In Naming our Town Beach, the Impact Matters more than the Intent

Emily Alger, February 2021

There is a rugged mountain in southwest Vermont with a rustic cabin, tall trees, and thick blackberry brambles. There is a cold lake in the Northeast Kingdom where the hills are perfectly reflected in the still morning water. There is shale beach in my hometown in the Champlain Islands where I learned to swim. These places in Vermont defined my childhood, and in many ways define my identity today. It can be hard when the places we love change, whether it’s houses being built in the back field of my childhood home, or a name change at the public beach. But on the issue of renaming what has historically been called White’s Beach in South Hero, it is clear to me that enormous good will be done for many by changing its name. 

Most of my memories of these special places of my childhood are happy. I was free to run in the woods, swim in the lakes, and explore the mountains in safety.  I was welcome everywhere, watched over by family and neighbors, safe in the arms of a community that cared. I can only imagine what it would be like if I had not felt welcome, if I had not been safe in these outdoor spaces. 

What if those beaches and mountains had excluded me, my parents, and my grandparents? What if being in those spaces had actually been dangerous, like they could be for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities? This name change cannot hurt me, my family, or my memories. But it can do a great deal of good by making our beach welcoming and safe for people of all colors. And to illustrate this, I think we should look at the historical context of who has been able to swim, picnic, and enjoy our beaches throughout the last 100 years.

“We think of beaches as wide-open spaces, and we associate them with freedom, but they have also been subject to very concerted efforts to restrict access, often along racial lines” (Crawford, 2018). The history of public beaches and pools in the United States is a complex and sometimes dark story. After the Chicago Race Riot of 1919, which began on the shore of Lake Michigan, towns and cities across our country enacted policies and practices designed to segregate outdoor recreation spaces and exclude people of color from those spaces. In the South those policies were explicit, and many cities “prohibited African Americans from stepping foot on any of their public beaches, and for years ignored blacks’ demands for public beaches of their own. Whites’ indifference to the health and humanity of black communities often had deadly consequences. Throughout the Jim Crow era, shockingly high numbers of black youth drowned each summer while playing in dangerous, and unsupervised, bodies of water. When white officials did respond to black demands for beaches and parks of their own, they invariably selected remote, polluted, often hazardous, locations” (Kahrl, 2018). 

You might think that this was a problem of the South. It was not. Methods of segregation in the North were subtler but equally effective.  “Predominantly white suburbs and towns in the north-east, for example, designated their public beaches for residents only, or charged exorbitant access fees for non-residents, or barred non-residents from parking near the shore, all designed to keep minority populations in neighboring cities out. City officials, meanwhile, failed to provide black neighborhoods with safe and decent places of public recreation and deliberately made beaches and pools frequented by middle-class whites inaccessible to the poor and people of color”(Kahrl, 2018). 

The 1964 Civil Rights Act desegregated public accommodations. But policies across the country uphold racist barriers to access even today (Wolcott, 2019). Cities and towns continue to slash funding for outdoor recreation programs for disadvantaged children and close public parks and beaches in poorer neighborhoods. At the same time affluent, and predominantly white communities, increased parking fees and decreased non-residential passes to their beaches to keep “undesirables” out (Kahrl, 2018). The story is similar with public pools after desegregation. Across the country, “many cities allowed and even encouraged white swimmers to use intimidation and even outright violence to keep Black people out of pools'' (NPR, 2008). After desegregation, public pools began to close, in favor of private swimming clubs and backyard pools, which were generally unaffordable for Black Americans (National Public Radio, 2008).

The impacts of segregation, from forcing Black Americans to swim in unsafe waters, to the violence they faced when swimming in public waters and pools, to the continued lack of access to swimming lessons, beaches, and pools has impacts today. “A 2017 study from the University of Memphis found that 66 percent of African-American kids couldn’t swim well enough to be safe in the deep end of a pool” while only “36% of white children lacked the same basic swimming skills.” And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black children are almost six times more likely to die from drowning than white children. The University of Memphis study also found that many Black parents are afraid of the water, and afraid to allow their children to swim, because of this very reason (Wolfram, 2019). 

Given this history of segregation, violence, and exclusion, the name of our town beach matters. Over the last year we have all seen the continued effects of systemic racism on BIPOC communities. The name White’s beach was originally a geographic designation, meant to tell us where this beach was, near the home of the White family. Over time, it has clearly become a name that many associate specifically with Harlow and Mary White. 

I’ve loved reading about Harlow and Mary on Front Porch Forum over the last couple of weeks. I didn’t know them personally, but it is clear that they were exemplary community members. I particularly enjoyed the lovely story of a surprise lightning storm during swim lessons when Mrs. White offered refuge and a delicious treat to kids caught by the storm. Many have shared their own memories of the Whites as kind, gentle, and friendly people. I think we can find ways to honor this special couple and their impact on our community that build compassion and community as they did. One suggestion would be to rename the beach the South Hero Town Beach, and dedicate the beach to the memory of Harlow and Mary White. We could collect stories of the Whites and share them on a plaque. I’m sure that there are other great ideas out there, I would love to hear them. 

In cases like this, we need to distinguish between the intent and the impact of the name. The intent of calling our beach White’s Beach is to honor the memory of Harlow and Mary White. But the impact of the name is to make our beach unwelcoming to our BIPOC neighbors and visitors. Let’s find a way to make our intent match our impact. Let’s come together to honor a special South Hero couple and make our beach a welcoming place.

 
Sources

Crawford, Amy. (2018) Racism Kept Connecticut’s Beaches White Up Through the 1970s. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/connecticuts-beaches-were-largely-limits-african-americans-through-1970s-180969494/

Kahrl, Andrew W. (2018) America’s segregated shores: beaches' long history as a racial battleground. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/12/americas-segregated-shores-beaches-long-history-as-a-racial-battleground 

National Public Radio (2008) Racial History of American Swimming Pools. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90213675 

Wolcott, Victoria W. (2019) The forgotten history of segregated swimming pools and amusement parks. UBNow. http://www.buffalo.edu/ubnow/spotlight.host.html/content/shared/university/news/ub-reporter-articles/stories/2019/07/wolcott-segregated-pools.detail.html 

Wolfram, Joel. (2019) For non-swimmers, a chance to jump in the water and learn. Whyy (a program of the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio) https://whyy.org/articles/for-non-swimmers-a-chance-to-jump-in-the-water-and-learn/