Children splashed each other in the pool, squealing and giggling. Sunglasses-clad lifeguards perched on a high chair, watching for signs of trouble. Parents coaxed the little ones who eyed the water with apprehension.
It was a familiar scene for Clarence "Shad" Brown Jr., 75, who worked as a city lifeguard in the 1950s - except for one major difference.
"We couldn't go to this pool," Brown said, sitting by the Druid Hill Park pool yesterday. "We had to go to the colored pool."
The Druid Hill Park Negro Pool was smaller, and when it rained, water from a nearby cemetery flowed into it, Brown said. That pool closed in 1955, and it has now been filled and sodded.
As 19 city pools opened yesterday for the summer, Baltimore officials recognized Brown and his fellow lifeguards who worked at the segregated pools in the 1940s and 1950s.
"When the temperature was in the high 90s, for African-American children, their only relief was the Druid Hill Negro Pool," said Tom Stosur, assistant deputy mayor. "Some of the lifeguards who worked here from 1921 to 1955 faced the hardships and reality of racism, but they also created a bond that lasted a lifetime."
It was like a class reunion for the old overseers of the segregated pool, who reminisced about their teenage adventures as they looked at photographs. Recalling their summer memories, they talked of pranks, such as pushing girls who had just dried off back into the pool and diving off an adjacent rooftop into the water.
"It was prestigious to be a lifeguard," Brown said. "You got to the pool for free." Admission was 10 cents for children and 35 cents for adults. And there was an additional perk, Brown said: "You got to see the girls."
Robert Ammons, a 78-year-old former lifeguard, clapped his hands and burst into laughter. "That was the main thing," he said.
When integration came, the transition in the city pools was not smooth, said Douglas Bishop, 77, who worked as a lifeguard for four summers in the 1950s.
"The park was divided," he said, shaking his head. "Education, occupations, it was all divided. The city was divided in half. Things are different now."
When Bishop came to work as a lifeguard at the newly integrated Patterson Park pool, some would say to him, "Why are you on that chair? You can't swim."
"Patterson Park didn't welcome us at first," he said. "I think the people realized the law was the law. People were reluctant to accept it. They later realized lifeguards were serious individuals who wanted to save the lives of children."
