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On Mr. Rogers, Officer Clemmons, and why soaking their feet together on national television was a powerful act of antiracism in 1969. https://twitter.com/ErickFernandez/status/1316921618841612294?s=20
When PBS aired the episode of Fred Rogers and François Clemmons bathing together on national television in 1969, US pools had been legally desegregated for only five years.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act banned discrimination at the workplace and public places, including swimming pools, which had been scenes of white mob violence against Black people for decades.
These attacks occurred in both the North and the South. On August 21, 1931, hundreds of white youths dragged about 40 Black swimmers out of the new Highland Park pool in Pittsburgh and brutally attacked them. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1931/08/21/102256533.html?action=click&contentCollection=Archives&module=LedeAsset®ion=ArchiveBody&pgtype=article&pageNumber=6
Pools and beaches remained segregated and were sites for white mob violence against Black people, including in St. Louis in 1949, where approximately 200 white teenagers with baseball bats attacked fifty young Black people swimming in a local pool. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1949/06/22/84216316.html?pageNumber=56
In 1964 MLK and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, as part of their civil rights campaign, initiated a series of marches and sit-ins to protest segregation, including in pools, in St. Augustine, Florida.
On August June 18, 1964 protesters participated in a "dive-in" to protest pool segregation at the Monson Motor Lodge. The motel manager, James Brock, poured muriatic acid into pool to force them out.
Police officers then forced the protesters out of the pool and beat them. MLK described it as " ... raw police brutality,” he said. “Cattle prods were used on our demonstrators and people were actually beaten.” https://www.nytimes.com/1964/06/19/archives/16-rabbis-arrested-as-pool-divein-sets-off-st-augustine-rights.html
It was only five years after police beat peaceful Black protesters for swimming in a segregated pool that Fred Rogers used his nationally broadcast television show to make a powerful statement of racial equality, showing himself and François Clemmons bathing together, as equals
n 1993, Fred and Francois reprised their scene together, and Francois shared a beautiful rendition of his song, "There are many ways to say I love you."
