Pool Archives - Public Seminar

Race

Everyone in the Pool? No—Not Everyone

A site for fun and competition, the swimming pool has its own civil rights history—one that is not yet resolved

May 25, 2022 • by Janet Golden

When you think about desegregation, do you think about schools? Buses? Lunch counters? How about that most innocent, necessary, and often taken for granted of summer recreation spots for hot kids and their parents—the public pool? Yet pools were, and are, a public facility, and because of that were segregated by ...

A quest to bring a public pool to New York City’s waterfront

_____ My research in the musty documents detailing the administrative history of New York Harbor ended roughly with the demise of the floating public baths. These documents, which no one had seen or cared about for nearly a century, were about to be thrown out. I left the Battery Maritime Building, ...