{"id":16748,"date":"2015-06-09T10:22:57","date_gmt":"2015-06-09T17:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=16748"},"modified":"2015-06-09T10:22:57","modified_gmt":"2015-06-09T17:22:57","slug":"the-last-barrier-to-racial-integration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=16748","title":{"rendered":"The Last Barrier to Racial Integration"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The city of St Louis, Missouri integrated its public swimming pools in June, 1949.\u00a0The experiment was\u00a0short-lived.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"LIFE_race riot by Paul Woodford, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/nextstl.com\/2010\/12\/fairground-park-the-history-we-choose-to-forget\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"click to link to story\" src=\"https:\/\/c1.staticflickr.com\/1\/422\/18645076891_fc36c8c492_z.jpg\" alt=\"LIFE_race riot\" width=\"597\" height=\"458\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When I was five,\u00a0my grandfather waded into a\u00a0creek I was playing in and yanked me out. Some black kids my age had followed me into the water. &#8220;You&#8217;ll catch a disease,&#8221; he explained. This was in my home town of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, probably a year or two after the swimming pool riots up the river in St Louis.<\/p>\n<p>A decade and a half later, during Freedom Summer, groups of black and white protesters attempted to integrate segregated swimming pools around the country. This is what happened in June 1964 at\u00a0the Monson Motor Lodge in St Augustine, Florida. Yes, that&#8217;s acid.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"1964-monson-mote-st-augustine-florida by Paul Woodford, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2014\/06\/13\/321380585\/remembering-a-civil-rights-swim-in-it-was-a-milestone\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"click to link to story\" src=\"https:\/\/c1.staticflickr.com\/9\/8855\/18637809152_5b0bf3f500_z.jpg\" alt=\"1964-monson-mote-st-augustine-florida\" width=\"597\" height=\"448\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Fears that black people would somehow infect the water they swam in were common\u00a0back then. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ign.com\/boards\/threads\/can-i-get-aids-from-swimming-in-a-pool-with-black-people.183873353\/\" target=\"_blank\">Thank goodness we\u00a0know better these days<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Or do we?<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"bzYHQJ7Q9M by Paul Woodford, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/nation-now\/2015\/06\/07\/texas-police-officer-suspended-gun-pool-party\/28651179\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"click to link to story &amp; video\" src=\"https:\/\/c1.staticflickr.com\/1\/439\/18644346185_8ebf07aa1f_z.jpg\" alt=\"bzYHQJ7Q9M\" width=\"597\" height=\"398\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Who knows what that 15-year-old girl and her friends did to the\u00a0water in\u00a0the Craig Ranch swimming pool last weekend? Best to be safe. Here&#8217;s the same pool yesterday. Wanna bet the &#8220;treatment&#8221; involves acid?<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"628x471 by Paul Woodford, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ctpost.com\/news\/texas\/article\/Latest-on-pool-incident-Witness-Teen-party-got-6313935.php\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"click to link to story\" src=\"https:\/\/c1.staticflickr.com\/1\/389\/18455452060_8957ddafaa_z.jpg\" alt=\"628x471\" width=\"597\" height=\"458\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The city of St Louis, Missouri integrated its public swimming pools in June, 1949.\u00a0The experiment was\u00a0short-lived. When I was five,\u00a0my grandfather waded into a\u00a0creek I was playing in and yanked me out. Some black kids my age had followed me into the water. &#8220;You&#8217;ll catch a disease,&#8221; he explained. This was in my home town [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[250,10,64],"tags":[1595,1883],"class_list":["post-16748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-wars","category-current-events","category-history","tag-integration","tag-swimming-pools"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16748"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16752,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16748\/revisions\/16752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}