Across the south, municipalities chose to close recreational facilities rather than integrate them. : 580 In spite of the Civil Rights Act, a summer camp in Montgomery, Alabama hosted by the YMCA refused entry to two black children in 1969, resulting in a landmark desegregation decision which included the YMCA as a public accommodation. Prior to the 1960s, the YMCA built separate facilities in black and white neighborhoods. : 11 Public schools and recreation facilities were often segregated in the United States, de jure until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or de facto due to residential patterns. Swimming nude was required, but did not appeal to all. The first black YMCA with a pool was the Twelfth Street YMCA in Washington, DC. Since few swimmers in these neighborhoods could afford swimsuits or wanted to wear them, nudity among males was taken for granted. Building indoor pools, and the addition of pools to bathhouses, was done to address this problem. As the quality of urban river water declined, floating baths became a source of infection. In addition to health and hygiene, they were intended to prevent drowning in the open river, which was a frequent occurrence. : 9–10īeginning in 1870, the first public pools in New York City were outdoor "floating baths" of wood surrounded by docks that allowed river water to flow through them. Naked swimmers from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to New York City sometimes flaunted themselves intentionally in view of more upper class passers-by. Such behavior had begun in the 18th century, but laws prohibiting public indecency had little effect. "Swimming baths" and pools were built beginning in the late 19th century in poorer neighborhoods of eastern cities to exert some control over a public swimming culture that offended Victorian sensibilities by including not only nakedness, but roughhousing and swearing. Origins of swimming pools Forty-two Kids by George Bellows (1907) depicting boys swimming from a pier in the East River, New York City A generation later, nude swimming in public pools as a widespread practice was forgotten, and in the 21st century sometimes denied having existed. After the passage of Title IX in 1972, requiring gender equality in physical education, most schools found mixed-gender use of swimming pools to be the easiest means of compliance. Male nude swimming remained a common practice in the Midwest and Northeast through the 1950s, but declined in the 1960s due to technological and social changes. As with other physical education activities, swimming was gender-segregated. As the century continued, more indoor pools were built by local governments and schools, primarily in northern states, to provide year-round swimming as a sport. Because indoor pools were generally male only, the health of swimmers could be monitored most easily by forbidding swimsuits, which often were a source of contamination, while female swimmers wore suits that were more hygienic. During the early developmental stages of filtration and chlorination, behavioral measures were also needed to keep the water clean. The primary reason given for nudity by officials was for public health, swimming pools being prone to contamination by water-borne diseases.
Pre-pubescent boys might be nude in mixed-gender settings, including the presence of female staff, public competitions, and open houses for families.
In their own classes, nudity was rare for girls based upon an assumption of modesty, but might include young children. For the first decades of the 20th century, male nude swimming was associated with a trope of the "old swimming hole" as representing childhood innocence and adult masculinity. When the tradition of skinny-dipping in secluded spots had become more visible with urbanization, indoor pools were built in the 1880s as a means of separating swimmers from public view. Male nude swimming had been customary in natural bodies of water since the 18th century. See also: Nude swimming and Childhood nudity Floating Bath at The Battery, New York City, 1908įor almost a century in the United States, men and boys swam nude in indoor swimming pools, generally for education or athletics, not recreation.
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