The End of Customary Segregation
In July 1960, 23 African Americans, led by the Rev. Pickens A. Patterson of Butler Presbyterian Church, petitioned the Recreation Commission to desegregate Forsyth Park, Daffin Park, Grayson Stadium, and the Municipal Auditorium. (They also included Memorial Stadium, where high schools played football, but Chatham County, not the City, owned that facility.) City officials handled the petition like a stick of dynamite. The recreation director referred the petition to City Council, who in turn passed it off to the city attorney.
In late 1961, the city of Savannah, under repeated threats of federal lawsuits by Black residents, declared all municipal recreation sites open to everyone, a tacit admission that the premier parks and facilities had been informally segregated for a century. Earlier that year, seven Black men were arrested while playing basketball in Daffin Park and convicted of breaching the peace. After losing appeals in state courts, the six remaining defendants, represented by the NAACP, got a hearing from the U.S. Supreme Court.
The high court heard arguments in November 1962:
Convictions Overturned
On May 20, 1963, the Supreme Court overturned the convictions. The high court noted that the park "was customarily only used by white people," and found that two officers arrested the men "upon their intention to enforce racial discrimination in the park," a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
One of the defendants, Judson Ford, confirmed to the Savannah Morning News in 1997 that playing basketball at Daffin Park "was more or less a test thing. We went there to exercise our rights." In an oral history interview in 1990, decades after leaving office, Mayor Malcolm Maclean blamed an overzealous District Attorney, Andrew J. Ryan, Jr. for pursuing the case.
The Supreme Court decision should have swept away customary segregation in Savannah parks for good. However, Black swimmers continued to be barred from the Daffin Park pool. As in many other cities, Savannah officials were especially resistant to integrating public pools. In 1964, NAACP President W.W. Law said negotiations about the pool had failed, "seemingly because city officials are afraid of the reaction of white citizens if the Daffin Park pool is opened to Negroes."
Law stated in the draft of an affidavit in his files:
Negro citizens…have reported to me that they have been denied admission to the Daffin Park pool as late as Labor Day 1963. In addition, I have personally observed some of these Negroes being turned away from the pool at a time when the pool was opened and whites were being admitted. |
In a muted threat, Law said: “My experience indicates that desegregation as a result of negotiations and legal action could be achieved with less disturbance than if protest demonstrations are required.”
Last Stand for Pool Segregation
On Monday, June 8, 1964, managers shut the pool after reporting a pipe failure just as three Black people tried to enter. The pool reopened on Thursday and four Black people tried to use the pool. The staff told them the pool was unavailable because swim classes were underway. On June 25, the pool ticket office abruptly closed and managers locked the gates when fifteen Black people tried to enter. On July 2, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the pool opened to everyone the next day. The New York Times reported in a front-page story headlined "Savannah is Tranquil" that "there was considerable advance jitters over the desegregation on July 3 of the Daffin Park swimming pool, but three Negro boys jumped in without too much apparent shock to the white bathers. The Savannah Morning News reported that "about 100 whites were in the pool. Most of the latter remained in the water."
This exhibit is viewed best on the desktop or tablet.
Jeffrey M. Ofgang Jeff Ofgang Jim Crow in Savannah's Parks Georgia Southern University City of Savannah Municipal Archives
A Message From Mister Rogers
Focus Features
In 1969, Fred Rogers shared a tiny wading pool with the Black "Officer Clemmons" (actor Francois Clemmons) on "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood." The moment was carefully planned. Watch this excerpt from the 2018 documentary, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?"
Unlike Savannah, many southern cities closed their municipal pools—or sold them—rather than desegregate them after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In Race, Riots and Roller Coasters: The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), Virginia W. Wolcott found that cities were most resistant to integrating swimming pools because white people considered this the most-taboo form of integration, fearing “bodily pollution” by sharing the water with Black swimmers.