹

Up to this point, the mob consisted of several hundred teenagers and a few older men, who incited the passions of the younger rioters with inflam- matory rhetoric. “You want to know how to take care of them niggers,” a burly man of about thirty asked rhetorically. “Get bricks and smash their heads.” One of the teens expressed concern that the police would arrest him for smashing a black child’s head with a brick. “No, they won’t,” the man responded. “Kill a nigger and you will make a name for yourself.” As night approached, the crowd grew considerably, reaching an estimated 5,000 by eight o’clock. It now included many women, children, and adult men.⁵²

The mob chased every black person who approached the park. A local newspaper described one of these episodes: “At 7:50 pm a Negro was seen on the east side of Spring Street, and another chase was underway. He ran, stumbled, and fell about 100 feet west of Grand Ave. Members of the crowd pounced on the Negro, beating him severely. Plainclothes police rushed to the spot and formed a protective cordon around the man. A detective ser- geant tried to learn the man’s name, but he was so severely beaten he could not speak.” Then, someone hollered that another black man had been spot- ted on the other side of the park. The crowd and the police raced toward him. A smaller group of rioters had cornered the man on the front porch of a home adjacent to the park. Before the police could rescue him, the mob beat him with clubs and sticks, then kicked him as he lay motionless on the ground. As the police carried the limp but still breathing body away, one of

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the attackers could not believe the man survived. “Why I kicked him twice in the head myself,” remarked the sixteen-year-old boy.⁵³

Some black bystanders were brave beyond reason. One young man driving past the park stopped, got out of the car, and challenged some of the rioters to

Rioters outside Fairgrounds Park, St. Louis, June 21, 1949. Young white men brandishing

bats and clubs attack a truck driven by a black man during the Fairgrounds Park Riot.

The role of the police officer in the melee is unclear. From the St. Louis Globe-Democrat

Archives of the St. Louis Mercantile Library at the University of Missouri—St. Louis.

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a fight after they yelled obscenities at him and his wife. Police Chief Jeremiah O’Connell, who was now on the scene with about 150 officers, rushed to the enraged man and persuaded him to drive away. The police eventually blocked all roads leading to the park and created a cordon around the area to warn black residents away. The violence soon ended, but the crowd stayed in the park until late that night. Twelve people—ten blacks and two whites—suf- fered injuries that required hospitalization. The black victims were treated at segregated Homer G. Phillips Hospital for a variety of injuries, including stab wounds, fractured jaws, skull fractures, scalp lacerations, and countless cuts and bruises. The two white men were treated at City Hospital, one for a stab wound and the other for facial abrasions.⁵⁴

Victim of Fairgrounds Park Riot, St. Louis, June 21, 1949. From the St. Louis

Globe-Democrat Archives of the St. Louis Mercantile Library at the University

of Missouri—St. Louis.

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For all the violence and lawlessness, the police arrested only eight people— five of whom were black. Goodwin, who stabbed the white cement finisher, was charged with inciting to riot and assault with intent to kill. Three other young black men were charged with disturbing the peace and inciting to riot. James Wallace, a thirty-seven-year-old black man who claimed to be on his way to the St. Louis Cardinals–New York Giants baseball game at nearby Sportsman Park when the mob attacked and stabbed him in the chest, was, according to the charge, suspected of affray. The white man who was stabbed, Roland Erbar, was charged with disturbing the peace and inciting to riot, while Aaron O’Neal, a thirty-eight-year-old white welder, was also suspected of affray. All seven of these men were arrested at their respective hospitals while receiving treatment for their various wounds. Only one person was taken into custody at the scene, as the riot raged. The police arrested eigh- teen-year-old Clyde Monroe and charged him with interfering with police business. Officers found the youth letting the air out of their police car tires. The charges were eventually dropped on all except one, Clyde Monroe. He pled guilty and paid a five-dollar fine.⁵⁵

In response to the violence, Mayor Darst closed Fairgrounds and Mar- quette Pools and announced that the city would return—at least in the short term—to the “time-honored policy” of segregation at the pools. The mayor acknowledged that O’Toole was legally correct in opening the pools to black residents but rescinded the integration order anyway, “in the general public interest.”⁵⁶ Darst did promise to build an outdoor pool for black residents sometime in the near future.⁵⁷ He also formed a fifteen member Council on Human Relations, composed of twelve whites and three blacks. The mem- bers were community leaders, labor-union representatives, and business people. Darst assigned the council two broad tasks: counteract racial preju- dices among the people of St. Louis and seek a way to end “discriminatory practices” in the city. To achieve these ambitious ends, he allocated the group $5,000 and an office in city hall.⁵⁸

The local media blamed the riot on “hooligans” and “young rowdies,” thereby absolving the larger white community of complicity. The Post-Dis- patch reported that “the disturbances in large part were created by irrespon- sible teenagers” who were being directed by a few older agitators.⁵⁹ Rumors also circulated through the city that communists or fascists or perhaps both groups were responsible for the violence.⁶⁰ The black press was especially eager to point the finger of guilt at extremist groups. The St. Louis Argus blamed the violence on followers of Gerald L. K. Smith: “The Fascists and the

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crowds who are still fighting President Truman’s Civil Rights program will be found among the ‘inciters to riot.’ Included in those, of course, is the Gerald L. K. Smith–Ku Klux Klan, race baiting conglomerations. They claim to have a bait for all suckers who thrive on slime and ignorance.”⁶¹ By blaming ir- responsible youths and extremist groups, the St. Louis press suggested that the mob did not reflect the views of most whites. When local religious lead- ers issued a public statement condemning the violence and supporting pool desegregation, the Post-Dispatch editorialized that “[t]hese—and not the Fair- ground Park hoodlums—represent the real sentiment of the community.”⁶² And yet, one local paper questioned these judgments. The Globe-Democrat agreed that most reasonable whites regretted the violence and the black eye it caused the city but doubted that most whites wanted the pools integrated: “The violences [sic] at the Fairgrounds Park pool were precipitated by whites. That they were rash and thoughtless youths, with a content of plain hood- lumism, does not mean that within the city generally cannot be found num- bers of more sober whites who seriously object to indiscriminate bathing by whites and Negroes.”⁶³ Subsequent events would validate the paper’s asser- tion.

The mayor’s Council on Human Relations hired George Schermer, di- rector of Detroit’s Interracial Committee, to investigate the causes of the riot and recommend ways to improve race relations in the city. Schermer inter- viewed police officers, city officials, victims of the violence, witnesses, and pool employees. His final report offered a very different interpretation of the riot than appeared in local papers. Schermer determined that the riot resulted solely from the introduction of mixed-race swimming and did not reflect blind racial hatred or underlying social or economic tensions in the city. He acknowledged that the racial contest over the pool stemmed from increasing black settlement in the area, but he did not find overt racial an- tipathy among local whites. He pointed out that three days after the riot, blacks and whites were back at Fairgrounds Park playing baseball with one another. He further concluded that the riot was really a protest that turned violent but never lost its protest character. People in the mob “discussed” the pool integration order and condemned O’Toole for issuing it, even during the height of violence. This in part explains why the riot did not radiate out from the park and engulf the surrounding neighborhood. Schermer concluded that the mob did not raze black homes and businesses, as was the case in so many other twentieth-century race riots, because the protesters were moti- vated by a specific goal rather than general racial hatred. They intended to

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reestablish the traditional boundaries of racial interaction in the park. They accepted interracial baseball but not interracial swimming. Despite obvious resistance to the policy, Schermer concluded that the city had no option but to reopen the pools on an integrated basis. To avoid another riot, he advised the city to begin a public relations campaign designed to counteract fears about mixed-race swimming and station enough police officers at the pools to protect black swimmers.⁶⁴

The Council on Human Relations agreed with Schermer in principle, but a slim majority decided that the risk of further violence was too high to im- mediately open the outdoor pools to black swimmers. The council concluded that “the transition from a policy of segregation in the operation of swimming pools . . . to one of non-segregation must be made with careful planning and preparation.”⁶⁵ By an eight-to-seven vote, the council advised Mayor Darst to continue racial segregation for the time being. Darst agreed. “Public safety,” he wrote to the council, “demands the approach you have outlined.”⁶⁶ Local and national civic groups, including the Urban League, League of Women Voters, and the Interracial Ministerial Alliance, objected to the decision but could not sway the mayor.⁶⁷

When Fairgrounds Pool opened for the 1950 season on June 19, three black residents—attorney George Draper and two women affiliated with the local NAACP chapter, Katie McCullough and Rose Taylor—sought admission to the pool but were denied. An attendant claimed that they had to have a “permit” issued at city hall to enter the pool. Draper asked whether all swim- mers needed this permit, to which the attendant replied, no, “only Negroes.”⁶⁸ Three days later, the St. Louis chapter of the NAACP filed suit against Darst, O’Toole, Baumes, and the City of St. Louis in U.S. District Court on behalf of Draper and Taylor seeking a court order forcing the city to desegregate all of its municipal pools.⁶⁹

The case was assigned to Judge Rubey M. Hulen. Hulen was a pensive- looking fifty-five year old man with dark hair and a long, stern face. He was a lifelong Missourian. Born in tiny Hallsville, Hulen attended night classes at Kansas City Law School, served as Boone County prosecutor, and was a Democratic Party leader in the state. His ascension to the federal judiciary re- sulted from political favoritism, not distinction as a jurist. President Frank- lin Roosevelt appointed him to the federal bench in 1944 as a favor to Mis- souri Senator Bennett Champ Clark, who Hulen helped get elected six years earlier.⁷⁰ If either party to the pool suit assumed that Hulen’s small-town up- bringing and membership in the state’s political establishment meant that he was partial to the traditional practice of racial segregation, they were wrong.

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In court, the city mounted a vigorous defense of its segregation policy. The city’s attorney, who was appropriately named James Crowe, offered two principal arguments. First, he claimed that the city was in the process of con- structing a relatively large outdoor pool at the Vashon Community Center that would be open to blacks. The city would therefore, Crowe argued, soon meet the constitutional standard of separate but equal established by the Supreme Court’s 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision. He then claimed that the city was committed to integrating all of its swimming pools “as expeditiously as public feeling will permit,” but asked the judge to permit them to move slowly so as to avoid additional violence.⁷¹

The plaintiff ’s attorney, S. R. Redmond, dismantled the city’s defense through a series of strategic cross-examinations. First, he argued the city’s superintendent of recreation John Turner into admitting that the soon-to-be- completed Vashon Pool was not in fact equal to Fairgrounds or Marquette Pools. It was much smaller and lacked a sandy beach. Turner also admitted that the indoor pools currently open to black citizens were “undoubtedly” less desirable than the outdoor pools. Redmond next cornered St. Louis chief of police Jeremiah O’Connell into admitting that the police could in fact main- tain order at the outdoor pools if they were thrown open to blacks and whites. He asked O’Connell a clever question: “Would you say that the trouble at Fairgrounds on June 21, 1949 was due to incompetence in the police de- partment?” Recognizing the trap, O’Connell stuttered and hedged, trying to think of a way out. Associate City Counselor John McCammon objected to the question, but Judge Hulen overruled. The police chief had to answer. Unwilling to take the blame for last year’s debacle, O’Connell stated that the police could have maintained order if only he had been informed about the integration order ahead of time. Redmond then asked him if the police could maintain order if the pools were integrated this summer. “Yes,” the chief replied. Redmond had effectively dismantled the city’s principal arguments but that did not ensure victory. Black plaintiffs had learned through decades of less-than-color-blind justice to expect the worst.⁷²

In his decision, Judge Hulen granted Draper and Taylor the injunction they sought, ordering the city to open Fairgrounds and Marquette Pools to black swimmers on July 19, 1950. Hulen first addressed the question of whether the city could legally exclude black citizens from the most desirable municipal pools if it promised to desegregate them at some later date, when racial prejudices had weakened. He mocked this argument as “a new and novel theory” of law. “Defendants would delay the granting of equal rights to plaintiffs, as guaranteed by the Constitution to some unannounced date

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to be determined by the Council of Human Relations. The law permits no such delay in protection of plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.”⁷³ Hulen next ad- dressed the issue of the soon-to-be-completed Vashon Pool. He warned the city that even when it was completed and open to black residents, Vashon Pool would not make continued segregation at Fairgrounds and Marquette Pools constitutional. The Vashon Pool was, Hulen concluded, “in a setting far less attractive than the present outdoor pools.” Citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education deci- sion, Hulen stressed that separate facilities must be equal in fact.⁷⁴

The judge, however, did not stop there. He tentatively waded into unchar- tered legal waters by suggesting that racial exclusion from any municipal pool, even if another truly equal pool were provided, might still violate the Constitution. A comparable pool “may mitigate discrimination,” Hulen con- cluded, “but it will not validate it as to other sections of the city.” Hulen seemed to be saying that a black swimmer who had to walk past a whites- only pool to get to a truly equal Jim Crow pool would not be receiving equal treatment under the law, as mandated by the Fourteenth Amendment. Con- venience was a component of equality.⁷⁵

James Crowe was startled by the implication of Hulen’s ruling and asked him to stay the integration order until a higher court could review it. During a tense verbal exchange, Crowe pointed out that the decision conflicted with social tradition and legal precedent: “We feel that this cause presents a most serious question and most important decision. We feel that the condition that has existed—the status quo, if you will,—that has existed for this and many decades in this country, the decisions of the courts which have been in being, they have recognized as Constitutional rights equal facilities pro- vided between the races.” Unmoved, Hulen responded that neither social nor legal custom would make him disregard his oath to uphold the Constitution. “Does the viewpoint of the community set aside the Constitution?” Hulen asked Crowe. “Is the Constitution to be shelved for an hour, or set aside, be- cause one part of the community happens to have an antipathy towards it? . . . I have no intention of putting my ear to the ground, to see what the people are thinking. I think any judge that would do that would be a dishonor to the bench.”⁷⁶

When Thurgood Marshall read a transcript of this exchange several weeks later, he forwarded it to two other NAACP attorneys with a note attached pro- claiming, “This is really good.” The future Supreme Court justice no doubt recognized in the sentiments of Judge Hulen—his rigid definition of equal and his unwillingness to be swayed by popular sentiment—a shift in the

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Struggle to Desegregate Municipal Pools 179

legal tide that would lead inevitably to the Brown v. Board of Education deci- sion that he would argue before the U.S. Supreme Court four years later.⁷⁷

Back in St. Louis, Judge Hulen’s decision caused not one, but two social changes at Fairgrounds and Marquette Pools. Mayor Darst announced that the city would abide by the ruling, but added that beginning July 19—the same day Hulen set for racial desegregation—the pools would become seg- regated along gender lines. Men and women would have to swim separately, Darst decided, if blacks and whites swam together.⁷⁸ The mayor had essen- tially turned the clocks back thirty-seven years to 1913, when an earlier city administration had simultaneously gender-integrated and racially segregated Fairgrounds Pool. Darst no doubt sensed that most whites still harbored the same sex-based racial prejudices that led the city to racially segregate the pools in the first place.

As it turned out, most white St. Louisians were not willing to accept any form of interracial swimming. They virtually stopped using the city’s munici- pal pools after desegregation. On July 19 the police and white protesters out- numbered swimmers at Fairgrounds Pool almost forty to one: 170 police offi- cers and about 200 white protesters watched as 10 swimmers (3 blacks and 7 whites) plunged into the enormous pool. Only three women entered Mar- quette Pool on its first day of interracial swimming—all of them were black.⁷⁹ The number of black swimmers gradually increased that first summer, as they felt secure about their safety, but the number of whites did not. A month after “integration,” the Post-Dispatch reported that Fairgrounds and Mar- quette Pools “have been almost completely boycotted by residents in the vi- cinity who ordinarily use the facilities.”⁸⁰ The boycotts were not short-lived. Before desegregation, the outdoor pools attracted hundreds of thousands of white swimmers each summer. Fairgrounds Pool recorded 313,000 swims during the summer of 1948. The pool was closed throughout 1949 because of the riot. The first summer of interracial swimming, 1950, the pool re- ported only 60,000 swims, 80 percent less than the last summer of “whites only” swimming. Even this number was artificially high because the pool was still segregated during the first month of summer, before Hulen’s ruling took effect. The attendance statistics for subsequent summers reveal the full effect of desegregation: 10,000 swims in 1951, 20,000 in 1952, 20,000 in 1953, and 25,000 in 1954. The attendance at Marquette Pool was equally depressed, plummeting from an average of nearly 300,000 swims per summer to an average of 24,000. And, almost all the swimmers at both pools were now black.⁸¹ In its 1954 Annual Report, the parks and recreation division blamed desegregation for the dwindling number of swimmers: “[I]t appears likely

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180 Struggle to Desegregate Municipal Pools

that the failure of the large outdoor pools to draw the huge number of swim- mers that were attracted in the past may be a reflection of passive resistance to inter-racial swimming.”⁸²

In 1956 St. Louis closed Fairgrounds Pool.⁸³ Just as the pool’s opening back in 1913 foreshadowed a new era in the history of swimming pools, its closing symbolized the end of that era. Beginning in the mid-1950s, northern cities generally stopped building large resort pools and let the ones already constructed fall into disrepair. They became decrepit monuments of a bygone age when tens of millions of white Americans spent their summers swimming and suntanning at municipal pools. Although many whites aban- doned desegregated municipal pools, most did not stop swimming. Instead, they built private pools, both club and residential, and swam in them instead. Racial integration was not the only cause of the dramatic proliferation of pri- vate swimming pools after the early 1950s, but it was a direct and immediate cause. As one disgruntled St. Louis citizen asked rhetorically in a letter to the Post-Dispatch, “What is going to happen to the whites who do not want to mix?” “They will go to a pool where they have to pay a fee,” he answered.⁸⁴ And so they did.

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