Unearthing the Past

Unearthing a Town Pool, and Not for Whites Only

In the fearful cosmos of the segregationist South, the integrated swimming pool occupied a special place: race-mixing carried to an intimate level.

So it was that when integration came to this old mill town in the 1970’s, its magnificent pool, 100 feet long and 30 feet wide, the summer delight of generations of white children, had to close, people here thought. It was filled in with truckloads of red southern Mississippi dirt, covered over and forgotten for more than 30 years.

In 1969, only white children used the pool.