Jackson closes every public swimming pool
Pools closed 1963; closure upheld by the Supreme Court in 1971The City of Jackson's five public swimming pools, Hinds County, MS
Jackson desegregated its parks and its zoo but would not desegregate its pools, so it closed four and gave up the lease on the fifth. In 1971 the Supreme Court held that closing them broke no law.
Through 1962 and 1963 Jackson's NAACP Youth Council and students from the city's Black colleges pressed the capital's segregated public facilities - the buses, the parks, the zoo, the swimming pools - with sit-ins and with lawsuits. A federal court held that enforced segregation of the city's public facilities was unconstitutional.
The city council complied with most of it. It desegregated the parks, the zoo, the golf course and the auditorium. It would not desegregate the swimming pools. Mayor Allen C. Thompson told the city that pools could not be operated safely or economically on an integrated basis, and in 1963 Jackson closed the four pools it owned and surrendered its lease on the fifth, which was run by the YMCA. They did not reopen.
Black residents sued to have them reopened on a desegregated basis, and the case became the clearest test of the whole tactic. In Palmer v. Thompson, decided in 1971, the Supreme Court held by five votes to four that closing a public facility to everyone is not a denial of the equal protection of the laws, whatever the city's reasons for closing it. Justice Byron White dissented, joined by Justices Brennan and Marshall; Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote a separate dissent.
That holding is the legal footing of a pattern that ran across the South for a decade: a pool filled in, a park locked, a recreation centre leased to a private club that chose its own members. Where a court could compel a city to share a public amenity, the city could lawfully abolish it instead - and an abolished public pool stays abolished long after the ruling that permitted it is forgotten.
Five pools closed; none reopened under the city. The shape is the city of Jackson, drawn indicatively; the authoritative boundary is the Census TIGER/Line place file.
Sources
- U.S. Reports: Palmer v. Thompson, 403 U.S. 217 (1971)Library of Congress (1971)loc.govThe official report. Backs the council desegregating everything but the pools, the mayor's stated reasons, the four city pools closed and the fifth lease surrendered, the five-to-four holding and the dissents.
- Jackson Civil Rights MovementMississippi Encyclopedia, Center for Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippimississippiencyclopedia.orgBacks the Youth Council campaign against the city's segregated parks, pools, buses and zoo.
- Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in AmericaUniversity of North Carolina Press (2007)Jeff Wiltse's account of municipal pool closures as a response to desegregation orders, and of the private-club swimming that replaced them.