(This article originally appeared in the December 2024 issue of the South Baltimore Peninsula Post.)
On December 2, 2024, the Baltimore City Council passed a bill to change the name of Riverside Park Pool to the “Congressman Elijah E. Cummings Community Pool.” Mayor Brandon Scott signed the bill the following day.
The bill was introduced in September by Council member Eric Costello, who represented the SoBo peninsula (District 11) from 2014 until early December. The renaming bill recognizes Cummings’ public service in the U.S. House of Representatives and Maryland House of Delegates and his “participation in the integration of the Riverside Park Pool” in 1962.
Baltimore officially desegregated its public pools in 1956, but the Riverside pool remained whites-only. In August 1962, a group of Black youths from Sharp-Leadenhall, escorted by their neighborhood park director, swam at the pool, sparking three weeks of violent protests. One of the children injured during the racial strife was 11-year-old Elijah Cummings of the 100 block of W. Cross Street (Peninsula Post, April 2023). The pool was integrated when it opened the following summer.
“It was there, at the gate of Riverside, that I realized for the very first time that I had a right that other people had to respect,” Cummings recalled years later. “And that was an insight that has made all the difference in the world to me.” Cummings died in 2019.
At the time this issue went to press, the Baltimore City Recreation and Parks Department had not announced a timeline for when the new pool name would become official. – Steve Cole
South Baltimore Peninsula Post 