Why do most Metro Nashville pools close in July instead of Labor Day?

Memorial to Labor Day typically bookend summer — and with it, outdoor swimming.  

Even though temperatures in Nashville are still hovering in the 80s, most of the city’s pools are already closed. It’s been that way for at least the last 25 years.

During the two months it’s open, these three community center pools are a free place for mostly Black kids to have a ball.

“Majority of the pool time is used by some enrichment program. So each of those sites typically run 120 kids,” says Stevon Neloms, Metro Parks’ assistant director of the community recreation division.

All city pools both indoor and out are free to the public. But only Looby, Cleveland and Rose Park community centers have outdoor pools.

Jackie Jones, who runs community affairs, says the only city-operated pool that’s open through Labor Day is Wave Country. Why is that?

“Well, the Wave Country, that is at the admission-based facility,” she tells WPLN News. Jones says Wave Country is in higher demand. Plus, a lot of the lifeguards at the community centers have to go back to school.

For Williamson and Rutherford counties, outdoor pools stay open through Labor Day, but you have to pay to get in.

Metro Parks in 1961 responded to two Black men wanting to swim at Centennial Park with racism by closing all its pools. After the Civil Rights Movement, it never re-opened.

While city governments were filling in outdoor pools, affluent white people were paying to keep their private ones open.

Victoria Wolcott, a history professor at the University at Buffalo – SUNY, talks about the lasting impact this has had on public spaces.

“Swimming and access to other forms of recreation is just part of having a full life, right?” she says. “I mean, having the ability to play, having the ability to enjoy your body, your friends, right? All of that is part of being fully human.”

Wolcott says city governments like Nashville started privatizing some services in the 1970s and that’s created more barriers to play.

The city’s public pool Wave Country is open if you pay until Monday.

Ambriehl Crutchfield WPLN News

A sign outside the closed and emptied Looby Community Center pool reads “No swimming without a lifeguard on duty.”