Swimming While Black in Montgomery County

Crystal Pool facade today. Photo by Beth Baker

In the documentary film, True Justice, attorney Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, shares a story that is seared into his memory. His mother had saved so that he and his sister could go on a church bus trip from Delaware to the new Disney World. In the film, Mr. Stevenson smiles, recalling his excitement at not only going to the theme park, but also staying in a hotel with a swimming pool—their first chance to ever be in a pool. 

As soon as they arrived at the hotel, he and his sister raced to the pool. They jumped in with pure delight. “It was as glorious as I had imagined it would be,” he says.

Immediately, panic ensued as the motel guests, all white, rushed to get out, until soon there was only one other little boy left. When a big man bent down to yank this child from the pool, young Bryan asked him, “Is something wrong?" The man looked dead at him and said, “You are wrong, n….r.”

When they ran to tell their mother, she told them not to let those people run them from the pool. “What I remember most vividly from that trip is getting back in the pool and holding my sister’s hand and trying desperately not to cry,” he says.

About this same time, in the early 1970s, Montgomery County was embroiled in its own ugly resistance to integrating swimming pools—resistance that eventually led to a precedent-setting Supreme Court case.

A view of Glen Echo's Crystal Pool taken in 1959. Wikimedia Commons.

As recently as 1972, nearly half of community pools in our county were still for whites only. Indeed, across the nation many white people clung to their community pool as a bastion exclusively for them. The effects of this racial discrimination linger today. 

According to the organization Stop Drowning Now, African-American children ages 5 to 19 drown in swimming pools at rates 5.5 times higher than white children in the same age range. Black children are also less likely to know how to swim (64%) compared to white kids (40%).

In our area, many pools spelled out in their bylaws that Black people were not allowed, while others achieved the same ends through their practices. In a statement on Adelphi Pool’s website, Ken Leonard, former president of the Prince George’s County pool, wrote that although "racist motives were not written down, [it] does not mean they do not exist...We do not have a recorded history of the black families that tried to join the pool and were discouraged or insulted in that process. We do not have a recorded history of the black guests who were mistreated. We do not have a recorded history of the teenage boys who were over-disciplined or the girls who were singled out to wash their hair before they got in the pool. But we do know these things happened broadly."

At the Garrett Park Pool, no written records indicate that the pool was meant to be all-white. But like many community pools, membership was restricted to those within the town, effectively excluding Black people. Whether or not this was intentionally racist, it was a common practice. 

In a 1997 oral history, former Garrett Park town council member Ann Brown Smith recalls that someone suggested they open the pool one morning a week to a group of “underprivileged” kids from D.C. Although many supported the idea, there was also “overt opposition…. But anyway, those of us who thought it was a good idea prevailed. And the first day that the busload of children—99 percent Black—came out to swim in the pool, a committee was set up of two nurses—at least they said they were nurses…and they were going to examine the children before they were allowed in the pool area.” When her daughter, a lifeguard, called her angry and upset, Ms. Smith went down to the pool and put a stop to the children being checked.

Chevy Chase Lake was more overt. As far back as 1898, in a letter to the editor of the Washington Post, a white reader complained that his neighbors, “among the most respected colored people in the District,” were denied entry into Chevy Chase Lake, then an amusement park. 

Segregation continued when the Chevy Chase Lake swimming pool opened in 1927. According to the Chevy Chase Historical Society, many swim clubs in Bethesda and Chevy Chase adopted bylaws that kept pools as a white domain. Not until 1968 did the first Black family apply for pool membership at Chevy Chase Lake. Although the couple lived within the membership boundaries, their application was rejected, and the pool’s members then voted to officially ban Black people from joining.

According to the Chevy Chase Historical Society, this 1927 photo “features a group of African American men working at the bottom of the Chevy Chase Lake swimming pool on Connecticut Avenue. A powerful reminder of the invisible labor that maintained spaces of leisure, these men—essential to the creation of such settings—were denied the opportunity to enjoy them.”  Courtesy of Chevy Chase Historical Society, "Swimming Pool Construction, Chevy Chase Lake," 1927. Photographic Collection, Item #2007.38.04” 

The most famous pool in Montgomery County was Glen Echo Amusement Park’s Crystal Pool. Accommodating some 3,000 swimmers, the pool had a fountain with rainbow lighting and a 10,000-square-foot sand beach. According to the Glen Echo Park Partnership for Arts and Culture, before the pool was built, Black patrons were discouraged from coming to the park, except for church groups, which were lucrative for the owners. “Restrictions hardened in 1931 with the opening of the Crystal Pool. From that point through the 1950s, park security did not admit Black patrons. This policy was widely understood, but never signposted.”          

The national fight against racist swimming pool policies came to a head in Montgomery County. The Wheaton-Haven Recreational Association fought for its all-white policy all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1968, Murray Tillman, a pool member, brought a Black guest, Grace Rosner, to the pool. As he related to the Washington Star, “everyone was so flabbergasted, they let us in.” The pool promptly changed its rules to limit guests to those related to pool members.  When a Black couple, Dr. and Mrs. Harry Press, moved into the community and applied for pool membership, they too were denied.

Even though the County Human Rights Commission had already determined that community pools fell under the public accommodations law and thus could not ban entry based on race, Wheaton-Haven maintained it was a private club that could admit who it wanted. 

In 1973, the US Supreme Court weighed in. In a case brought by the Tillmans, The Presses, and Ms. Rosner, the high Court ruled in their favor, denying Wheaton-Haven’s claim to be exempt from civil rights laws. All five plaintiffs were allowed to seek $30,000 in damages for suffering past discrimination.

As for the Wheaton-Haven pool, it “drowned in a sea of debt” according to a Sentinel article, brought on by high legal bills. The pool eventually closed, replaced by townhouses.

Bryan Stevenson says of his experience in the hotel pool, “Memory is powerful.” And he wonders, do the white children who were there that day remember what happened?