All signs are that Natchez and Adams County will soon build a new community swimming pool — regardless of the lack of logic or reason to do so.

Last week City of Natchez leaders heard the latest proposal from the Natchez-Adams County Recreation Commission and representatives from Magnolia Bluffs Casino Community Development Board.

After years of talking, planning, non-binding referendums and more talk, Natchez and Adams County are jointly poised to finally do something on recreation, but instead of a comprehensive, multi-phase plan, the option on the table is to build an expensive swimming pool — and two soccer fields.

For the supporters of truly bringing Natchez’s recreation facilities out of the 1950s, the move is mostly a disappointment. It’s also a move that puts one of the most expensive projects in a comprehensive recreation development first up for construction. But this is Natchez, and we often do things in illogical order.

The swimming pool issue seems to have become an intersection of politics and, to a degree, race as well.

Let’s delve into the black and white issue first.

Natchez hasn’t had a truly public swimming pool since around 2001 when the city closed the pool at Duncan Park after years of battling maintenance issues and swarms of children at times.

Since it’s closure a number of residents, a high proportion of which are black, have complained about a lack of a public pool.

Ironically, Natchez has another public pool in the basement of the senior center located on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. and Washington streets. Apparently, however, highly restrictive hours cause many would-be swimmers to simply go without.

The racial aspects of the pool issue are very much unspoken publicly, but very palpable in private.

Many blacks view the Duncan Park pool’s closure as simply a slap in their faces. Toward the end of its life, the Duncan Park pool patrons were more black than white, as least from what I can recall.

So when it closed, many black residents viewed it as the city simply not wanting to provide a recreation avenue that was mostly used by people of color.

Knowing whether or not race was a factor in the decision to close the pool is difficult at best.

Politically, at least, closing the pool was not popular so the politicians who did so would have had to have a pretty staunch underlying racist bend to do so.

More likely they truly just got tired to pouring taxpayer cash into the pool’s drain — many homeowners with built-in swimming pools can relate.

As the old phrase goes, swimming pools are holes in the ground in which you throw money into, meaning keeping one running, particularly a really old one like the Duncan Park Pool, can be costly.

Our children — red, yellow, black and white, as the song goes — do deserve a nice pool in which to learn to swim and have fun.

But that pool shouldn’t be built out of racial pressure or political pressure by elected leaders who would like nothing better than to make a large group of constituents happy by finally “doing something” about recreation.

What we really need to do about recreation is realize two things.

First, if the community truly works together and gets behind a joint city-county recreation project, we could have an amazingly high-quality facility. Many municipalities that are tiny compared to Natchez have managed to invest in really nice facilities. Across the river, the City of Vidalia has nicer ballparks than any in Natchez.

Second, such a facility has the potential to bring together diverse segments of the community, including all races, all classes, etc. For far too long our community has been divided — sometimes self-segregated — by race. The success of the Natchez Trails project shows that recreation can truly bring people together. The Trails are regularly utilized by black, white, rich, poor, young and old.

Natchez must take recreation seriously and build a truly comprehensive plan. Opting to simply accept what is politically advantageous in the moment isn’t wise long term.

 

Kevin Cooper is publisher of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3539 or kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com.