CNN
Growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, Gerome Sutton looked forward all week for his chance to swim at Algonquin Park pool on the weekend.
“It was like Christmas in the summer time,” said Sutton, now 66 and a local minister. “It was the best time of the week.”
Louisville’s public parks were desegregated in 1955, a year before Sutton was born. This included the newly built Algonquin outdoor swimming pool on the West Side of Louisville.
It cost 35 cents to swim at Algonquin at the time, Sutton said. He and his seven siblings took turns going on alternating weekends because the family could not afford to send all eight children at the same time.
“We would go swimming. That makes a big statement” against segregation, he said. “There was an organized effort on the part of government to keep children engaged with an activity.”
Public pools have played a critical role in American culture over the past century. But as climate change and extreme heat worsen, they are taking on an urgent public health role. Heat kills more Americans than any other weather-related disaster, according to data tracked by the National Weather Service.
Yet just as public pools become more important than ever, they’re disappearing from sight.
Pools have become harder to find for Americans who lack a pool in their backyard, can’t afford a country club, or don’t have a local YMCA. A legacy of segregation, the privatization of pools, and starved public recreation budgets have led to the decline of public places to swim in many cities.
“If the public pool isn’t available and open, you don’t swim,” Sutton said.
‘Swimming is mental health’
In the early 2000s, Louisville had 10 public pools for a population of around 550,000.
Today, the city has five public pools for a population of around 640,000, ranking 89 out of the largest 100 cities in swimming pools per person, according to Trust for Public Land, an advocacy organization for public parks and land.
Algonquin is the only pool left in West Louisville, and residents say the city has neglected basic maintenance and improvements for years.
This summer, as temperatures climb to the 90s in Louisville, Algonquin is closed for repairs, leaving around 60,000 people — most of whom are Black and middle-or-lower income households — without convenient access to the water.
Some will miss out on a chance to learn how to swim, get more comfortable in the water, and build life-saving skills. Kids and teens won’t have a key place to gather and play during the summer months when school is off. And seniors can’t participate in Aqua Zumba fitness classes held at Algonquin during the summer to help them stay active.
“Swimming is mental health. It’s therapy. You have to have activities. It’s bigger than just a pool,” said Louisville Councilwoman Tammy Hawkins, who represents the district.
Swimming disparities
Access to swimming pools has long been hotly contested in America.
Giant municipal pools were built in the first half of the twentieth century, and desegregating public pools was a key target of the civil rights movement. But, strapped for funding, many local governments have neglected public pools.
“We’ve gotten to a point where a lot of the recreation taking place in the summers is happening in private spaces or in places with lack of support,” said Andrew Kahrl, a historian at the University of Virginia and author of “The Land Was Ours: How Black Beaches Became White Wealth in the Coastal South.”
“We’ve seen the complete erosion of the public side of this equation,” Kahrl said.
