In the book, Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America, author Jeff Wiltse relates the history of swimming pools in America to situations and events that happened in American history. Not only have swimming pools outlined America’s history, but they have symbolized its division in race, gender, and class. Swimming pools themselves have been used for bathing, recreation, and physical activity. Who knew that something so simple as swimming pools would be a recognizable symbol of American life. Important time periods for this division in race, gender, and class are noticeable in the 1890’s, 1920’s and 1940’s.
Racial segregation in the United States had been a problem throughout the 1870’s and wasn’t outlawed until the late
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By the end of the nineteenth century, the swimming pool community was split into two groups. One side was for the working-class boys who used swimming pools to bathe and used pools for not only this cleaning purpose but used it to have fun and pleasure themselves. The middle-class men had developed a more serious use for the private swimming pools they had that were a great display of the Victorian culture. In 1895, the middle class of a suburban town miles from downtown Chicago petitioned the request for a pool to be build in Douglas Park. These middle-class families that signed the petition already had baths in their homes, so the need for this swimming pool was for physical activity. The design, location, and purpose of this swimming pool was a drastic change from the once normal swimming pool put in place for cleanliness. This division of class can relate to the division of class that was visible during the early 1890’s with the formation of the People’s Party or Populists. Just as swimming pools were invented to aid the working class in cleanliness and hygiene, this Alliance was designed to promote community organization and education among the working class. “…they were hardly a backward-looking movement. They embraced the modern technologies that made large-scale cooperative enterprise possible – the railroad, the telegraph, and the national market – while looking to the federal government to regulate them in public interest” (Forner 653). The working class was always looking to the government for their next move, to be guided in the industry. But without them the products we use today would not have been made or maybe invented, just like the public swimming pool for it was invented to aid the young men in the working
To define the groups of pool players, I studied a pool hall in Waterford, Michigan. This pool hall is located on the Waterford border with Pontiac, right off the main highway, in a collapsing business district. This area has seen its better days; it is now falling down the economic ladder. Now it resembles many inner cities of America. The hall is tucked back in off the highway, next ...
After the emancipation of slaves in 1862, the status of African-Americans in post civil war America up until the beginning of the twentieth century did not go through a great deal of change. Much legislation was passed to help blacks in this period. The Civil Rights act of 1875 prohibited segregation in public facilities and various government amendments gave African-Americans even more guaranteed rights. Even with this government legislation, the newly dubbed 'freedmen' were still discriminated against by most people and, ironically, they were soon to be restricted and segregated once again under government rulings in important court cases of the era.
In southern states, where the black community mainly lived they were constantly rejected the right to vote. By 1910, racial segregation was ingrained legally in the North and South; after 1913 segregation had protracted to federal employees in the workplace. Through violence, white superiority was protected while blacks were harassed by white rioters. In Atlanta, Georgia, and Springfield, Illinois, in 1906 and 1908, an average of sixty-five blacks were lynched annually between 1910 and 1919.
Toward the end of the Progressive Era American social inequality had stripped African Americans of their rights on a local and national level. In the 1896 Supreme Court case of Plessey vs. Ferguson, the Supreme Court sided with a Louisiana state law declaring segregation constitutional as long as facilities remain separate but equal. Segregation increased as legal discriminatory laws became enacted by each state but segregated facilities for whites were far superior to those provided for blacks; especially prevalent in the South were discriminatory laws known as Jim Crow laws which surged after the ruling. Such laws allowed for segregation in places such as restaurants, hospitals, parks, recreational areas, bathrooms, schools, transportation, housing, hotels, etc. Measures were taken to disenfranchise African Americans by using intimidation, violence, putting poll taxes, and literacy tests. This nearly eliminated the black vote and its political interests as 90% of the nine million blacks in America lived in the South and 1/3 were illiterate as shown in Ray Stannard Baker’s Following the Color Line (Bailey 667). For example, in Louisiana 130,334 black voters registered in 1896 but that number drastically decreased to a mere 1,342 in 1904—a 99 percent decline (Newman ). Other laws prevented black...
Neddy’s journey across the swimming pools of his town are an effective parallel of many Americans living in upper and middle class suburban America. Neddy, as do many American’s today, choose to swim through their lives with their eyes barely open. Behaviors such as incurring too much debt, alcoholism, and keeping up with the neighbors (Jones’) are things that eat away at society and destroys families. This story was true of the time it was written and is still true today. Cheever’s, “The Swimmer”, is written as an artful treatment of the narcissistic bourgeois suburban life. Having read it twice, and seen the movie, I would recommend it as a great read to anyone who loves symbolic stories.
“In the early twentieth century, African Americans in the South and in many parts of nearby border states were banned from associating with whites in a host of institutions and public accommodations—schools, hospitals, old folks’ homes, restrooms, waiting rooms, railroad cars, hotels,
...sser race. Segregation still existed and was in full force after World War Two and did not end until the sixties.
While the Emancipation Proclamation marked the end of slavery in the U.S., it did little to address the racism that remained. Left unchecked, that racism, like a weed, grew and its roots permeated almost all sectors of American culture spreading from the southern white population throughout the local and state governments south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Jim Crow laws provided legal loopholes that skirted the spirit of the Emancipation Proclamation and they gave legal cover to those who longed for the pre-Civil War/Reconstruction era. The insidious nature of Jim Crow easily converted bigotry and intolerance from vile vices to prized virtues. Although Jim Crow laws were settled by the 1954 court case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, where all laws and public policy based on the theory of "separate but equal" were deemed unconstitutional; they were not fully eliminated until the mid 1960's, almost one hundred years after the end of U.S. Civil War and the beginning of Radical Reconstruction.
Shropshire, Kenneth L. 1996. In black and white: race and sports in America. New York: New York University Press.
Passing obviously requires time to have taken its place. Things change and sometimes they are good and bad. Some things that are good is that kids mature and experience life; we look back a month ago and not much has changed, if we looked back a year or two ago a lot of things have changed. A bad change could be something not wanted, like moving somewhere else or changing classes or having a loved one pass. At the same time however, people will have to go through changes; we were born to die. Bodies are and so do minds, but do minds get wiser or just older? I think with age comes wisdom and experience, which is probably why our grandparents and parents know so much more than us teenagers do. With passing though comes a new trend. For instance, a year ago in November the iPhone 5 came out and everyone quickly bought one because they were immediately popular. Now people are buying droids and such. That is how I feel about tooth brushes on TV commercials I see, dentists recommend a new toothbrush so I feel the need to buy it then once I buy it a new and improved one comes out, it’s a never ending cycle. One thing that has passed that many people are well aware of is the community swimming pool that has been up since who knows when. However, now there is a new and improved swimming pool not too far away from it, but us older kids that grew up in it are now looking at the destruction of where it used to be and are mourning of all the memories.
Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, segregation in the United States was commonly practiced in many of the Southern and Border States. This segregation while supposed to be separate but equal, was hardly that. Blacks in the South were discriminated against repeatedly while laws did nothing to protect their individual rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ridded the nation of this legal segregation and cleared a path towards equality and integration. The passage of this Act, while forever altering the relationship between blacks and whites, remains as one of history’s greatest political battles.
During the 1950s and 1960, the United States continued to renovate its social policies to address inequalities present among its citizens. Much of this change was aided by the Supreme Court, which found government-sponsored racial segregation unconstitutional, and worked to strike down infringing state and federal legislation. In its decision during Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the Supreme Court ruled that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment invalid...
During this time, the idea of segregation was a very controversial topic among the c...
In inequalities in the realm of competitive swimming mirror those of corporate America. Swimming like an overwhelming amount of corporations is dominated by wealthy white people. In the 2006, the last year the NCAA published data, whites were nearly 70 times more likely to be in division I swim teams than African-Americans. Even worse, a recent study confirmed that, “Fatal unintentional drowning rates for 5-14 year old African Americans were 3.2 times higher than that for whites.” The swimming disparity is not just one of race but economic class as the percentage of blacks in the is significantly lower than their overall percentage in the population. Swimming is much more expensive than basketball, football and track and thus facilities are frequently only available to the wealthy. Just as people are scared away from swimming they are scared away from corporate America supposing that they do not have enough training, their family did not have money and thus do not even attempt to succeed. Swimming although it may seem relatively natural requires lots of training and resources to master that complicated strokes. As the coach said, “there are no natural swimmers”. Parents often have their children training to become professional swimmers often ...
Swimming was very important in ancient Greece and Rome, especially as a form of training for warriors. In Japan, competitions were held as early as the 1st century BC. In Europe, swimming was less popular during the Middle Ages, swimming didn’t pick up until the 19th century. In the late 19th century amateur swimming clubs began conducting competitions in the United States and Britain. In the United States, colleges and universities such as Yale University, Indiana University, and the University of Southern California played an important role in spreading interest in swimming as a competitive sport. In 1875 Matthew Webb of Great Britain became the first person to swim across the English Channel.