‘Heritage District’ to Mark 1962 Riverside Pool Integration

[This article first appeared in the April 2023 issue of the South Baltimore Peninsula Post community newspaper.]

Twice in American history, the small area of South Baltimore that we know as Riverside Park has played a role at moments of national crisis. One is well noted, the other is not.

In 1814, at the high point of the park where the gazebo stands today, the Fort Look-Out military battery joined with the guns of Fort McHenry to keep British naval forces out of Baltimore. That story is written in the park with an historical marker, interpretive sign, and cannons.

Downhill from the gazebo is the Riverside public swimming pool, the site of an outburst of violence in 1962 as America struggled to end segregation and secure equal rights for its Black population. The outburst that summer involved dozens of city police officers, rock-throwing mobs of white citizens, and injured Black swimmers, including an 11-year-old boy who would grow up to represent Maryland in the U.S. Congress. That story is written nowhere in the park.

That will change as the Reimagine Middle Branch project moves forward. The multimillion-dollar, multiyear plan, approved in February by the Baltimore City Planning Commission, envisions new recreational and cultural improvements along the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River, from Curtis Bay and Brooklyn in the south to Westport and the SoBo peninsula, and including adjacent communities such as Riverside. One element of the 187-page plan is an “African-American Heritage District” composed of 10 sites (see Chapter 4, pages 138-139). One of those sites is Riverside Pool.

Brad Rogers, executive director of the South Baltimore Gateway Partnership (SBGP), which is a major partner in the project, advocated for including the pool in the Heritage District. “Throughout the project planning process, we have focused on how we can elevate the stories of Black South Baltimore, stories that in many cases have been overlooked or ignored.”

The story of the integration of Riverside Pool unfolded in the era between the U.S. Supreme Court striking down segregation in public schools (1954) and Congress outlawing it in “public accommodations” such as restaurants, buses, and pools with the Civil Rights Act (1964). The story is a reminder that changing laws is not always synonymous with changing public attitudes.

In the summer of 1956, Baltimore’s public pools were officially desegregated. At the time, the city had six whites-only pools (including Riverside) and one for Blacks (Druid Hill Pool No. 2). The Baltimore Afro-American newspaper reported no incidents during the first week of official desegregation. But by the end of the pool season, attendance system-wide had dropped by nearly half as whites chose not to swim in integrated pools.

An editorial in the Baltimore Sun in 1962 noted that the city had largely adjusted to desegregation “in peaceful fashion,” although “many have moved or made other personal shifts to avoid the changes.” That peace ended on the afternoon of Friday, August 17, 1962, at Riverside Park.

On that day, James Smith, director of a city playground in the historic Black neighborhood now known as Sharp-Leadenhall – a 20-minute walk from Riverside Park – brought two dozen Black youth to swim at the pool. According to press reports, when the group left the pool at 4:30 pm, they faced a crowd estimated at 1,000 or more, hurling angry words and rocks. One 15-year-old Black swimmer was hit and cut under his eye. Police sent the group back into the pool while they cleared the crowd from the park. Three men who refused to leave were arrested. At 5:45 pm, Smith and the group of young swimmers were escorted from the pool under police protection.

According to an article in the Evening Sun, Smith planned a return visit to the pool with more Black swimmers.

No Blacks were at the pool that Sunday, August 19, when demonstrators from the pro-segregation “Fighting American Nationalists” group picketed the park with signs reading “Wake Up White Man” and “Swim With Your Own Race.” A crowd of several hundred gathered with two dozen police officers and K-9 dogs standing guard.

On Wednesday, August 22, Smith and two dozen Black youth returned. Most of the white swimmers left the pool when the group arrived. Another large crowd circled the pool fence and jeered. When Smith and the group left the pool at 3:15 pm, police and K-9 dogs escorted them all the way back to their neighborhood.

On the morning of Friday, August 24, after a meeting with representatives of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Acting Mayor Philip Goodman called for peace. “I appeal to the people of the area to act within the confines of the law,” he said. “Public pools are public property and open to all regardless of race, creed or color.”

That afternoon, as another group of two dozen Black youth swam in the pool, hundreds again gathered to jeer at them from the fence. Demonstrators with signs arrived, but police kept them outside the park. As the group left the pool, another 15-year-old Black youth was hit by a stone thrown from the crowd.

An editorial in the Baltimore Sun on Sunday, August 26, called for stronger action by police. “Let the police get tough with the tormenting mob, as tough as they would be with potential murderers.”

The pool closed on Tuesday, August 28, after a bomb threat resulted in lifeguards walking off their jobs. The pool closed again on Thursday, August 30, when it was discovered that someone had dyed the water green overnight.

The pool reopened with new water on Saturday, September 1. Black swimmers from the Sharp Street playground returned, as did a jeering crowd of several hundred and 70 police officers with K-9 patrols. More arrests were made. Ten police cars escorted the swimmers back to their neighborhood. Sunday saw a replay of the same scene.

Monday, September 3 – Labor Day – was the last day of the city pool season and the most violent at Riverside. After the Black swimmers arrived at 2 pm, the jeering crowd steadily grew to 1,000, becoming, according to police, the most dangerous crowd at the park that summer. More than 100 police officers were dispatched to the park with two dozen K-9 dogs. The “Fighting American Nationalists” demonstrated. Thirteen people were arrested. Four boys were injured by objects thrown by the mob, according to Juanita Jackson Mitchell of the Maryland NAACP.

At 3:15 pm, when the Black swimmers left the pool, police formed a semicircle at the entrance. The youngest swimmers were put into police wagons for the trip back to their neighborhood. The angry crowd followed the swimmers and their police escort to within a few blocks of the Sharp Street playground, where the police turned them back with an assist from K-9 dogs.

One of the Black swimmers injured during the nearly three weeks of racial strife at Riverside was 11-year-old Elijah Cummings of the 100 block of W. Cross Street. “I still have the scar where a bottle thrown from the crowd hit me,” the Baltimore native recalled in 2000. But “it was there, at the gate to Riverside, that I realized for the very first time that I had a right that other people had to respect. And that was an insight that has made all the difference in the world to me.”

Cummings was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1983 and to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1996, where he served until his death in 2019.

On Thursday, June 27, 1963, a dozen Black youth swam undisturbed at Riverside Pool with some 300 whites. As that first summer after the violence progressed without incident, the police presence in the park dropped from 65 to 6. Black lifeguards began working at the pool for the first time.

How and when this piece of South Baltimore history will be told in Riverside Park has not yet been decided, according to SBGP’s Rogers. Other planned Heritage District sites in neighboring Westport and Cherry Hill are first in line. But Rogers says project planners will be seeking community input once plans come together for Riverside Pool. – Steve Cole

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