Jim Crow in Savannah's Parks in the 20th Century presented by Jeffrey M. Ofgang: Pools

Courtesy of City of Savannah Municipal Archives on behalf of V. & J. Duncan Antique Maps & Prints

The city of Savannah opened its municipal swimming area in September 1921. The eight-acre Daffin Park Lake included an elaborate pavilion and bath house. The lake was built with convict laborers, who were often Black men arrested for petty offenses. The Superintendent of the Park and Tree Commission, William Robertson, boasted that 5,400 people used the bath house in its first three days of operation. Robertson had promoted the project for years and designed the lake himself to resemble the shape of the contiguous United States. A 430-foot long platform crossed the swimming "pool," dividing it into areas for swimmers and non-swimmers. Part of the lake was set aside for boaters. The city's history of the park notes that, "Every summer, the Daffin Park 'pool' became the focal point for the white children of Savannah." Black people were barred, and to this point the city provided no pool for them.

Black petitioners notably did not seek integration of the Daffin Park swimming area, but requested comparable facilities. Integration was not a widespread cause in the Black community in early 20th-century Savannah, a pragmatic strategy that would change with more activist Black leadership starting in the 1940s.

A powerful voice of the Black community, the weekly Savannah Tribune, noted that Black tax dollars helped pay for the Daffin Park pool and on September 1, 1921 urged Mayor Murray Stewart to build a swimming pool for Black constituents. For good measure, the newspaper flattered the Mayor "as a broad minded and true Savannahian." One week later, the Mayor announced appointment of a Black citizens' committee to find a location for a new pool and promised it would open "next season." Black residents petitioned the City Council for a pool in Cann Park, a mostly-Black area southwest of downtown. The petitioners promised that the pool would not cause trouble because there would be no intermingling of the races. White residents around Cann Park objected in a petition declaring that "building a pool for negroes would prove most objectionable." The City Council rejected a pool for Cann Park.

1922 advertisement in the Savannah Tribune

In April 1922, the Savannah Tribune reported that Mayor Murray Stewart fulfilled his promise: the city had built a Black swimming pool and it was almost ready to open. It was located in the former Ogeechee Canal basin near Louisville Road. The Tribune conceded that the pool "may not be ideally located, yet it is no further away from the central part of the city than Daffin Park pool." Advertisements in the Savannah Tribune welcomed patrons to the "Colored Swimming Pool" on Rockwell Street, a misspelling of Rothwell Street in the Brickyard enclave of Carver Heights on Savannah’s west side. A city contract with R.N. Williams called for him to build and operate 300 dressing rooms, a dance pavilion and a soft-drink stand. Today the pool site at the foot of Rothwell Street serves as a retention pond near the Springfield Canal and stretches along Stiles Avenue toward the new Enmarket Arena.

City workers began filling the pool on April 16, 1922, a week before its official opening. Hundreds of people did not wait for Opening Day and immediately jumped in, presumably without a lifeguard on duty. A young man drowned and a teenage girl and two young boys had to be rescued. By July, the Tribune complained that the pool was "a fertile crime field" and a secluded spot for furtive sex. Within two years, the dressing rooms had burned down and the pool was closed. On April 15, 1924, Park Superintendent William Robertson, in a report requested by Mayor Paul Seabrook, stated that the pool basin was overgrown with weeds and grass but could be returned to service with little trouble. As a reformist judge, Seabrook helped register hundreds of Black voters before his election the year before. The superintendent stated that the banks were apparently in good shape, "while there might be a slight seepage due to the death of plant roots." Robertson’s description of a hole dug into the wetlands of the Ogeechee Canal basin was a sharp contrast to his grand project at Daffin Park. No evidence in the historical record indicates that the pool reopened, and in 1928 the City Council rejected a petition by the Negro Education Committee for a new pool. 

In March 1932, a white community leader, Rabbi George Solomon of Temple Mickve Israel, endorsed construction of a new swimming pool for African Americans in Savannah. In a speech to the Lions Club, Solomon noted the dearth of recreation facilities for Black residents. As was the pattern, the city acted on behalf of African Americans only under pressure, and in this case the federal government picked up most of the cost. The "Colored Recreation Center" at Ogeechee Road and West 39th Street opened on Thanksgiving Day 1934. A Black attorney and civic activist, J.G. Lemon, working with the Chatham County Colored Citizens Council, a network of Black professionals, helped the city win a small New Deal grant (a little more than $45,000 in 2022 dollars) for construction of a pool. The City of Savannah supervised construction of the pool and recreation center but the federal government paid for the materials and the laborers. A blueprint notes the swimming pool was already under construction by the New Deal's Civil Works Administration. 

Just as Black organizations took the initiative and opened new playgrounds, the new pool was managed by J.G. Lemon and the Colored Citizens Council. In an oral history interview in 1990, the longtime Savannah NAACP leader, W.W. Law, looked back skeptically at what he called a "mud hole," which he saw as a meager payoff for Lemon and the Colored Citizens Council to turn out the Black vote for the Democratic machine of John Bouhan. The pool was among a few, relatively small New Deal projects that directly benefitted Savannah's Black residents.

In September 1935, J.G. Lemon asked the Park and Tree Commission to reallocate clay left over from building the Daffin Park tennis courts, apparently so the courts at the new recreation center could be converted to clay. Superintendent William Robertson and the commission refused, saying they would hold the clay in reserve for repairs to the Daffin courts.

The city announced in 1955 it would replace the deteriorating pool and recreation center. It opened in 1956 and was named for Black educator Sophronia Tompkins. The city first replaced the Daffin Park Lake swimming area with a modern pool for white residents. 

Savannah Tribune editorial, November 5, 1953: