Built in 1919, the Fairground Park pool in St. Louis, Missouri, was the largest in the country and probably the world, with a sandy beach, an elaborate diving board, and a reported capacity of ten thousand swimmers. When a new city administration changed the parks policy in 1949 to allow Black swimmers, the first integrated swim ended in bloodshed. On June 21, two hundred white residents surrounded the pool with “bats, clubs, bricks and knives” to menace the first thirty or so Black swimmers. Over the course of the day, a white mob that grew to five thousand attacked every Black person in sight around the Fairground Park. After the Fairground Park Riot, as it was known, the city returned to a segregation policy using public safety as a justification, but a successful NAACP lawsuit reopened the pool to all St. Louisans the following summer. On the first day of integrated swimming, July 19, 1950, only seven white swimmers attended, joining three brave Black swimmers under the shouts of two hundred white protesters. That first integrated summer, Fairground logged just 10,000 swims—down from 313,000 the previous summer. The city closed the pool for good six years later. Racial hatred led to St. Louis draining one of the most prized public pools in the world.
Draining public swimming pools to avoid integration received the official blessing of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971. The city council in Jackson, Mississippi, had responded to desegregation demands by closing four public pools and leasing the fifth to the YMCA, which operated it for whites only. Black citizens sued, but the Supreme Court, in Palmer v. Thompson, held that a city could choose not to provide a public facility rather than maintain an integrated one, because by robbing the entire public, the white leaders were spreading equal harm. “There was no evidence of state action affecting Negroes differently from white,” wrote Justice Hugo Black.
A video shows police arresting a teenager at a pool at Cambridge Commons in east Charlotte. A woman, who didn’t want to be identified, said a group of underaged kids got into the pool. A family member of the HOA president said that because there is no lifeguard, the rules are that anybody under 18 must be accompanied by someone who is over 18. The woman told Counts the kids were asked to leave and they allegedly refused and so someone called the cops. Several adults told Channel 9 that the kid who was arrested lives in the neighborhood and would have had the right to use the pool if the chaperone policy was followed.
“On July 27, we received a call for a disturbance at Cambridge Commons Drive. During these types of calls, we seek collaboration from all parties involved. Our goal is always to achieve a peaceful resolution in every situation.”
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