Race and Recreation in East Texas: A History of Huntsville's Municipal Swimming Pool and Emancipation Park

Abstract

Race and Recreation in East Texas:A History of Huntsville's Municipal Swimming Pool and Emancipation Park Jeffrey L. Littlejohn (bio) and Charles H. Ford (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Female swimmer in a one-piece suit at Huntsville's Municipal Pool, c. 1950, from the I. J. Walden Collection. Courtesy of the Walker County Historical Commission. [End Page 144] After six years of planning and construction, the residents of Huntsville, Texas, celebrated the opening of their new municipal swimming pool on May 18, 1939. At 7:30 that evening, local officials sponsored a grand party to commemorate the occasion. The Huntsville High School Band presented a thirty-minute concert, and Mayor Robert C. Stiernberg welcomed families to the new facility. Then, the city's swimming pool committee offered a brief recitation of its efforts before a group of young men from Sam Houston State Teachers College put on a stunt show.1 The scouts followed next with their own pool exercises for boys and girls. Finally, the night's main attraction took place: a "mammoth bathing revue . . . sponsored by all the civic and service clubs in Huntsville." As was common at the time, a "bevy of the best-looking girls" in town were requested to strut their stuff in bathing suits to "compete for the honor of being named 'Miss Huntsville.'" Wanda Grogan, a freshman at Sam Houston State Teachers College, defeated thirteen other [End Page 145] entrants in the contest, winning the title "Miss Huntsville" and the right to represent the city at the Tomato Festival in Jacksonville, Texas, that June.2 Huntsville's new pool proved to be incredibly popular. Open daily from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 to 10:00 p.m., it offered affordable entertainment in a relaxing environment. Adult tickets cost just twenty-five cents, while children under twelve years of age were admitted for ten cents. In addition, local adults who intended on swimming regularly could buy a season ticket for $7.50. College students paid only $5.00, and high school students paid just $3.75. Within the first week alone, the Huntsville Item reported, "nearly 2,000 [people] . . . paid admission fees." Helen Bowden, the city council's appointed property manager, said that "attendance ha[d] increased each day," and that "many of the swimmers ha[d] come from other cities in the area."3 This last statement proved remarkably revealing. Although White residents from Trinity, New Waverly, Willis, and other nearby towns could travel to Huntsville and swim in the city's new pool, local African Americans, who made up 25 percent of Huntsville's population, were barred from enjoying the new facility.4 Racial protocols established by White Texans required that men and women of different races be separated in public spaces such as pools, movie theaters, train cars, and restaurants. Although the state of Texas had no specific law requiring segregation of swimming pools, White officials applied a 1915 statute to the new form of recreation. As historian Bruce Glasrud has shown, "a state law prescribing that black and white coal miners must be provided with separate bathing and locker facilities eventually was interpreted to include swimming pools and rest rooms for all the population." Indeed, Glasrud noted, "No black Texans could use a white swimming pool or restroom during the first half of the twentieth century."5 This article examines the intersection of race and recreation in Huntsville and the broader East Texas region during the twentieth century. According to scholar David G. McComb, "[c]overage of . . . recreational [End Page 146] history in Texas . . . is spotty." In fact, McComb shows that "[o]nly an incomplete, unorganized, and unrecognized collection of writings about recreation history . . . exists for Texas."6 To address this important gap in the literature, we have drawn on national studies of recreation, like Victoria Wolcott's Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America, as well as in-depth archival, newspaper, and legal research, to present this particularly Texan story of a segregated municipal pool and the way it differs from the northern narrative that appears in Jeff Wiltse's book, Contested Waters...