Lynchburg Living

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By Suzanne Ramsey

They were churchgoing kids, Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts, who went to the pool that day, ready to swim. It was July 4, 1961, and the six boys, ages 7 to 14, stood outside the entrance of the Miller Park pool in Lynchburg, swim suits clutched in their hands.

It was a hot day, a day made for swimming. The next day’s newspaper would report a high of 85 degrees with 66 percent humidity. The paper also would list the names of the boys, along with their addresses and parents’ names, because of what they did on that Independence Day: They were black and wanted to swim in the whites-only pool.

Someone in the group, which was led by local civil rights leader, Olivet Thaxton, had attempted to buy tickets to the pool. In a response similar to the way that Prince Edward County, Virginia, had closed all of its public schools in 1959, rather that integrate them, the City of Lynchburg closed all of its pools.

In the same article that reported the boys’ names, City Manager Robert Morrison called the pool closing a “matter of public safety,” and said, in accordance with federal law, “The city does not have the right to deny any citizens admission to a pool operated by the City of Lynchburg. The only way to legally prevent their admission is by closing the pools.”

The city’s three public pools–two for whites, at Miller and Riverside Parks, and one at Jefferson Park for African Americans–were closed that afternoon and eventually filled with dirt. It would be years before the city once again operated a public pool.

The attempted “swim in” at Miller Park pool was part of a bigger goal that local civil rights leaders had of desegregating all public facilities. That event and others were organized by the Lynchburg Improvement Association, headed by Virgil Wood, then-pastor of Diamond Hill Baptist Church, a hub for civil rights activities in Lynchburg.

City officials, including Morrison, knew of the plan in advance and told Wood they would close the pools if he followed through with it. Wood described Morrison as a “very decent man” who seemed trapped by the times.

“I think he didn’t believe in the old way, but he was trapped in having to carry out what he didn’t believe in,” Wood, now 80 and living near Houston, Texas, said. “That was my impression. We always had a high level of respect for each other. We didn’t do sneak attacks. We always gave them the opportunity to do what was right before we challenged it.”

The parents of the boys who went to the pool that day were part of a core group of civil rights activists, a group whose roll included names like Thornhill, Jackson and Burton. Linda Barksdale’s parents, Ed and Georgia, were also part of this core group, and while she wasn’t at the pool that day, she was fully aware of what was going on.

“They weren’t sure there wasn’t going to be violence, so we girls were sitting on the sidelines, waiting to hear,” Barksdale, who was 14 at the time, said.

Barksdale said the group was prepared to be turned away, adding that similar demonstrations were going on around the same time in Prince Edward County, with similar outcomes. She was a little surprised, however, with the end result.

“[The Miller Park pool] was already closed to us,” she said. “We swam at Jefferson Park and so I guess it was a bit surprising that they closed all of the pools.”

Audrey Lenon was at Jefferson Park that afternoon. She was 15 years old. She had walked to the pool from the Diamond Hill neighborhood, where she still lives, and was enjoying the water with friends when the police arrived.

“We were in the water and there was a ramp that you walked down to the get the pool,” she said. “We looked up and it was lined with police officers. They told us to get out of the water. No explanation.”

Lenon said the police “herded us like we were criminals” and stood by while they went to the locker rooms to dress and get their things. The police wouldn’t say what had happened, or why they were closing the pool. She wouldn’t find out what happened at Miller Park until later that evening, while watching the television news.

“We asked ‘What happened?’ and ‘Why are you closing the pool?’ but we didn’t get any answers,” Lenon said. “We were just told to put your clothes on and the pool was closed. That’s all they said, not why it’s closed. I guess they didn’t feel they needed to tell us. … Do they really need to give a child an explanation?”

Alvin Everett was one of the six boys who were at the Miller Park pool that day with Thaxton. He was just 13 years old at the time and, although he doesn’t remember much about that afternoon, he thinks he probably went to the park with his older sister, Essie Gordon, who had been arrested the previous December for her part in a sit-in at Patterson’s Drug Store.

“From what I can remember, I did quite a few things with my big sister,” Everett, now 63 and living in Salem, said. “You go with your family, you know.”

Like Barksdale, Everett said he wasn’t surprised that they weren’t allowed into the pool that day.

“We really didn’t know what was going to happen, but the general feeling was that they were not going to let us swim,” he said.

He said he does think, however, that what he did made a difference.

Wood said whether they got into the pool that day was irrelevant; they would get in to that pool, or some other pool, someday.

“We didn’t see it as progress, but what we did understand was that the community, now, had to face the same deprivation that they’d forced on us,” he said. “That was the sense of it. If we can’t use it as citizens, then y’all have to decide. Do you want these facilities for citizens or not? That was their choice, to deprive all citizens. That was their choice. We understood that.”

On that hot afternoon 50 years ago, after the police locked the pool and left, Lenon and her friends didn’t go home but instead hung around the park for a while.

“There was a concession stand as you were entering the pool,” she said. “The lady kept it open. It was Fourth of July. Kids needed something to do. She kept it open, so we bought food and just sat on the hill and looked at the water.”