Being a good neighbour

June 24, 2024 10:40 AM

Fred Rogers breaks the color barrier in a kiddie pool with Officer Clemmons in 1967. Fred Rogers Previously. The only known violation of Betteridge’s Law of Headlines: Is Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood the greatest television show ever made? by Emily St. James for AV Club. Segregation & Swimming Timeline in the United States. An episode of the podcast 5-4 discussing the Supreme Court case Palmer v. Thompson, in which the court decided that the Equal Protection Clause does not prohibit the city of Jackson, Mississippi from avoiding integration by closing its public pools.
posted by bq (8 comments total)

Oh, thank you for posting this, bq! That Emily St. James piece is lovely.

I would just like to remind my MeFite friends that the official website posts a full week of five episodes twice a month over at Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and if you'd like to explore details of the hundreds of episodes, there's the wonderful Neighborhood Archive - for example, you can learn about Officer Clemmons, including which episodes he was in.

There are even a few episodes discussed on Fanfare.

The more I read about Mister Rogers, the more I admire him. He was certainly not perfect, but he was good, and he was kind, and he touched so many thousands of lives with an example of how to live an ethos of love.

I urge everyone to bookmark the Neighborhood site and, any time you're having a bad day, pick any episode and play the last minute or so, where he looks at the camera and tells you you make every day special, just by being you.

Thank you for this, bq. You make every day special.
posted by kristi at 12:33 PM on June 24 [16 favorites]

(I also spent a few sad minutes reading about public pools in US cities. I did find this list of cities with the most public pools, and I was pleased to see that the pool in the Chicago suburb where I grew up is still being operated by the park district.)
posted by kristi at 12:36 PM on June 24

It's entirely plausible that if Jesus returned after 2 millennia it would be perfectly natural for him to decide that the most effective way to reach the largest audience for his message of peace would be to get on children's TV and preach his gospel of loving your neighbor and helping the poor and doing good. This communal washing of the feet video therefore seems a particularly trenchant sign.
posted by chavenet at 12:48 PM on June 24 [15 favorites]

https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2024/01/16/rose-bowl-aquatic-center-names-pool-after-pasadena-civil-rights-leader-edna-griffin/

But there was a time when not everyone was welcome.

Opened in 1914, the [Brookside Park] Plunge limited access for non-White visitors to one day a week for nearly three decades, until the local chapter of the NAACP sued the city, with the courts granting everyone unrestricted access to the pool in 1942.

Rather than comply with the ruling, Pasadena closed the pool entirely until the NAACP forced its reopening with a court injunction in 1947.

. . .

Pasadena residents of color of the era described the plunge as one of their first encounters with being excluded, including baseball great Jackie Robinson, who wrote in his autobiography that Pasadenans were more openly hostile than Southerners at the time.

The Pasadena pool issue is considered the start of the Civil Rights era supposedly, along with this case:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lopez_v._Seccombe

Part of the "separate-but-equal" 20th century segregation of public pools was the racial minorities would get the last day before the water was changed.
posted by torokunai at 2:02 PM on June 24 [6 favorites]

Oh man, old timers here in Pasadena still have thoughts about the Pasadena Plunge - mostly of the sort that we'd be happy about here, but not all. Reminds me I should go hit the therapy pool.

Cause lord is it hot right now in Pas.

And every time I see a discussion of Mr. Rogers pop up, I get concerned we're finally going to learn that he had a special puppy kicking room or something. The worst thing I've heard was that he had his concerns about Francois Clemmons' sexual orientation causing a potential scandal for the show and that even that he came around on.
posted by drewbage1847 at 4:25 PM on June 24 [3 favorites]

I usually pop into every Mr. Rogers thread to link to Tom Junod's incredible profile of him, "Can You Say... Hero?", but Esquire has put it behind a paywall. Here's a Neighborhood Archive link with readable screenshots. It's a lovely piece about the loveliest man.
posted by Sweetie Darling at 5:04 AM on June 25

I first learned about the tragedy of segregation and municipal pools from Bonnie Tsui. She dives deep into the social context of pools (and many other issues of interest to lifelong swimmers, like me) in her 2020 work, Why We Swim.
posted by Jesse the K at 8:17 AM on June 25

I'm not religious at all, so about the only energy I ever spend thinking about an afterlife is hoping that somehow Fred Rogers is somewhere nice, forever.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:15 AM on June 25 [5 favorites]