Civil Rights in Central Virginia: Thaxton’s ‘swim-in’ turned tide at Miller Park

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Civil Rights in Central Virginia: The Series

 

Civil Rights in Central Virginia (fourth in a series): With Barack Obama poised to become the nation’s first black President, The News & Advance looks at significant post-1950s civil rights moments in Lynchburg.

In 1961, on a hot Fourth of July afternoon, six young boys showed up at Miller Park Pool, swim trunks in hand.

A string of police officers were already there waiting. The children, ranging in age from 7 to 14, didn’t qualify for entry to this city spot.

They were all black. The pool was solely for whites.

Olivet C. Thaxton, a civil rights activist and leader of this carefully planned demonstration, insisted they be let in.

The city leaders said it wasn’t possible and promptly closed the pool down. It would remain dormant for the next 25 years.

“I wanted integration so bad,” Thaxton, now deceased, recalled in a 1986 interview with The News & Daily Advance.

“I thought that if something happened to me, I wouldn’t care. A lot of people had been jailed and beaten up.”

“I was not a militant,” he added, possibly referencing the description of the group offered at the time by a hostile local press. “I considered myself as someone who loves freedom.”

The Miller Park Pool swim-in was a seminal moment in Lynchburg’s civil rights movement.

The city at that point had already been stripped of its authority to enforce the color line separating the public pools, thanks to a desegregation ruling handed down by the federal courts.

But, when the July 4 swim-in pushed them to honor that mandate, officials chose another path. They shut down all three city pools — two white-only facilities at Miller and Riverside parks and one all-black facility in Jefferson Park.

“The only way to legally prevent their admission is by closing the pools,” City Manager Robert Morrison told a newspaper reporter that day.

“I’m awfully sorry this situation came about,” he added, “because I know it will deprive a lot of children, particularly, of good, wholesome fun.”

Morrison, also since deceased, described the decision as a public safety issue, explaining the city didn’t want responsibility for “what might happen” if the pools were integrated.

The prospect of violence was also on the minds of the demonstration’s organizers. On the day of the event, a crowd gathered to watch and some spectators grew nasty.

“Some of the whites were yelling at us,” Thaxton recalled, “and I think if the police hadn’t been there, it could have been a lot worse.”

“I had prepared myself to take the beating, if they had beat me.”

No violence erupted that afternoon. The swim-in ended peacefully, and city officials moved quickly to complete the closing of the pools. All three were drained within days and the staff dismissed.

The swim-in would later become part of a broad discrimination suit filed against the city by Thaxton and two others — the Rev. Virgil Wood, a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr., and Theodore Burton, a Lynchburg barber and strong civil rights supporter.

Thaxton himself did not escape the event entirely unscathed. Owner of his own hauling business, he saw his predominantly white customer base disintegrate as news of his activism spread. The company was eventually driven to ruin.

“He said if he had to do it all over again, he would,” said Thaxton’s godson, Preston Little.

“He felt like everybody should have a fair chance, an opportunity to pick and choose for themselves rather than have someone else pick and choose for them,” Little said. “… He felt that God put that in his heart.”

In 1965, the city opened two new, integrated swimming pools at E.C. Glass High School and Dunbar High School, respectively.

The older, abandoned pools were all filled in. For Jefferson and Riverside parks, the losses would be permanent.

No trace of the Jefferson pool remains today. Riverside bears only a partial imprint of its old site.

Frank Morrison, son of former city manager Robert Morrison, said his father always considered the demise of the original pools to be sad, but unfortunately also necessary for that time.

“I know it was with great sadness and regret that made he made that very difficult decision,” said Frank Morrison, who was a high school student when those events unfolded. “But the motive behind it was — given where everyone was at the time — a fear that there be some violence or other safety risk.”

“I remember occasions when people, even in church, wouldn’t speak to him because they thought he was too radical,” he said. “… My father was in the middle (of two clashing factions) and he was trying to get the city to proceed at the pace it could.”

The introduction of integrated pools just four years after the swim-in conflict seemed to be the fruits of those diligent labors, he added.

Little, who was 6 during the swim-in, remembers his godfather always encouraged him to make use of the pools after they opened.

“He’d get all the kids from the neighborhood together and we’d go to the pool,” he said. “Two, three times a week.”

In 1986, just one month before the 25th anniversary of the swim-in, the city unveiled a new Miller Park Pool. The Olympic-size facility replaced the two older school spots. It now stands as Lynchburg’s only public swimming pool.

Before the grand opening, Thaxton, age 68 by then, was photographed by the newspaper standing next to the pool’s crisp, aqua blue water. It was the type of close proximity he could never have hoped to gain 25 years earlier.

Then-Vice Mayor M.W. Thornhill Jr., who would go on to become the city’s first black mayor, said it was a time of new beginnings.

“The past is behind us,” he declared. “We can concentrate on the future — on the progress we’ve made.”

COMING SATURDAY
The E.C. Glass High School football team in 1970 after the closing of Dunbar High School.