Desegregation of City Parks and the Civil Rights Movement: The Case of Oak Park in Montgomery,Alabama

Introduction

This article chronicles history of the sixteen-year fight to desegregate public parks in the City of Montgomery and argues that the fight to desegregate parks in Montgomery is an important missing piece in the narrative of civil rights history. The article situates the Montgomery park desegregation cases in the larger context of civil rights activities in Montgomery, including the Bus Boycott, Freedom Rides, school desegregation, lunch counter sit-ins, and the Selma to Montgomery March. The article explores the question of why pubic officials sought to keep parks segregated long after the 1964 Civil Rights Act and after numerous court decisions outlawing segregation in public facilities. The article also questions why the effort to desegregate the parks in Montgomery is relatively unknown, despite its connection to very well-known activities, including the Bus Boycott and school desegregation. ¹

The first part of this article discusses the historical context of park desegregation in Montgomery—park segregation, segregation in the YMCA, and Montgomery during the Jim Crow era. Second, Oak Park, the city park at the center of the controversy, is discussed, along with the decision of city officials to close all of the parks in Montgomery. Third, the series of desegregation lawsuits are discussed. Finally, I offer some conclusions on the linkage between park desegregation and the Bus Boycott and school desegregation, why public officials continued to seek to segregated parks into the 1970s, and why the story of park desegregation in Montgomery is still relatively unknown.

Park Segregation

Parks were segregated in the South during the Jim Crow era, and African Americans had access to only a small number of parks. ² Segregation in parks was strictly protected by city officials and White Southerners, who had longstanding fears of racial mixing in intimate environments, especially by youth and women. ³ Many African American people were also excluded from public parks and private amusement areas in the North. ⁴ Segregated parks included state parks, national parks, local parks, and private amusement parks in and near urban areas, as well as rural areas.

Many parks were established later in the South than in the rest of the country, due to traditions of limited government, poverty, and the plantation ideal. ⁵ However, state and local parks began to appear in the South around the same time as Jim Crow laws were enacted, with the end of reconstruction and the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court found Jim Crow laws to be constitutional. ⁶ In the 1920s, the Southern states began to establish state parks, and cities began to establish municipal parks. However, it wasn’t until the New Deal, which started the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and other agencies dedicated to developing parks, when parks in the South began to take off. ⁷ Because Jim Crow laws by then already existed in the South, those laws were immediately applicable to parks, and African American people were largely excluded. ⁸

Despite the success of New Deal programs at constructing new parks, park facilities for African Americans were inferior and far less in number than parks for White people. A survey of seventeen Southern cities in 1928 found only four cities with any recreation facilities for African Americans. ⁹ Between 1935 and 1941, just nine state parks were available to African Americans in five Southern states, and there were none in Alabama. ¹⁰ By 1952, there were ten state park facilities for African Americans in Southern states. ¹¹ A 1954 survey found just twelve state parks for African American people in nine Southern states, compared with 180 parks for White people, and the nine parks that were available for African American people were inferior in size, natural attractiveness, and had fewer recreation facilities. ¹²

In many places, and for many types of recreation facilities, the false doctrine of separate but equal was even less equal for recreation than it was for other facilities like education and transportation. Most of the African American park facilities were constructed in conjunction with far superior White facilities at the same park. ¹³ The African American park areas were typically restricted to day use facilities—with no camping, cabins, or restaurants. ¹⁴ In addition to their far lower quality, African American park facilities were often up to 400 miles away from major cities because they were so few in number. ¹⁵ New South magazine called parks the weakness of the Jim Crow system:

. . . publicly supported recreation—that Achilles’ heel of the “separate but equal” system. All of the Southern states have paid at least lip-service to the goal of an equal and segregated set of public schools. But few have, until very recently, even given serious thought to an equitable dual system of parks and playgrounds. ¹⁶

Facilities for African Americans in city parks paralleled their state and national counterparts. In Atlanta, in 1954, although African Americans comprised over one-third of the city’s population, they had access to just three of the 132 municipal parks, eight of the ninety-six tennis courts, one of the eight community centers, one of the seven indoor gymnasiums, and none of the five golf courses in the city. ¹⁷ However, a lack of mobility for urban residents meant that city parks were often the only recreation opportunities available to them.

Between the end of the World War II and the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision to desegregate schools in Brown v. Board of Education, ¹⁸ Southern states saw an increasing number of African American–only segregated parks. These developments were in response to court decisions in favor of integration—to try to prove that the doctrine of separate but equal was being achieved in Southern parks. ¹⁹ Another reason for increased attention to the establishment of African American park facilities was the notion that parks would correct perceived criminal and social ills among African Americans. ²⁰ Nonetheless, park facilities for African American people remained far fewer and inferior to parks for White people.

African Americans and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) begun to challenge Jim Crow laws in the South by the late 1940s, when challenges to segregated parks began in Virginia and Texas. ²¹ The 1940s was a key period of activism for civil rights, as African Americans returned home from World War II to strict segregation laws that contradicted the idea of equality and democracy that they had fought for in the war. The discrimination that African American people experienced as the war ended, and the organizing that followed—particularly through the NAACP—set the stage for the civil rights activities in the 1950s and 1960s, including park desegregation activities.

Activists challenged segregated parks across the United States throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s. ²² The response to calls for better parks for African Americans by state and local park boards was to improve and create new segregated parks for African Americans—not to integrate parks. ²³ Alabama stood out among the Southern states as being the least dedicated to state park building for African Americans—constructing just one state park that was available for African Americans by 1955 (part of Joe Wheeler State Park). ²⁴

Although National Parks had a policy of nondiscrimination by 1951, it recognized and practiced segregation in states with Jim Crow laws. ²⁵ Likewise, the Tennessee Valley Authority recognized Jim Crow laws in its recreational facilities. ²⁶ Conflicts arose over segregation in National Parks when the federal government began constructing National Parks in Southern states, including Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 1934 and Shenandoah National Park in 1935. ²⁷ The states where the parks were located—Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee—asked the National Park Service (NPS) to ensure that local segregation laws would be enforced, and NPS agreed. ²⁸ When new national parks were created, NPS constructed segregated facilities such as picnic areas, campgrounds, restrooms, and playgrounds. ²⁹

Another important facet of early twentieth-century parks was private amusement parks, which were marketed as commercial enterprises that offered clean and safe leisure activities, and a counterbalance to older private amusement parks and public facilities that were criticized as overcrowded and immoral. Segregation was a key part of the marketing effort to sell the parks as moral and safe. ³⁰ Many cities in the north experienced challenges to segregated private amusement parks, such as Euclid Beach Park near Cleveland in 1946 and Crystal Beach in Buffalo in 1956. ³¹ The pervasiveness of integration efforts at private amusement parks was due to the fact that they were usually the largest private accommodation in cities, making it difficult for African American people to create counterparts to those spaces. They also typically included dance halls and swimming pools that were viewed as intimate, sparking fears of racial mixing from White people. ³²

After the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ³³ school desegregation decision courts found a close relationship between schools and parks, ruling in favor of desegregating parks. ³⁴ For example, in 1955 the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Maryland, ruled that segregation of parks was not constitutional. ³⁵ African Americans won a desegregation case against public golf courses in Texas, when the U.S. Supreme Court denied review of the lower court’s decision. ³⁶

Despite court cases that favored desegregation of parks in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, ³⁷ many parks throughout the South remained segregated into the 1960s. In the summer of 1963, efforts to desegregate public and private beaches (known as wade-ins or swim-ins) took place throughout the South, along with lunch counter sit-ins. In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and others were arrested for trying to desegregate a hotel swimming pool and lunch counter in St. Augustine, Florida. Later, the hotel manager poured muriatic acid into the swimming pool to get protesters out. ³⁸ Wade-ins were common on July 4th throughout the 1950s and 1960s, such as in Clearwater, Ft. Lauderdale, and Tampa, Florida. Wade-ins in Sarasota resulted in a successful lobbying effort to get the State of Florida to pass a bill allowing the county to sell its beaches to private interests. ³⁹

A popular response to attempts to desegregate public parks was for cities to divorce themselves from the operation of public facilities, and lease, sell, or give away parks to private entities. ⁴⁰ In Louisville, Kentucky, for example, the city leased the operation of a publicly owned amphitheater to a private organization. The city continued to maintain the facility and make and enforce rules for the operation of it, including excluding African Americans. ⁴¹ The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case after the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that desegregated the amphitheater. ⁴² Similarly, City of Montgomery officials resisted integration by transferring park facilities and activities to the Montgomery branches of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA).

YMCA and Segregation

The YMCA is a private organization that provides social and job-training activities and recreation in cities. ⁴³ Following the end of the Civil War, YMCA began to work with African Americans, but embraced segregation and Jim Crow by encouraging African American people to establish separate associations. ⁴⁴ The first African American YMCA was in Richmond, Virginia, in 1889. ⁴⁵ While several African American YMCAs were established just after the Civil War, it was not until later in the nineteenth-century that African American YMCAs became common. Many of the early African American YMCA branches were short-lived because they lacked national administrative support and financial resources. ⁴⁶

In 1946, the National Board of the YMCA adopted a goal of desegregating YMCA facilities, ⁴⁷ and “colored associations” became “city associations” in the national yearbook. ⁴⁸ Many YMCAs, however, ignored the policy and continued to segregate facilities, especially in the South. National YMCA urged White associations to desegregate; however, associations insisted that they were autonomous and refused the order. ⁴⁹ In 1968, the Board voted to require member associations to certify that their programs operated without discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin, although that requirement was also regularly ignored. ⁵⁰ By 1972, the YMCA National Board proposed an adjustment to its overall vision from a focus on converting young men to Christianity to one that focused on social justice, peace, and recognition of the dignity, freedom, and equal worth of all persons. The proposal failed to pass. ⁵¹

By 1950, more than half of the YMCA branches in the United States had open admissions policies; however, most of those were located along the coasts and the Midwest, and none of the YMCAs in the Southeast or the Southwest admitted African Americans. ⁵² By the time Montgomery, Alabama, was using their local YMCA branch to maintain segregated recreation facilities in 1958 (see below), YMCA branches in the South were still segregated, in violation of the National YMCA desegregation policy. ⁵³ Civil Rights attorney Morris Dees doesn’t believe that the City of Montgomery cared about this; however, as he said in a 2019 interview, “The City did not care about what the National YMCA said about desegregation.” ⁵⁴

Montgomery, Alabama, in the Jim Crow Era

Montgomery, Alabama, was home to many of the most influential events in Civil Rights history, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Selma to Montgomery March, Freedom Rides, school desegregation, and lunch counter sit-ins. It was also home to many important civil rights activists. Martin Luther King Jr. got his start at public life with the Montgomery Improvement Association, and lawyers such as Fred Gray, Morris Dees, Solomon Seay, Robert Carter, and Judge Frank Johnson Jr. propelled the movement through the court system. ⁵⁵

School desegregation is an important part of the history of Jim Crow in Montgomery and has important connections to park desegregation. In 1912, when schools were legally segregated in Alabama, ⁵⁶ there were 200 public high schools for White children, and four for African American children. ⁵⁷ When the U.S. Supreme Court decided that segregated schools were unconstitutional in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ⁵⁸ decision, it ordered schools in the United States to desegregate, but the response in Alabama was resistance. Local school boards immediately redrew school district lines to exclude African American children. The Alabama Legislature passed a pupil placement law in 1955. ⁵⁹ In 1956, voters in Alabama passed a constitutional amendment that allowed the legislature to abolish public schools to prevent integration. ⁶⁰

The first effort to enroll African American children at a White school in Alabama was in September 1954 at Harrison Elementary School in Montgomery (the effort failed). ⁶¹ That effort was followed throughout the 1950s and 1960s by other attempts to enroll African American children in White schools, and lawsuits when their enrollment was denied. ⁶² The first African American children enrolled in a public school in Alabama was on September 3, 1963, when Dwight and Floyd Armstrong enrolled at an elementary school in Birmingham. ⁶³ The City of Montgomery had a long resistance to school desegregation. Judge Frank Johnson, Jr. ordered Montgomery schools desegregated in 1964, in Carr v. Montgomery County Board of Education, in a case that was in the court system until 1974. ⁶⁴

The physical setting for many of the civil rights activities in Montgomery was in the neighborhoods surrounding Alabama State University (ASU, then Alabama State College), located south of downtown, and the Centennial Hill neighborhood near ASU. ⁶⁵ ASU is a historically Black college and was the only institution of higher education in Montgomery at the time. ⁶⁶ Many of ASU’s faculty, administrators, and students became leaders in the Civil Rights Movement in Montgomery ⁶⁷ and participated in the Bus Boycott, lunch counter sit-ins, ⁶⁸ and Freedom Rides and were expelled and fired for their civil rights activities. ⁶⁹ A large city park—Oak Park—was also located in the neighborhood and was surrounded on three sides by segregated African American neighborhoods, but was off-limits to the African American residents because it was a segregated Whites-only park (see Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

Map showing racial composition of neighborhoods surrounding Oak Park in 1950.

Oak Park

Oak Park was the largest park in Montgomery and regarded as the loveliest. It was originally 45½ acres, purchased by the City of Montgomery in 1899 for $25,000. ⁷⁰ When the City established the Parks and Recreation Department in 1948, it assumed responsibility for Oak Park. Designed by the Olmsted Brothers, with their telltale meandering paths and water features, the 45-acre park originally contained several historic buildings, a picturesque pedestrian bridge, water wheel, stream, tennis courts, zoo, ferris wheel, miniature train, and a football field. ⁷¹ The park contained a swimming pool—the largest in the city—and a small wading pool for young children. ⁷² The park’s zoo, a popular feature, included a monkey island, bears, alligators, a lion, deer, a bobcat, raccoons, pheasants, peacocks, doves, and other small animals. ⁷³ The park was the only one in Montgomery that contained many of these features, since most other parks in Montgomery simply contained a playground structure and sports facilities. It was also the only park in the city designed by Olmsted. Although the design of the park was elaborate, the space was large and well-designed, so it didn’t feel overcrowded or cramped.

Oak Park was a popular destination for White residents of Montgomery. The park reported approximately 225,000 visitors in 1958, and visitation was as high as 10,000 people on any given Sunday that year. ⁷⁴ The park is located close to the capital and was a frequent picnic spot for out-of-town visitors to the city. In 1958, the park saw visitors from all but one of Alabama’s 67 counties. ⁷⁵

Jim Crow laws assured segregation of all of the parks in Montgomery, and Oak Park was designated as a Whites-only park. City of Montgomery laws made it a misdemeanor, subject to fine or imprisonment, for any person to enter upon, visit, use, or in any way occupy public parks or other public houses or public places except those assigned to their respective race. ⁷⁶

Only four of Montgomery’s fourteen parks were available for African American residents (Washington Park, King Hill Park, Trenholm Court Park, and Mobile Heights Park). ⁷⁷ Therefore, in an era of low car ownership, many African American residents who lived near ASU and Oak Park did not have access to the park in their neighborhood, and instead had to travel two miles to the nearest African American park—King Hill Park. King Hill park was smaller, had inferior facilities, and was surrounded on two sides by White neighborhoods, an African American neighborhood on one side, and on one side by a tuberculosis sanitarium. Adding to the physical separation was the fact that African Americans living near Oak Park had to travel through a middle-class White neighborhood to get to King Hill Park, which was something to be avoided in the Jim Crow era.

In 1957, Mark Gilmore, a young African American man, was arrested, beaten, and put in jail for taking a shortcut through Oak Park to his job at Jackson Hospital, which was on the opposite side of Oak Park from his home. Prompted by this incident, forty-eight African American residents of Montgomery, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Solomon Seay, and Georgia Theresa Gilmore, ⁷⁸ petitioned the Parks and Recreation Board to integrate Oak Park and all of the other parks in the city.

Georgia Theresa Gilmore, Mark Gilmore’s mother, was a cook and midwife in Montgomery. Gilmore sold food at meetings of the Montgomery Improvement Association at the Holt Street Baptist Church. Martin Luther King Jr. gave her the nickname “tiny.” ⁷⁹ Gilmore had an important role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott because she helped raised funds for the carpools. She cooked food in her home and sold it to raise money for the boycott. ⁸⁰ Later, when she was fired from her job as a cafeteria cook for testifying in court at the Bus Boycott trial, Martin Luther King Jr. suggested that she open a restaurant in her home, which she did soon thereafter. The restaurant became an important meeting and strategizing place for civil rights activism, and well-known people such as King, Robert Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Morris Dees, and even segregationist Governor George Wallace ate at her restaurant. ⁸¹

The petition demanded access to Oak Park for African American residents of Montgomery, noting, “with its trees, flowers, shaded walkways, wading pool, zoo, picnic area, and concessions, is more readily accessible to your petitioners than the substandard, poorly equipped public parks which are provided, operated, and maintained for the use of negro citizens.” ⁸² The petition demanded that the Parks and Recreation Board “adopt a positive policy certifying that no distinction based on race or color shall be made” for use of park facilities in Montgomery. ⁸³ The petition noted that segregation of the parks was unjust, “The denial of Oak Park facilities to Negroes does not accord with fundamental and inherent principles of justice and equality.” ⁸⁴ The petition demanded that the board grant a hearing to the petitioners to discuss integration of the parks. ⁸⁵

Upon receipt of the petition, the board issued a statement that they have no authority over the segregation ordinance, and denied their request for a hearing. ⁸⁶ The petitioners then addressed their petition to the City Commissioners, who denied the request for a hearing ⁸⁷ and issued a joint statement:

The Board of Commissioners of the City of Montgomery has been advised by the Park and Recreation Board that it has received a petition signed by a group of Negroes. This petition seeks a hearing before that board for the purpose of making available to Negroes the parks of the White people of Montgomery and particularly for the opening of Oak Park to the Negroes. In order that there be no misunderstanding as to the attitude of the City commissioners, we state that we have no intention of operating any integrated parks in the City of Montgomery. The commission has in the past sought to provide excellent facilities for Negroes despite the fact that the Negroes have contributed comparatively little to the taxes and virtually nothing in the way of personal gifts. ⁸⁸

The arguments that the City Commissioners made to keep parks segregated focused on the argument that the doctrine of separate-but-equal was working—that African Americans had access to segregated parks and facilities and thus were treated equally. The reality, however, was that parks in Montgomery for African American residents were far inferior than parks for White residents, in terms of quantity, quality of facilities, access, and location. ⁸⁹

Oak Park is Closed

Eight days after the first lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court to desegregate the parks in Montgomery (see below), the Parks and Recreation Board announced that it would close Oak Park and all of the other parks in the city. ⁹⁰ Newspaper accounts noted that the decision was “in anticipation of a federal court order which would integrate all parks in the city.” ⁹¹ Newspapers also questioned the motivation behind the effort to desegregate parks. The local popular press blamed African American people for the parks’ closing, and “stilling the happy sounds which used to ring throughout the scenic 43-acre area.” ⁹² They also speculated that the real motive behind the lawsuit to integrate the parks was to close them or to force the city to improve the segregated African American parks:

A park is not a bus system or a school. It is something that can be dispensed with . . . We suspect the . . . petitioners know this. Perhaps their motive is to prod the city to move faster and on a larger scale to provide truly separate but equal parks in Montgomery. ⁹³

Newspaper editorials used language such as “vindictive” to describe the integration efforts:

The closing of Oak Park was forced by a vindictive, dog in the manger attempt to compel integration, when those making the attempt knew it would not be accepted and must inevitably result in the closing. The park is a silent testimonial to an attempt to drive people not accustomed to being driven. ⁹⁴

Although the city continued to maintain the flower beds on the periphery of Oak Park, most of the park that was out of public view became overgrown. Park officials made the decision near the end of 1959 that the park would never reopen and sold all of the animals in the zoo and filled the water features with dirt. ⁹⁵ In 1967, the swimming pools in Oak Park, which were the only public swimming pools in the city, were demolished. ⁹⁶ The Parks and Recreation Department was renamed the Recreation Department ⁹⁷ and all of the funds were redirected to recreation. ⁹⁸

Closing parks to avoid segregating them was a common response to the threat of desegregation in the South. Birmingham closed most of its parks to avoid a desegregation order when Revered Fred Shuttlesworth and other civil rights activists filed a desegregation lawsuit in 1961. ⁹⁹ Wolcott notes that public parks and park facilities (especially pools) were closed to avoid desegregation orders in Cairo, Illinois, Statesville, North Carolina, Little Rock, Arkansas, Huntsville, Alabama, Park bluff, Arkansas, Memphis, Georgia, Griffin, Georgia, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Oxford, North Carolina, and other places. ¹⁰⁰

With the news that the parks in Montgomery would be permanently closed, Oak Park, with its prime location near downtown, became coveted by development interests in the city. City officials began to seek different uses and development opportunities for all of the closed parks, although redevelopment of land was not a main motivation for the closure of the parks. ¹⁰¹ City officials considered several options for redevelopment of Oak Pak, including a hospital, trade school, residential subdivision, factory, and as a potential route for Interstate-85. ¹⁰² At least five other parks in Montgomery became police stations, fire stations, a children’s center, a YMCA, and an Exchange Club.

The Segregation Ordinance is Declared Unconstitutional

On December 22, 1958, eight African Americans (Georgia Theresa Gilmore, Gussie Carlton, Sylvia Johnson, J. C. Smith, Mattie Cargill, Fred Harris, George Stephens, and Elizabeth Brown), represented by attorney Solomon Seay Jr., filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court seeking to have the segregation ordinance for Montgomery parks declared unconstitutional. ¹⁰³

U.S. District Court Judge Frank Johnson, Jr. ruled on that the segregation ordinance was unconstitutional and violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. ¹⁰⁴ The fact that the case was heard in Judge Johnson’s court was significant because he already had a reputation in Alabama for desegregating public facilities. ¹⁰⁵ Johnson’s reputation for being pro-integration likely figured into the decision to file the park desegregation case in the District Court instead of the state courts (in addition to the obvious constitutional challenges). ¹⁰⁶ Judge Johnson believed that the Constitution recognized only one class of citizens and that race laws were contrary to that principle. ¹⁰⁷

By the time the segregation ordinance was declared unconstitutional, parks were by then closed (see above), but the court declared that if they were to ever reopen, it would have to be on an integrated basis. ¹⁰⁸ The court issued an injunction that prohibited the city from operating parks on a segregated basis. The City’s testimony, when asked about the possibility of reopening the parks was that they have “no present intention to reopen any of the parks during the present term of the incumbent Commissioners.” ¹⁰⁹

Mayor Gayle announced that the city immediately planned to appeal the decision and that the parks would remain closed and would never reopen on an integrated basis, noting, “we’ll fight to the last to preserve segregation.” ¹¹⁰ The City appealed the District Court decision to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. ¹¹¹ Gilmore and the other activists were represented by attorneys Solomon Seay Jr. and Robert L. Carter. ¹¹² The appeal argued that the ordinance became moot when the city closed all of the parks in 1959.

The Appeals Court upheld the lower court’s decision that segregation in the parks was unconstitutional and modified the decision to allow the District Court to retain jurisdiction if the City were to reopen the parks. ¹¹³ The reason for the modification was because it could conceivably be possible to open the parks without the segregation ordinance, and they could become essentially self-segregating. Montgomery had relatively few parks, and most are very small, so, the court noted, it was possible that the citizens of Montgomery may choose to self-segregate the parks. ¹¹⁴

By then Mayor Earl James, also a segregationist, had been elected mayor of Montgomery. James responded to the decision by indicating that the city parks would remain closed, “we will not open up these parks on an integrated basis.” ¹¹⁵ The parks remained closed for five more years.

The City of Montgomery Reopens the Parks

The Montgomery Parks and Recreation Board voted to reopen seven of the fourteen closed city parks, ¹¹⁶ including Oak Park, on February 25, 1965. ¹¹⁷ The parks that were not reopened had already been put to other uses. ¹¹⁸ Hammer Hall Park became a police station and fire station, Civic Park was sold to the Children’s Center of Montgomery, Perry Street Park was sold to the YMCA, Bear Park was sold to the East Montgomery Exchange Club, Kiwanis Park became a fire station, ¹¹⁹ and Yancy Park was sold to the Montgomery Spastic Children’s School. ¹²⁰

The timing of the opening of the parks occurred along with other important events. The first attempt to march from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights, when state police attacked marchers (the event known as Bloody Sunday), occurred just ten days after the parks opened. The third, and only successful, attempt to march from Selma to Montgomery to demand voting rights for African Americans ended in front of the Alabama capital building in Montgomery one month later, on March 25. Park desegregation activist Mary Louise Smith participated in the march. ¹²¹

The Parks and Recreation Department installed a six-foot high chain link fence around the park in May 1965, so the only way to enter the park was from the main road on its east side—in the only White neighborhood adjacent to the park. ¹²² The result of the fence was a lack of easy access for the residents of the nearby African American neighborhood, which would have to walk around the large park and through the White neighborhood to enter the park.

The city initially decided not to restore many of the activities in the park ¹²³ and hired a consultant to redesign the park with a focus on “botanical gardens with spots for quiet relaxation” (see Figure 2). ¹²⁴ Eventually, the park became a combination of a quiet botanical garden and a restoration of the original design. The Parks and Recreation Board adopted a resolution indicating that Oak Park should be restored back to its design before it was closed in 1959, with the exception of the swimming pools, which the board did not want to restore. ¹²⁵ However, the park today bears only partial resemblance to its design before it closed in 1959 (see Figures 3 to 6). ¹²⁶ A botanical garden was under construction by 1966. ¹²⁷ A planetarium with a 50-foot dome opened in 1968 (see Figure 7). ¹²⁸ By 1970, a small zoo of animals had been returned to the park, including an alligator, chickens, and deer. ¹²⁹ Reversing the 1965 decision that there be no picnic areas in the parks, the Parks and Recreation Board constructed picnic areas in Oak Park in July 1968, and removed the “no picnicking” signs. ¹³⁰ As late as 1970, however, Montgomery’s Parks did not contain signs to indicate that they were public parks, a decision which some critics viewed as racially motivated. ¹³¹

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Figure 2.

Hand-drawn image by an unknown author showing the plan for the redesign of Oak Park after it reopened in 1965.

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Figure 3.

Main entrance to Oak Park today.

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Figure 4.

The water feature shown here was present in the park before it closed in 1959, and it remains in Oak Park today.

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Figure 5.

The former Monkey Island remains in the park today, along with a rock structure that the monkeys used to climb on.

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Figure 6.

Although the park is still fenced in, it is accessible to the west today through a pedestrian gate near the neighborhood, shown here.

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Figure 7.

W. A. Gayle planetarium, named for Mayor William Gayle, who sought to keep the parks segregated, is a main attraction in Oak Park today.

The decision to not restore the swimming pools was significant because integrated swimming pools, picnicking, and playgrounds were seen as more of a threat to segregationists than botanic gardens and passive scenic parks. By not restoring the pools, public officials in Montgomery were perhaps trying to avoid true integration by preventing different races from interacting with each other in intimate environments, especially where women and children of different races would interact.

Smith v. YMCA

In Spring 1958, the Montgomery YMCA and the Montgomery Parks and Recreation Board formed a committee to coordinate their recreation efforts. The committee was composed of Parks and Recreation Department representatives and representatives from all of the YMCA branches except Cleveland Avenue, the only African American YMCA branch, according to a letter to the mayor that suggested “that we do not include the Negro staff members or Board members” on the committee. ¹³²

In 1959, the committee entered into a cooperative agreement to “coordinate the programs and facilities of the YMCA and the City Parks and Recreation Department, and to eliminate duplication of efforts.” ¹³³ Under the agreement, the YMCA would offer most of the athletic programs for elementary-age children and operate the entire swimming program for the city, since the Montgomery Parks and Recreation swimming pools were closed. ¹³⁴ The committee had been kept a secret, but Morris Dees, the attorney for the case, ¹³⁵ found out about it and discovered that the YMCA had been receiving city money. ¹³⁶ Through the agreement, the YMCA became the segregated parks department, as Morris Dees said in a 2019 interview:

The YMCA was the de facto City segregated recreation department. The Central YMCA Board operated out of a new building placed on donated land. The Board was made up of fifty or so top White leaders with the major donor as its honorary chairman. ¹³⁷

On June 3, 1969, two African American children, cousins Vincent and Edward Smith, and their mothers, Annie Ruth and Mary Louise Smith, along with two members of the Montgomery Human Relations Council, ¹³⁸ attempted to enroll the children in YMCA summer camp Besler, and their applications were denied by the director because he “had no authority to accept applications from Negroes,” ¹³⁹ and “because it was an all-White camp.” ¹⁴⁰ On June 11, 1969, Vincent Leonard Smith and others who were denied access to the YMCA facility filed a case with the District Court, asking the court to prohibit the YMCA from racial discrimination in administration of its recreation programs.

Mary Louise Smith had experience in civil rights activism. Two months before Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to relinquish her seat to a White man on a bus, setting off the boycott of the bus system in Montgomery, Mary Louise Smith was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery. ¹⁴¹ Smith was charged with failure to obey segregation orders and given a nine-dollar fine. ¹⁴² Civil rights leaders considered staging the Bus Boycott in response to her arrest, but decided against it because she came from a poor family and they believed (incorrectly, according to Smith) that her father was an alcoholic and that would be used against the boycott. ¹⁴³

By the time the Smith family filed the lawsuit against the YMCA, the Civil Rights Act had been passed in 1964 which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. ¹⁴⁴ Many cities in the South, however, especially in their recreation programs, sought to circumvent the Civil Rights Act by transferring public facilities to private clubs, as Wolcott writes, “the Civil Rights Act had an uneven impact on public accommodations . . . many recreational facilities could either become private clubs to avoid the law or claim that Title II did not cover them.” ¹⁴⁵ Transferring recreation programs to private organizations was a common tactic, used in cities such as Little Rock, Arkansas, Fairfax County, Virginia, Memphis, Tennessee, ¹⁴⁶ and Montgomery, Alabama.

The argument that private organizations running public recreation facilities were exempt from constitutional violations was not always successful in court, however. Courts sometimes decided that when a city permitted a private entity to perform a city function, the private entity became subject to the constitutional limitations placed on the state actions. ¹⁴⁷ The significance of these cases meant that YMCA would have to present another argument instead of solely relying on the private club argument. The Montgomery YMCA presented two arguments: first, that the segregation at its branches was due to housing patterns and not a segregation policy, and second, that the YMCA was a private organization and not subject to constitutional limitations or the Civil Rights Act.

During the hearing, the YMCA argued that its segregated branches and recreation programs were not the result of purposeful discrimination; rather, they resulted from residential housing patterns and the personal preferences of people to associate with those of their own race. ¹⁴⁸ The Smith sisters and their lawyers successfully countered this claim by presenting evidence that the housing patterns did not match up to the segregated facilities at the YMCA branches. YMCA operated five branches, with four of them being entirely White and one of them being almost entirely African American. The branch that was located in a racially mixed residential area had entirely White membership. The citywide camps operated by the YMCA had never had an African American participant. The court also found that every African American school in Montgomery was assigned to the Cleveland Avenue YMCA branch (the only African American branch), even though some schools were located closer to White YMCA branches. Therefore, the court concluded, the racial segregation of its activities and branches could not be entirely explained by housing patterns and personal social preferences. ¹⁴⁹

The YMCA also argued that the prohibitions of the Fourteenth Amendment against racial discrimination do not apply to it because it is a private organization. The court noted that although the YMCA is a private organization, they operate with state participation that is sufficient to transform private conduct into state action. For example, the State of Alabama had provided tax exempt status to the YMCA. Also, the cooperative agreement that the YMCA entered into with the Montgomery Parks and Recreation Department resulted in substantial impacts on the number and types of programs offered by the YMCA. The YMCA was also given free use of city parks, playgrounds, and lighting equipment for athletic events, and free water for swimming pools, and the YMCA had grown substantially after entering into the cooperative agreement. ¹⁵⁰ Importantly, the court noted that the YMCA, through the cooperative agreement with the city, was performing a statutorily declared public function, and the city transferred some of its statutory responsibility to the YMCA. ¹⁵¹

The court concluded that the cooperative agreement was part of an effort to avoid desegregating the parks, “An analysis of the historical context which prompted the establishment of the cooperative agreement makes it unmistakably clear that its purpose was to circumvent the Supreme Court’s and this Court’s desegregation rulings in the area of public recreation.” ¹⁵² According to the Court, the effect of the committee was more segregation in the city, “the effect of this agreement has been the perpetuation of segregated recreational facilities and programs in the City of Montgomery.” ¹⁵³ Therefore, the Court concluded, segregation of the YMCA facilities and activities violated the Fourteenth Amendment. ¹⁵⁴

The YMCA also argued that it was exempt from the Civil Rights Act, which did not apply to private clubs or other establishments not open to the public. However, the court also disagreed with that argument, noting that the YMCA does not operate like a private club because it puts almost no limits on its membership, membership is open to any person, and they do not have any self-government, member-ownership rules, or bylaws. ¹⁵⁵ Therefore, the court found that the YMCA was not a private club, and was instead a “place of public accommodation” as defined by the Civil Rights Act, and must comply with the Act. This was consistent with other recent segregation decisions when cities claimed that they were exempt from the Civil Rights Act and constitutional violations because they had admonished their park responsibilities to private entities. ¹⁵⁶

The court found that the Montgomery YMCA engaged in racial discrimination, violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1964. It prohibited the YMCA from (1) denying membership to the YMCA based on race, (2) constructing new branches or facilities that may tend to perpetuate the past policies and practices of racial segregation, (3) recruiting participants for programs or activities at predominantly White schools unless the same is done at predominately African American schools, and (4) excluding membership on the Board of Directors based on race. The court ordered the YMCA to desegregate its programs and activities within 30 days, to revise its publications to include a statement that its programs and activities are open to people of all races, and to submit a plan to the court within 30 days detailing how it has desegregated its activities, including school programs and membership, and membership on its Board of Directors and other governing bodies. ¹⁵⁷

The connection of the Smith case to school desegregation makes an important point about how public officials sought to use park segregation to maintain school segregation and segregated athletic facilities, after school desegregation orders in Montgomery. The court noted that the YMCA was operating a football program for elementary school children in two if its White branches (East and South branch YMCA) and its one African American branch (Cleveland Avenue branch). The football program was open to all schoolchildren in the city, and each school was assigned to a branch to play football. Although the schools were under a desegregation order, they were still predominantly segregated, and every White school was assigned to the South or East branch YMCAs and every African American school was assigned to the Cleveland Avenue branch, despite the fact that some were closer to the East and South branches. During the local football playoff games, the South and East branch teams were assigned to play games at Cramton Bowl, a municipal field owned by the city, and the teams from the Cleveland Avenue Branch were assigned to play at Alabama State University.

Alabama public officials were still resisting school integration, though a few African American children had enrolled in White schools by then. ¹⁵⁸ School athletic programs, however, were not integrated until April 1968 (two years before the Smith decision), when Judge Johnson ordered the two separate athletic programs for Alabama public schools integrated. ¹⁵⁹ According to Bagley, the negotiations to merge the two athletic programs were particularly tense:

[a negotiator] argued that it would “kill” high school athletics, because formerly all-White schools would eliminate their athletics programs rather than play Black schools . . . “blood would flow” if any of these “clashes of races” ever took place, especially if Black teams started running roughshod over White teams. ¹⁶⁰

For the City of Montgomery, transferring control of its football program to the YMCA was perhaps an effort to avoid integration of both schools and athletic programs. ¹⁶¹

On August 18, 1970, the YMCA of Montgomery filed its plan to eliminate segregated memberships and activities, following the Smith court order. The parties in the Smith case also filed their response and objections to the plan. The District Court found most of the plan constitutionally unacceptable, since it failed to adequately inform the citizens of Montgomery about the YMCAs new nondiscrimination policies, permitted the YMCA to continue to operate some activities on a segregated basis, and afforded African Americans only token positions on the Board of Directors. ¹⁶² The court issued an order immediately requiring a desegregation plan. The YMCA appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, largely agreeing with the lower court, issued its decision on June 14, 1972.

The appeal centered on two procedural questions, three questions about the findings and conclusions made by the lower court, and four points of disagreement with the desegregation order and plan. The appeals court disagreed with all of the YMCAs contentions, except one—it would not permit affirmative action to ensure African American representation on the YMCA Board of Directors. ¹⁶³ The court modified the lower court’s decision to remove the requirement that the YMCA Board of Directors have a fixed ratio of African American members that corresponds with the racial composition of the city. The court found that since 70 out of 285 voting members of the YMCA of Montgomery were African American, a real possibility existed to have African American people elected to the Board of Directors, without the court order. ¹⁶⁴

Gilmore v. Montgomery is Reopened

In 1970, while the Smith case was pending appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals (see above), the original parties in the Gilmore case reopened their case, relying on the Smith v. YMCA decision. ¹⁶⁵ The group, represented by attorneys Solomon Seay and Morris Dees, asked the U.S. District Court to hold the city in contempt for failing to end the racial segregation at Montgomery Parks under the 1959 desegregation order. ¹⁶⁶ The group sought to get the swimming pools restored in Oak Park, ¹⁶⁷ since segregated YMCA pools continued to be the main place where people could swim in the city. ¹⁶⁸ Swimming pools had always been a sensitive issue in desegregation. The idea of desegregated swimming pools and beaches brought up fears of racial mixing because the sexual revolution and smaller bathing suit fashions coincided with the Civil Rights Movement. ¹⁶⁹

The group claimed that there was a coordinated effort between the City of Montgomery and the Montgomery YMCA to circumvent the court desegregation order for the parks. The case was settled by an agreement on January 29, 1971. The agreement was aimed at providing equal recreation facilities for African Americans in Montgomery and specified the construction of new recreation facilities and improvements to existing facilities in African American neighborhoods. The City also agreed to maintain facilities on an equal basis. Under the agreement, the city was required to submit written progress reports to the District Court every six months. ¹⁷⁰ The first written progress report was filed on July 29, 1971. ¹⁷¹

Gilmore et al. Seek to Stop Segregated Schools from Exclusively Using Parks

On September 8, 1971, the original group of eight African American people again filed a lawsuit in the District Court, claiming that the city was allowing private segregated schools and groups to use parks and recreation facilities. ¹⁷² The case underscores the important link between segregated parks and schools, and came just after the rise in enrollment in segregated private schools, following school desegregation court orders in Alabama. The number of segregated private schools almost doubled in the South between 1969 and 1970. ¹⁷³ In 1965, there were 34 “segregation academies” ¹⁷⁴ in Alabama, and most of those were established just after the Brown decision. By 1970 there were 109. ¹⁷⁵ The number of children attending private schools in Alabama increased from 39,524 in the 1968-1969 academic year to 68,123 in 1970-1971, a 72 percent increase. ¹⁷⁶

The case relied again on the Smith v. YMCA decision. ¹⁷⁷ Gilmore claimed that the city was permitting racially segregated schools and other segregated private groups and clubs to use public recreation facilities. Because schools were involved, and the City was under a court order to desegregate its schools, Gilmore was able to present new arguments and rely on school desegregation case law, including Brown v. Board of Education. ¹⁷⁸ The group also claimed that some of the parks in Montgomery had been reopened in such a manner to avoid full integration; that the city had conspired with the YMCA of Montgomery to segregate swimming pools and other recreation programs; that parks and recreation facilities were unequally distributed between White and African American neighborhoods; and that the city was discriminating in its employment practices for parks and recreation programs.

On January 18, 1972, the District Court issued its decision prohibiting the City from allowing the use of city parks and recreational facilities by racially segregated groups and schools. The court reasoned that because the city was under a court order to desegregate the public school system, providing recreational facilities for segregated private schools was inconsistent with that order, since it enhanced the attractiveness of those schools and generated financial savings for them. The court decision also went a step further and prohibited the City from allowing the use of parks and recreation facilities by any private segregated group—even those that were not affiliated with a private school.

The City of Montgomery filed an appeal, seeking to reverse the decision by the District Court. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed part of the District Court’s decision, holding that the city could permit segregated schools to use their public recreational facilities as long as their use was ‘nonexclusive’—used by segregated schools as well as the rest of the public. ¹⁷⁹ The court also reversed the lower court’s decision that banned the use of park and recreation facilities by groups that were not affiliated with schools. ¹⁸⁰

Gilmore petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for review of the decision and the court granted review on October 15, 1973. Two questions were presented to the court: first, whether a governmental body may permit organized, program-oriented use of public recreational facilities by private segregated academies, or if such use amounts to a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment; and second, whether a governmental body may permit the organized use of public recreational facilities by private clubs or groups which have a policy of racial segregation. ¹⁸¹

The Court saw little difference between the city’s 1957 segregation ordinance, the segregated recreation programs through the YMCA, and the practice of allowing segregated schools to use park facilities, it wrote:

Instead of prompt and orderly compliance with the District Court’s mandate, however, the City of Montgomery engaged in an elaborate subterfuge to anticipate and circumvent the court’s order. Segregated recreational programs continued to be presented through the conveniently cooperating private agency of the local YMCA. All public swimming pools were closed allegedly to prevent the mixing of races. Facilities in Negro neighborhoods were not maintained equally with those in White neighborhoods . . . the exclusive use and control of city recreational facilities, however temporary, by private segregated schools were little different that the city’s agreement with the YMCA to run a “coordinated” but, in effect, segregated recreational program. Such use and control carried the brand of “separate but equal.” ¹⁸²

The court wrote that it was particularly important that city’s policies operated directly contravene to a school desegregation order, which was still in effect. ¹⁸³ The court noted that the city’s actions enhanced the attractiveness of segregated private schools, which were formed in reaction to the federal desegregation order, by enabling them to offer more complete and attractive athletic programs. The practice also afforded those schools a capital savings and enabled them to divert funds that would be used on recreation and athletic programs into other opportunities for the school. ¹⁸⁴

In a 5-4 decision, the Court agreed with the Appeals Court’s order prohibiting the City of Montgomery from allowing exclusive use of parks and recreation facilities by segregated private schools. However, it did not make a conclusion about if nonexclusive use of parks and recreational facilities by all-White segregated schools involved a state action, which would warrant intervention by the courts, because there had not been enough findings at the lower court level. ¹⁸⁵

Conclusion

The fight to desegregate parks in Montgomery is an important missing piece in the narrative of civil rights history in the South. The cases are significant because of their interrelatedness to other major civil rights victories in Montgomery. Many of the activists who fought to desegregate parks in Montgomery were involved in the Bus Boycott and other civil rights activities. The timing of the park desegregation case—just after the Bus Boycott ended—came at a time when African Americans were united in Montgomery and had just won an important victory in desegregating busses in the city. The timing of the Smith cases and the transfer of park responsibilities to the YMCA coincided with school and school athletic program desegregation efforts. Therefore, the cases demonstrate how segregationists used all aspects of city governance and planning as a coordinated attack on efforts to integrate.

The cases are also important in the narrative of legal history of civil rights, especially the history of cases decided by Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. Judge Johnson presided over the District Court in Montgomery during the most tumultuous years in Alabama civil rights history. He invalidated segregation and racial discrimination in transportation, voter registration, schools, colleges, administrative agencies, jury selection, prisons, mental health institutions, museums, recreational facilities, property taxes, political parties, and government funding. ¹⁸⁶ He ruled in favor of the activists who staged the Bus Boycott in 1956, he ruled against the City of Montgomery and the Ku Klux Klan in a case involving the Freedom Riders in 1961, and he ruled in favor of the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965. He also desegregated public parks in the Gilmore and Smith cases.

The park desegregation cases in Montgomery had many similarities with other Southern park desegregation cases, so it helps establish a pattern. The idea of waging longstanding battles to maintain segregation well into the 1970s was common in Montgomery. Montgomery city officials during the Jim Crow era were committed to defending segregation, and frequently fought long-lasting campaigns, even as overwhelming judicial rulings and precedent mounted against them. When they lost court cases they created other methods of segregation. ¹⁸⁷ When asked why Montgomery public officials tried to keep parks segregated for so long, Morris Dees answered that fighting long and hard to maintain segregation was typical in Montgomery:

The City tried to stop desegregation in every aspect of its operations. The City Library removed tables to keep Blacks from sitting next to Whites. The Park rules were to keep things totally segregated. The parks were all closed and most sold to entities for non-recreational activities. ¹⁸⁸

The idea of closing the parks to maintain segregation was also common in Southern cities. Wolcott documents many instances of city officials closing pools, playgrounds, parks, and golf courses following desegregation orders. ¹⁸⁹ For example, Greensboro, North Carolina, sold a public pool in 1956, after a group of African Americans sought to desegregate the facility. ¹⁹⁰ Pools and parks were also closed in Lynchburg, Virginia; Nashville, Tennessee; Jackson, Mississippi; and many other cities throughout the South. ¹⁹¹ In Birmingham, Alabama, park facilities that were targeted for integration were immediately closed, and the budget for the park department was reduced by 80 percent. ¹⁹²

Another commonality between the Montgomery cases and other desegregation cases in the South was that city officials and segregationists also fought hard to keep parks segregated because Southern White people were fearful of racial mixing in intimate environments such as playgrounds and pools, especially among children and women. As Wolcott notes, swimming was a sensitive segregation issue for Southern Whites: “Swimming pools . . . continued to serve as central battlegrounds in the legal and physical war over coveted recreation. As Baltimore’s Judge Thompson had intoned in 1954, swimming was ‘more sensitive than schools.’” ¹⁹³

Another reason for the longstanding fight to maintain segregation in parks was because of their connection to segregation in schools. After the Brown v. Board of Education ¹⁹⁴ decision, and subsequent school desegregation orders in Montgomery, city officials were looking for other ways to maintain school segregation, and used parks to perpetuate a segregated school system after courts forced desegregation in the Montgomery Public Schools. They made segregated private schools more attractive by allowing them to use public parks. The private schools, in turn, saved money and didn’t need to build athletic facilities. After Montgomery city officials were forced by the courts to integrate public schools, they dug in their heels for segregating parks and pools even further.

Despite its importance, desegregation of parks in Montgomery is relatively unknown because the fight was mostly waged in courtrooms—not in public space, and because most of the activists were African American women. Many of the well-known events in Montgomery during the Civil Rights Movement had photogenic end points, though the key issues remained far beyond those dates. For example, the day after the courts decided that bus segregation was unconstitutional, newspapers photographed Rosa Parks sitting in the front of a city bus. The Selma to Montgomery March ended at the capitol steps in Montgomery and was on the front page of newspapers nationwide. On the contrary, the park desegregation battle was waged over sixteen years through multiple court cases, and didn’t have a photogenic end point, so it was not covered in national newspapers. Also, it was eventually decided in 1974, after most major civil rights events took place, when Southern civil rights were no longer the major news story in America.

Another reason that the case is relatively obscure is because many of the activists were women—mothers who wanted to assure access to city parks for their children and families in their neighborhoods—not well-known pastors and male civil rights leaders. Researchers have noted a dearth of research on notoriety of women civil rights activists, as one author notes:

The invisibility of modern Black women leaders and activists is in part a result of gender, race, and class biases prevalent in both the social movement literature and feminist scholarship . . . Most of the leadership recognition and pioneering research covering the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, in particular, has concentrated on the leading roles and charisma of elite male professionals within the Black community, such as ministers. ¹⁹⁵

While the lawyers for the cases became well-known for their legal work in Civil Rights, ¹⁹⁶ that notoriety came later. As Morris Dees recalls, he was not a well-known lawyer at the time, and it was before he cofounded the Southern Poverty Law Center. ¹⁹⁷ Smith v. YMCA ¹⁹⁸ was his first civil rights case, “I filed that suit in 1969 when I . . . had little legal experience. It was my first complicated civil rights case.” ¹⁹⁹ Dees notes that the case did get him into some personal trouble:

I am not sure why the Montgomery City parks desegregation cases did not get a lot of national publicity. It could be that other cities were doing the same thing. I do know it got me into a lot of hot water with the White authorities who did their best, without success, to take my law license. ²⁰⁰

Another important conclusion is that although the activists did eventually desegregate parks in Montgomery, it was a long-fought and short-lived victory. By the 1970s, White flight had already begun to change the city. As White people fled to the suburbs, integrated parks in the city became predominately African American anyway because of the new racial composition of the city. By 1970, local newspapers were reporting a “drastic turnover in housing” in White Montgomery neighborhoods. ²⁰¹ Just as the integration of urban parks has been credited for contributing to White flight across the country, ²⁰² park desegregation contributed to White flight in Montgomery.

Today, Montgomery public schools are among the most segregated in the state. In 2010, the White population of Montgomery was 37 percent, while the public school system was over 90 percent African American. The private schools in Montgomery are primarily White, as Bagley points out, in 2010 Montgomery Academy had 27 African American students out of 819, St. James school had 49 African American students out of 996 total students, Trinity Presbyterian had one African American student out of 906 total. On the contrary, Bagley notes, Harrison Elementary, the first White public school in Alabama that African American students tried to desegregate in 1954 (see above) had 229 African American students and one White student in 2010. ²⁰³

Going forward, the City of Montgomery should confront its history of park segregation. Confronting the history of segregation of parks could help work toward justice and healing, as Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative Director Bryan Stevenson writes:

Our nation’s history of racial injustice casts a shadow across the American Landscape . . . This shadow cannot be lifted until we shine the light of truth on the destructive violence that shaped our nation, traumatized people of color, and compromised our commitment to the rule of law and to equal justice. ²⁰⁴

The City of Montgomery could begin confronting this history by publicizing the story of park desegregation. The names of most of the eight activists who persisted through the many court cases and legal proceedings won’t show up in an Internet or library search. Most of their homes don’t have a historical marker in front of them, and one that does—Georgia Gilmore’s home—doesn’t mention her effort to desegregate the parks. The only indication of the desegregation battle in Oak Park today is an entrance sign that doesn’t mention segregation: “Oak Park was closed and largely dismantled in 1959 following a Federal Court finding City recreational policies to be unconstitutional.” ²⁰⁵ The Montgomery Parks and Recreation website includes only a brief mention of closing the parks in 1959, and their reopening in 1965, with a four-paragraph synopsis of the segregation battle that does not mention any of the activists (it does mention Judge Johnson), the YMCA, the link to school segregation, or many of the details of the story. The synopsis ends with “On February 24, 1965 the City Commission voted to reopen the parks and playgrounds throughout the city to all races” ²⁰⁶ and doesn’t mention that the fight to desegregate parks in Montgomery wasn’t settled until 1974.

Despite its lack of notoriety, however, the struggle to desegregate Oak Park was an important effort to end segregation in the South. Starting with Mark Gilmore’s arrest for entering Oak Park in 1957, and concluding with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 1973, the battle spanned three decades and lasted sixteen years. Montgomery and Alabama residents owe a great debt of gratitude to Georgia Theresa Gilmore, Gussie Carlton, Sylvia Johnson, J. C. Smith, Mattie Cargill, Fred Harris, George Stephens, Elizabeth Brown, Annie Ruth Smith, Mary Louise Smith, Morris Dees, Solomon Seay, Robert Carter, and Judge Frank Johnson Jr., for freeing parks in Montgomery.