South Baltimore Peninsula Post: “‘Heritage District’ to Mark 1962 Riverside Pool Integration” (Steve Cole)
Downhill from the gazebo is the Riverside public swimming pool, the site of an outburst of violence in 1962 as America struggled to end segregation and secure equal rights for its Black population. The outburst that summer involved dozens of city police officers, rock-throwing mobs of white citizens, and injured Black swimmers, including an 11-year-old boy who would grow up to represent Maryland in the U.S. Congress. That story is written nowhere in the park.
That will change as the Reimagine Middle Branch project moves forward. The multimillion-dollar, multiyear plan, approved in February by the Baltimore City Planning Commission, envisions new recreational and cultural improvements along the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River, from Curtis Bay and Brooklyn in the south to Westport and the SoBo peninsula, and including adjacent communities such as Riverside. One element of the 187-page plan is an “African-American Heritage District” composed of 10 sites (see Chapter 4, pages 138-139). One of those sites is Riverside Pool.
Brad Rogers, executive director of the South Baltimore Gateway Partnership (SBGP), which is a major partner in the project, advocated for including the pool in the Heritage District. “Throughout the project planning process, we have focused on how we can elevate the stories of Black South Baltimore, stories that in many cases have been overlooked or ignored.”…
…One of the Black swimmers injured during the nearly three weeks of racial strife at Riverside was 11-year-old Elijah Cummings of the 100 block of W. Cross Street. “I still have the scar where a bottle thrown from the crowd hit me,” the Baltimore native recalled in 2000. But “it was there, at the gate to Riverside, that I realized for the very first time that I had a right that other people had to respect. And that was an insight that has made all the difference in the world to me.”