Speaker 1: Well, right now it is time for our way Black
Speaker 1: History fact and today's way Black History Fact comes from
Speaker 1: NPS dot gov, that is the National Park Service. This
Speaker 1: is the history of segregation in the United States and
Speaker 1: how it extended into the oceans. All right, it's all share.
Speaker 1: We all love spending a warm day on a beautiful beach. However,
Speaker 1: there was a time when public beaches were not open
Speaker 1: to all to enjoy. Public beaches, like many other public
Speaker 1: facilities such as schools, swimming pool theaters, and restaurants, were segregated.
Speaker 1: The segregation came in the form of local and state laws,
Speaker 1: as well as understood social norms. Collectively, these laws and
Speaker 1: social norms were known as Jim Crow in many places
Speaker 1: along the Gulf Coast. The rest the request by African
Speaker 1: Americans for access to public beaches often fell on deaf ears.
Speaker 1: Without access to public beaches, many were denied the joy
Speaker 1: and safety of swimming and playing at public beaches. Many
Speaker 1: Black children drowned as they swam in unsafe and unsupervised
Speaker 1: bodies of water. In areas where African Americans were allowed
Speaker 1: to access public beaches, most were very remote, polluted, and
Speaker 1: hazardous areas. A rare exception to this was the eastern
Speaker 1: end of Perdido Key, which is preserved by the National
Speaker 1: Seashore today as Johnson Beach. Similar to peaceful protests at
Speaker 1: restaurants known as sit ins, doctor Gilbert Mason Senior led
Speaker 1: a series of protests against segregated beaches called weade ins.
Speaker 1: He believed all Americans should have equal access to public
Speaker 1: beaches maintained with taxpayer dollars. For these wade in protests,
Speaker 1: Mason and his followers would wide into the Gulf waters
Speaker 1: of Biloxi, Mississippi beaches. Those peaceful protesters were met in
Speaker 1: many cases with violence from white rioters, and many were
Speaker 1: also arrested. The Justice Department finally won a lengthy battle
Speaker 1: over these segregated beaches in Mississippi in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1: The hard fought battle resulted in public beaches being open
Speaker 1: to all, regardless of color. Wade in style protests, like
Speaker 1: the ones in Mississippi occurred in other parts of the
Speaker 1: country as well. These protests provided a way for black
Speaker 1: Americans to speak out against segregated beaches. The efforts of
Speaker 1: these brave advocates for change ensured the public beaches are
Speaker 1: open and accessible to all Americans to enjoy. Okay, now
Speaker 1: I'm going to shift gears here because that seems like
Speaker 1: a neat little story, happy ending or whatever. But I
Speaker 1: want to give you a little bit more insights, so
Speaker 1: I'm going to share a bit. This is from the Guardian. Okay,
Speaker 1: summers have long been America's most segregated season. Nowhere is
Speaker 1: this more evident than along the nation's beaches and coasts,
Speaker 1: one of the chief destinations for vacationers and pleasure seekers,
Speaker 1: and a perennial site of racial conflict and violence. The
Speaker 1: infamous nineteen nineteen Chicago race riot, which lasted seven days
Speaker 1: and claimed thirty eight lives, began on the shores of
Speaker 1: Lake Michigan, when white Youth gang members stoned to death
Speaker 1: a black teenager named Eugene Williams after he had accidentally
Speaker 1: drifted across a color line in the water. And its aftermath,
Speaker 1: African Americans learned to avoid the city's lakefront. As a child,
Speaker 1: black Chicago and Dempsey Travis remembers quote, I was never
Speaker 1: permitted to learn to swim. For six years, we lived
Speaker 1: within two blocks of the lake, but that did not
Speaker 1: change my parents' attitude to Dad and Mama the Blue
Speaker 1: Scott the Blue Lake always had a tinge of red
Speaker 1: from the blood of the young black boy. In the
Speaker 1: decades that followed, local governments across the US and acted
Speaker 1: a host of policies and practices designed to segregate places
Speaker 1: of outdoor leisure by race and effectively exclude people of
Speaker 1: color from public beaches. In the South, those methods were
Speaker 1: quite explicit. Coastal cities such as Norfolk, Virginia, Charleston, South Carolina,
Speaker 1: and Miami, Florida prohibited African Americans from stepping foot on
Speaker 1: any of their public beaches and for years ignored black's
Speaker 1: demands for public beaches of their own. White's indifference to
Speaker 1: the health and humanity of black communities often had deadly consequences.
Speaker 1: Throughout the Jim Crow era, shockingly high numbers of black
Speaker 1: youth drowned each summer while playing in dangerous and unsupervised
Speaker 1: bodies of water. When the white officials did respond to
Speaker 1: Black demands for beaches and parks of their own, they
Speaker 1: invariably selected remote, polluted, often hazardous locations. In Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Officials designated Buzzard Point, a former dumping ground located downstream
Speaker 1: from a sewage plant. It has a suitable location