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Segregation was experienced in the Mahoning Valley
By Sarah Lehr
YOUNGSTOWN
Al Bright, a Youngstown native, vividly recalls one hot summer day from his childhood in 1951.
Bright’s Little League team had just won a city championship, and the boys decided to celebrate at a South Side pool.
The manager, however, padlocked the gate to keep out Bright, who was the only black member of the team.
“It was humiliating,” Bright said. “I had gone from being the conquering hero at the game to being treated like a pariah.”
The manager eventually relented, but only after blowing his whistle to evacuate all the white people from the pool. The manager then made Bright climb onto a small rubber raft and dragged the raft around the pool for a few cursory laps.
The manager said he would drain the pool if even Bright’s big toe dipped into the water, Bright said.
Bright said the experience was formative. He recalled he refused to lower his gaze, even though the other patrons seemed reluctant to meet his eyes.
“I saw in their eyes that they were helpless against the manager,” Bright said. “He was so awful. After I used the raft, he tossed it to the side like it was contaminated and pushed against my back to make me leave.”
For many American children, summer vacation is synonymous with frolicking at swimming pools. The history of public swimming, however, is fraught with the shameful legacy of racial segregation.
Municipalities began building public pools in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The exclusion of black people from “whites only” spaces, including schools, restaurants, housing and stores, persisted through much of the 20th century, and pools were no exception.
After World War II, laws compelled many pools to desegregate, but in many cases, Southern cities responded by shutting down the pools. There were also violent protests by angry whites in the North and South.
In other instances, white people abandoned pools by refusing to swim at places where black people also swam.
Youngstown shared in this history. For decades, the North Side pool, which made headlines this year after it almost closed due to a shortage of lifeguards, was whites-only.
Another beloved recreational facility, Idora Park on the South Side, also was racially segregated. The ballroom and amusement park, which was the site of the annual Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. picnic, permitted black employees to use the ballroom only from noon to 1 p.m.
In his book, “Idora Park: The Last Ride of Summer,” historian Richard Shale posits the park shut down its pool and converted it to a Kiddieland in order to “diffuse tensions from interracial swimming.”
Idora Park had been sued for racial discrimination against blacks at its skating rink in 1949 and likely wanted to avoid another uproar at its swimming pool, Shale suggests.
Legal action in 1949 forced the city of Warren to desegregate its municipal pool. In Youngstown during the 1940s, blacks were only allowed to swim at one (in the McGuffey Heights neighborhood on the far East Side) of the six city-operated swimming pools.
Bright, who was 10 years old at the time, did not tell his parents what had happened after his Little League game.
“I knew that they couldn’t do anything to help, because they were victims of the same system,” Bright said. “I really could have let if make me bitter, but I didn’t. It didn’t keep me from maximizing my potential.”
Bright, a musical and visual artist, went on to become the first black full-service faculty member at Youngstown State University, where he pioneered the Black Studies program.
“For me, the experience of being locked out of the pool was so indicative of a widespread injustice in the city,” Bright said. “We’ve gone through a lot of changes since then, and many things are improved, but there are still vestiges of the same racism in the city. It’s still so pervasive.”