"The Water's Always Great in Your Own Backyard!"
This file appears in: Eugene McKinley Memorial Pool: "A Place in the Sun for Everyone”
Integration of public swimming pools coincided with the boom in backyard residential pools. In May of 1966, the year that McKinley Pool was opened, Kobacker's in Portsmouth advertised above-ground pools, claiming "The Water's Always Great in Your Own Backyard." In 1950, according to Jeff Wiltse's book, Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America, only 2,500 American families owned in-ground pools as compared to 4 million by 1999.
This file appears in: Eugene McKinley Memorial Pool: "A Place in the Sun for Everyone”
Eugene McKinley Memorial Pool: "A Place in the Sun for Everyone”
On Friday, June 9th, 1961, McKinley and a group of other African American school boys went swimming in a flooded sand and gravel pit that had recently been dug in the bottoms of the Scioto River. It was the last day of school and the students were…