A public pool is set to undergo a meaningful transformation. The city of Pasadena, California is preparing to honor the legacy of civil rights leader Dr. Edna L. Griffin by renaming a public pool located on the former site of the historic Brookside Plunge.
Dr. Edna L. Griffin, Pasadena’s first Black female physician and president of the city’s NAACP branch from 1938 to 1947, led the charge in desegregating the Brookside Plunge Pool. Located on the former site of the Brookside Plunge Pool, the pool will be re-named in her honor, during a celebration to commemorate the occasion in May 2024.
The Brookside Plunge Pool had a long history, fraught with racial tensions.
The pool opened on July 4, 1914, and it was declared segregated only a week later, setting aside “Wednesday afternoons and evenings for the use of the Negro population of Pasadena,' according to historical documents.
When members of the African-American community initially protested the segregation by presenting the city council with a petition, they were dismissed. In 1915, when they again asked for an end to the segregation at the city’s only public swimming pool, the city council banned African-American use of the pool completely — a ban that lasted the next 14 years.
African-Americans were not the only ethnic group excluded from the pool. In 1930, the city returned to segregation, opening the pool to people of color — which also included Asian- and Mexican-Americans — on Tuesdays from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. for “International Day.” Whites were not permitted to swim during those hours.
Baseball legend Jackie Robinson, who grew up in Pasadena, mentions the pool in his autobiography, noting that he was among those banned from the pool except on Tuesdays Author Toshi Ito, the mother of Pasadena resident Judge Lance Ito (who presided over the O.J. Simpson trial), also mentions the pool in her memoir. “My homeroom class decided to have a graduation swim party and picnic at Brookside Park in Pasadena,” she wrote. “We all lined up to pay the plunge fee and rent a towel. When Motomu Nagasako, a Japanese-American, got up to the window to pay, he was told Orientals were not allowed to use the plunge. There were five Japanese-Americans in my homeroom class. He had the embarrassing task to tell us we were excluded. We all glumly sat on the lawn watching the others frolicking in the swimming pool and wishing the afternoon would end and we could all go home.
It was my first encounter with being excluded.'
In 1941, after a lawsuit was brought by six African-Americans led by Dr. Griffin, courts decided to end the segregation.
Dr. Griffin, then president of the Pasadena Chapter of the NAACP, who filed more than 20 lawsuits against Pasadena’s restaurants and businesses for discrimination, is credited with the win to desegregate the Brookside Plunge Pool.
In the short run, it was a shallow victory, because the city opted instead to close the plunge completely rather than comply with desegregation. But when the pool reopened in 1947, it was open to all Pasadena residents, regardless of color.
Now known as the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center, the pool sits on the former site of Brookside Plunge, after it was rebuilt in 1990.
But that’s about to change in recognition of one woman’s remarkable contributions to civil rights.
It will be renamed after Edna Griffin, to honor her trailblazing work, which resulted in an aquatics facility dedicated to promoting wellness and water safety to its entire community.
