HOW INTEGRATION SHAPED THE MODERN SWIMMING POOL ERA IN DALLAS

1945 saw the modern era of public swimming pools emerge and progress 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.

“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.

Park director L.B. Houston and members of the Dallas park board in the mid-20th Century understood the perils of integrating pools.

“We could see the time when racially mixed swimming would be with us,” Houston says in a 1973 oral history, provided by the Dallas Municipal Archives. “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 Dallas Park and Recreation Department’s centennial history. “Black citizens risked harassment or worse for using white facilities.”

In addition to Kidd Springs, a couple of large municipal pools served Dallas swim- mers in the early 1900s.

South Dallas’ Exline Park, named for Marcus Page Exline, a Dallasite who founded the M.P. Exline Printing Co., offered a park and junior pool for black residents beginning in the 1920s. A community pool was built there in the 50s.

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 city archivist John Slate, who co-wrote a paper with current Dallas park director Willis Winters about the desegregation of Dallas parks.

In their essay, “A means to a peaceful transition,” Slate and Winters credit former

Dallas park director L.B. 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, “within the confines of institutionalized segregation to encourage the peaceful transition to an integrated park system.”

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 neighborhoods relying on employees who lived in transforming neighborhoods for information. He plotted data about racial trends and attitudes on a map hung in his office, which he used to make desegregation decisions.

“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 neighborhoods that had seen some of the most violent responses to integrated housing in Dallas’ history,” according to Slate and Winters. Exline, for example, was the site of racially motivated bombings in the 1950s.

That strategy was employed around the city, arguably resulting ultimately in equal amenities for black citizens.

Years later Houston would have to defend the park 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.

Houston defended his board’s methods, which, he pointed out, was 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.”

— Christina Hughes Babb

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.”

Late Night Eats

A Waffle House restaurant is expected to open in the 3700 block of West Illinois, near Coombs Creek as soon as this month. The Georgia-based chain of greasy spoons has about 18 new stores coming to the Dallas area this year. The new Oak Cliff store, along with the recently opened one on Ross at Garrett in East Dallas, indicate a new strategy with Waffle House locations, which typically have been placed on busy interstate highways.

More Restaurant News

Cultivar, a high-end coffee shop, is now open at Jefferson Tower.

A specialty cheese shop is planned for the corner of West Davis at Edgefield, in the building that houses the Book Doctor and Bouchon 1314. The shop is called Cheese and Chutney, and it is expected to open soon.

Kessler Pie Co., which Armida Ortega started out of her Kessler Plaza home last year, is opening a storefront at 416 N. Tyler. The storefront could open as soon as next month.

Oak Cliff native Luis Olvera, recently opened a taquería, Trompo, in the 800 block of Singleton.

Fort Worth Avenue Development

Lincoln Property Co. recently purchased the site of the former Colorado Place apartment complex on Fort Worth Avenue, according to Dallas County property records. The 18-acre site, between Colorado and Parkcrest, has been vacant since 2009 when 1940s apartments were demolished there. The property passed through several owners until Cienda Partners bought it in 2014. Earlier this year, Cienda also purchased the adjacent Gator Wash carwash, which was included in the sale to Lincoln. Lincoln has developed at least three urban apartment complexes in Dallas, pictured above. Jeff Courtwright of Lincoln did not responded to messages seeking comment.

NEW ’DO

Craft & Co. salon opened recently at Sylvan Thirty. The salon from Garrett Lemmons and Daren Brimberry, who also own Muse the Salon on North Henderson, will be managed by Lisa Robertson of Oak Cliff.