Whites Only

I was eight years old in 1963, swimming with my brothers and sister at Forest Park swimming pool, the only community pool (at that time) in our hometown, Fort Worth, Texas. It was a very hot day and the water felt wonderful as we splashed about. As I played, something caught my eye that made me stop and survey my world. I saw an image that haunts me to this day.

There was a ten-foot high chain link fence all around the pool area. On the outside of the fence, with their fingers curled through, and their foreheads pressed against, the diamond shaped openings in the links, there stood a row of very young, barefoot, children, staring at me and all the other children cooling off in the pool. Each of the children clinging to the fence had dark skin of different hues, a sampling of the many black and Hispanic families that lived on “their own” sides of town.

I cannot now recall which of my siblings I asked, but I wanted to know why those kids outside the fence were there and not in the pool playing with us.  It was explained to me that they had “their own” day to swim in the pool. My young mind could not find any logic in this; those children were sweating and clearly as miserable from the heat as I had been prior to jumping into the pool.

The pool was huge and there was plenty of room, so, of course, I asked why there would be such a dumb rule.  It was only after I was told that it was the “whites only” day at the pool, that I began looking around. I was shocked to realize all of the people in the pool were white. Before this jolting enlightenment, I had just seen people, without regard to their race. A strong wave of shame washed over me, shattering my innocence, as I realized it was not they who did not want to swim with white people, but the other way around.

I felt dizzy and a huge knot formed in my gut. I sat alone in the shallow end of the pool for a long while, desperately trying to sort things out in my mind. I was deeply confused. Every Saturday morning I spent two hours in catechism class at my church, learning about how we are all God’s children. If the white people in the pool and the brown-skinned children outside the fence were all equal in God’s eyes, why did white people make “white days” and “colored days” for using the pool? I could see no reason for this rule. I simply saw the children of color, hanging on the outside of the fence thirty feet away from where I sat, as being no different from me. I suddenly felt very alone, even though a sea of people surrounded me.

The other big thing bothering me was why no one else in the pool but me seemed disturbed by the exclusion of these little children, based solely on the color of their skin. If they could be invisible from the consciousness of the rest of my family and all the other people in the pool, then I might become invisible, too. I stared at the children, studying their faces, which were dripping sweat from the heat of the day. And, even though each had sparkling eyes, their faces wore expressions of deep sadness which made my heart hurt.  After that, I was never the same. This was the first of several other “whites only” incidents that I encountered in my youth, even after the 1964 civil rights act was passed.

In 1991, I had the occasion to take my own three young children to that very pool back in my hometown. I had recently moved back to Texas after spending 11 years in various places on the West Coast. It was a terribly hot day and the pool was packed. As I swam and played with my children I suddenly began to weep. Unsure about what I was feeling, I assured my children that I would be alright, explaining that I just had some old memories take me by surprise.  I went and sat alone in the shallow end of the pool to think. The pool and surrounding areas looked exactly the same as in my childhood.

The same tall chain link fence surrounded the pool, and my gaze riveted to the spot where those children with brown skin had pressed their faces up against the outside of the fence. I could see the features of their faces with my mind’s eye as if I had first seen them yesterday instead of 28 years prior.  I felt overwhelmed as I looked all around the pool, watching the children, white and brown-skinned, playing in the water together, as they should have always been allowed to do.

Recalling how segregation at this swimming pool in my childhood, first opened my eyes and my heart to how much racial inequality hurts people, I then understood why I had wept.  A moment later my kids, and some others whom they had befriended, charged at me splashing and laughing, bringing my mind back to the present.  That day after swimming, I told my children about how the racial segregation of long ago at that public pool had upset me, and helped shape the activist adult I had become.