DESEGREGATION SHAPES THE MODERN SWIMMING ERA

Though it is remembered fondly, White Rock Lake never was the ideal place to swim, according to 1939-72 Park and Recreation Department director L.B. Houston, whose recorded oral history from 1973 is provided by city archivist John Slate.

Years before it closed, “the popularity of White Rock Beach began to decline. It was not a very dependable swimming place. In fact, it was just a recreation center. You know, go see and be seen and play in the sand,” Houston said. “Sanitation was always questioned.”

When White Rock beach closed, swimming’s modern era, which began in ’45, was just evolving in Dallas, progressing during a time of desegregation and accompanying unrest.

Swimming pools became a flashpoint for racial contention, notes professor Jeff Wiltse in his book, “Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America.”

“Racist assumptions that black Americans were more likely to be infected with communicable illness” inflamed opposition to racial integration, Wiltse wrote.

Also, gender mixing at pools was relatively new, and white swimmers objected “to black men interacting with white women at such visually and physically intimate spaces,” he adds.

Across the country, stories emerged of young black men being beaten for attempting to swim at white pools.

“In my book, I have pictures of black Americans who lie still on the ground with bloody heads from being pummeled, just for trying to access a swimming pool,” Wiltse said in an NPR radio interview.

Houston and members of the Dallas park board understood the perils.

“We could see the time when ra- cially mixed swimming would be with us,” Houston says. “We had the feeling that the very last thing that white people would tolerate would be mixed swimming. We thought it would be dangerous, you know, perhaps mob violence.”

In Dallas, no written rule of racial segregation at park property existed. Rather, segregation was socially enforced, according to the parks department’s centennial history. “Black citizens risked harassment or worse for using white facilities.”

Aside from White Rock and other lakes, a couple of large municipal pools served Dallas swimmers in the early 1900s.

The nearest pool for black residents of Northeast and East Dallas was Griggs Park, the city’s second black pool after Exline, located south of Southern Methodist University, almost to Downtown Dallas. Prior to 1924 it was called Hall Street Negro Park and was renamed for Rev. Allen Griggs, a freed slave who became a minister and newspaper publisher.

Imbalance in amenities grew increasingly evident over the years.

A 1944 Dallas Morning News article reported that the city offered 60 acres of park for its 60,000 black residents. In contrast, 5,000 acres were reserved for its 320,000 white citizens.

Compared to other Southern cities, Dallas managed to make a relatively peaceful transition to integrated pools, according to Slate, who co-wrote a paper with current parks department director Willis Winters about the desegregation of Dallas parks.

In their essay, “A means to a peaceful transition,” Slate and Winters credit Houston with leading “a quiet revolution that was a bright spot in an otherwise tumultuous time in the city’s relationship with its black citizens.”

Park board members Ray Hubbard and Julius Schepps worked closely with Houston, according to Slate,

Houston explained in his oral history how he and the board devised a new public swimming program while gradually integrating.

They developed a grid system of communities, both black and white, with a swimming pool at the middle of each. These smaller pools would progressively replace the existing large municipal swimming facilities.

The idea was directly tied to equal rights and desegregation.

“Houston surmised that providing more pools in more neighborhoods would distribute them more equitably throughout Dallas while reducing the chances of confrontation,” note Slate and Winters.

Houston began keeping close track of the racial makeup of Dallas neigh- borhoods, relying on employees who lived in transforming neighborhoods for information. He plotted data about racial trends and attitudes on a map hoods that had seen some of the most violent responses to integrated housing in Dallas’ history,” according to Slate and Winters. It was employed around the city, arguably resulting ultimately in equal amenities for black citizens. hung in his office, which he used to make desegregation decisions.

Years later Houston would have to defend the parks department’s seeming silence on issues of integration.

A trade magazine called Amusement Business noted in 1961 that Dallas desegregated parks, golf courses and other recreational facilities but explicitly left public pools out of their agreement with civil rights leaders.

“I never will forget the day [Schepps] called me and said, ‘L.B. are we ready to mix?’ By that time I think we had six or maybe nine pools. I told him my opinion that some could and others, doubtful,” Houston said in his oral history.

When it became clear a neighborhood was nearing a black-majority population, the local park was closed for a month and reopened as a “black” park. “By that time, most whites had moved on, and the park had been peacefully transitioned,” according to Houston’s oral history.

“This method was used successfully for both Lagow and Exline parks, which served South Dallas neighbor-

Houston defended his board’s methods, which, he pointed out, were supported by the Negro Chamber of Commerce and other local black groups.

“You were doing everything you could to prevent open rebellion. Because we were living on a powder keg. And when and if a revolt had ever been precipitated well, gosh, no telling where you would have ended up.”

Was it right to perpetuate socially segregated facilities? “No,” write Slate and Winters in their paper. “However, as agents of change from the inside they realized that whatever they could do from their positions would benefit a larger movement, and that anything that could prevent violent confrontation was better than the alternative.”

In the summer of 2010, a story from Shreveport, La., horrified the region. Six black teenagers, dead. Five went in after their friend who was drowning in the Red River’s shallow rough waters. A crowd stood nearby, helpless. Like their children, the adults could not swim. Black American children drown at a rate almost three times higher than white children, according to the USA Swimming Foundation. Swimming officials stress the key indicator is not race, but family — children from non-swimming households are eight times more likely to be at risk of drowning. Every summer for the past five years the YMCA of Dallas has taught minority children — 60 percent of whom cannot swim, they say — basic water safety skills through its Urban Swim Initiative. A component of the Urban Swim initiative is the Make a Splash program, which brings swimming lessons to neighborhood apartment complexes. In 2011 the effort resulted in 1,900 children in 27 apartment communities learning to swim. The next year, certified YMCA instructors taught twice as many. “Safety in and around water is an important issue for all children, but studies show that there are a disproportionate number of drownings among minority children,” YMCA President Gordon Echtenkamp said in 2012. “The Y established Urban Swim to focus on decreasing the number of swim-related fatalities in minority communities by providing swim lessons to children at no cost.” The Y also runs the Urban Swim Academy to “increase the number of minority youth that are certified as lifeguards and trained to save lives in pools, lakes and waterfronts.”

Desegregation of parks and pools proved a “complex, difficult, dangerous struggle, with many roles played by many different agents of change,” according to Dallas archivist John Slate. Tension lingered, but still, the Dallas Park and Recreation Department launched the city into something of a sparkling period for public pools. Families from all Dallas neighborhoods — people of all racial and socioeconomic backgrounds — were able to spend hot summer days dunking themselves in an affordable, accessible public pool. It began with the pool at Fair Park in 1925, then Tietze Park 1946 then Samuell-Grand in 1953, not to mention the dozens of junior pools and wading pools that dotted the neighborhood (see page 50).

It’s clear that Dallas loved its pool system by the attendance record, which climbed to a high of 731,227 in 1957 according to park reports. Historic city records (which only stretch from 1921-58) show that the only year the city lost money on its pool system was in 1929 and 1930 following the stock market crash that plunged the country into the Great Depression, when families lost the extra income needed to play at the pool. Even in 1943, when the entire pool system was closed down on July 2 amidst a polio outbreak, the city