What would our children think of us?
Ryan, James T.
WHAT WOULD OUR CHILDREN THINK OF US? THE FORBIDDEN WATERS OF LANSDOWNE JAMES T. RYAN In 1981, our family moved to Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, a small town of some 10,000 people, twenty-five minutes...
...By the time I returned to my office, fifty feet away, a news reporter was on the phone...
...Our decision to try to integrate the club was not made lightly...
...These members organized a petition drive to force a special meeting to discuss the issue...
...At that time, 90 percent of the voting members had to vote "yes" in order to admit an applicant...
...Their strong show of sympathy fueled our hope...
...This board member later testified in court that he voted against our membership...
...Still on hold is the whole other court action of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission against the club...
...Many of our group are Catholics...
...We were given a copy of the pool rules, had our application looked over, and paid our dues...
...We went through the normal admission procedures, writing a letter asking to join, filling out an application, and getting two references...
...picket lines in Lansdowne are like landings on Mars...
...The thing that still puzzles me, my wife, maybe my children, and others is the question of why, at this late date, this long process was necessary...
...Once, we were later told, a club official insisted that sleeping children be wakened so he could see them...
...It was the Attorney General of the United States...
...We launched our campaign by outlining a strategy and forming the Committee to Integrate the Lansdowne Swim Club...
...The Philadelphia media were especially cooperative because my boss, Henry Nicholas, is president of 1199...
...On the other hand, none of us could stand the picture of a small group of racists savoring their victory...
...local officials all refused...
...The director said that there had been a good turnout...
...I sent them all the news clippings and started to dig out the specifics on what the pool had been doing for the last twenty-five years...
...The call was a mistake...
...More recently, with overt racism no longer socially acceptable, the club did its discriminating silently, but no less effectively, and cited its "private" status as a defense...
...The Justice Department argues that the club's only private aspect is that blacks are excluded, and that its "private" status is a ruse to mask racial discrimination...
...the commission's legal counsel had changed...
...We heard nothing, and after a few weeks I called to inquire...
...My wife and I are white...
...All of us wanted out...
...The week of Memorial Day, May 1984, we received the news that we had been rejected by the club...
...THE FORBIDDEN WATERS OF LANSDOWNE JAMES T. RYAN In 1981, our family moved to Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, a small town of some 10,000 people, twenty-five minutes west of Philadelphia...
...We had only to await the vote...
...We outlined an agenda that would emphasize the moral dilemma facing Lansdowne...
...We also received endorsements from several national figures: Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Ed Asner, and Kurt Vonnegut...
...Other unions present offered to match Nicholas's gift...
...Our message to the press was that we were happy that the issue was out of the courts: racism was not really a legal issue but a moral issue...
...Law Keeps Racial Bigots Afloat" was the headline of an opinion column in the News of Delaware County...
...He was a union member, belonging to the same local as my father-in-law and brother-in-law, and an Irish Catholic, pillar-of-the-church...
...So in 1984 we decided to apply...
...He was a Democrat in a very Republican town...
...The legal system, though slower and more ponderous, proved to be more helpful than the churches...
...I let Nicholas know I was taking on an extracurricular activity that might be very public...
...Congressman Bob Edgar endorsed our efforts, despite the obvious risk of losing votes...
...Democratic U.S...
...His reason, he said, had something to do with our children's dress...
...The club promised cooperation in the commission's investigation, but when asked for its records, they refused and appealed the subpoena order...
...For me the clinching question was: As they grew up, what would our children think of us if we silently tolerated racism against them...
...Meanwhile, our Committee to Integrate the Lansdowne Swim Club continued to look for support, contacting the Borough Council (most of whom were pool members) to ask for an ordinance banning racial discrimination...
...one of the signers was the pastor of our home parish, St...
...The press reaction was staggering...
...After several years of maneuvering and discussion, the commission declined to proceed because the "private" pool was-deemed outside its jurisdiction...
...She had filed a complaint with the Human Relations Commission in 1976...
...Our oldest daughter, Maria, Puerto Rican, was five years old at the time...
...The Justice Department expects to win, and has already said it will appeal a loss...
...I was interviewing a student in my office late one afternoon when someone came to the door and held up the evening paper...
...The pool had a selective admission policy and it was no secret...
...So we called a press conference and announced victory...
...The commission staff sent a letter to all the priests in a dozen parishes in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, inviting them to discuss the issue at a special meeting...
...Financially, the pool could not function if Catholics were ever to withdraw...
...Picket lines are generally good media events...
...It is now 1989...
...The commission's involvement stopped completely...
...It remains for the trial judge to decide whether it is public in nature and, therefore, subject to federal law...
...At least we had soundly defeated the pool in their attempt to put the issue to rest...
...The director wrote to the pool's board members, calling for a change in policy...
...We told him we wanted ti join the club though we were aware of the club's admission history: no family with a black member had ever been knowingly admitted...
...Justice Department had filed suit against the Lansdowne Swim Club for violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act...
...Maria is nine, the twins are seven...
...So we made a special effort to draw in church officials...
...We met with the executive director of the Cardinal's Commission on Human Relations and several members of his staff...
...Virtually all cases of this sort are settled out of court...
...Still, it was clear: For the last eight years, every white applicant had been accepted and every black applicant had been rejected...
...We weighed the pros and cons for ourselves and our children...
...Our picketing of the LSC was front-page news in the local papers...
...As far as we know, however, the issue was never raised formally at any religious service except by the Quakers, though one Sunday at Mass I heard a vague reference to the situation in the Prayer of the Faithful...
...That spring, we were visited and interviewed by a member of the admissions committee...
...The story said that the U.S...
...The evidence against the club was substantial...
...One of our earliest hopes was that the churches would play a major role in framing the morality of the issue...
...Oral arguments were heard in the Federal District Court in the fall of 1988...
...An old union friend phoned to say he had seen a brief news item announcing a federal court order to integrate a pool in Missouri...
...That struck me as flimsy...
...Not long after, we heard about the Lansdowne Swim Club (LSC), built twenty-five years earlier by a group of local residents...
...We were crushed...
...We are neither professional agitators nor rank amateurs...
...The Delaware County Daily Times ran several news articles and an opinion piece, followed by a stinging editorial...
...Since I did not want to mousetrap or appear to ensnare the club, I called a club board member who we believed would be sympathetic...
...Responding to our request, they met and issued a very strong letter of support, which they sent to the pool officials and to the local press...
...In fact, some of the Justice Department lawyers had never actually seen a case go to trial...
...Early on, one of our sponsors seemed to have second thoughts and called to say maybe it would not be a good idea to sponsor us after all...
...Our activist friends argued that the previous decision had not set a legal precedent...
...The '' villains'' of this story are our three adopted children...
...It was no longer a handful of disgruntled swimmers...
...Friends with long experience in civil-rights cases urged us to approach the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission...
...During the summer of 1984, we received help from some members of the LSC itself...
...On the meeting night, the LSC reformers were stunned...
...There was significant risk in the legal approach...
...Ramon and Teresa are twins of mixed Chicano and black ancestry...
...When the appeal was denied, the Club filed a second appeal with the Commonwealth Court...
...In addition, there were numerous instances of applications from blacks being "lost" or "never received...
...There they won a narrow, precedent-setting victory, overturning the decision of the Commonwealth Court judge-an unprecedented event in his eighteen years on the bench...
...If we lost a legal case, the pool officials would use a court victory as vindication...
...What convinced us to go to the commission was the value of having someone else in the battle, some public agency to whom the pool would have to account for its actions...
...We knew what an attempt to integrate the pool would cost us...
...Philomena's...
...Ironically, the legal case did not die...
...The pool had accepted one white woman who had an interracial child, but the child appeared to be white, according to club testimony, and, apparently, most people were not aware that he was not totally white...
...The club has been discredited and its history of racism publicly documented...
...and there was reason to believe the new staff would consider the previous decision a mistake...
...On January 31, 1986, the judge ruled that the commission had no jurisdiction and denied the subpoena order...
...We filed a complaint in July 1984...
...Catholics are also a significant segment of the pool membership...
...Thanks to Vargas, the tide had clearly turned...
...Then, there were several months of silence before the lawyer called again to say that a third lawyer, Manny Vargas, would come to Philadelphia to conduct his own investigation...
...But our letter to the pool had already been mailed...
...Technically, the case is not over...
...The visit was the pool's device for making sure no blacks were sneaking into the club...
...we wanted to en-list the support of the churches, the unions, and any pool members who could be won over...
...We needed publicity...
...No one ever responded...
...Seeking endorsements, we approached several politicians...
...The Human Relations Commission appealed the Commonwealth Court's decision to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court...
...Club officials described going door to door to recruit new members, avoiding areas where blacks lived...
...Half the front page was a picture of our children...
...One of them, Dale Allison, a white nurse married to a black physician, had fought a lonely battle, applying to the pool three times after her first rejection...
...Some religious leaders, especially from Jewish groups, also wrote to the pool committee supporting us, copies to newspapers...
...Henry Nicholas spoke at the press conference, emphasizing the importance of the union to our struggle and then made the offer of financial support...
...I called the Justice Department attorney who had directed the Missouri case, who questioned me sharply, was noncommittal, but said someone would follow up...
...A second attorney called and asked endless questions...
...Nicholas had alerted her...
...Club officials had mobilized an overwhelming turnout...
...Philadelphia politicians were generous in their support...
...We said we were looking for a quiet solution, but we would not disappear if we were rejected...
...They have not yet been allowed to swim in the pool nearest to our home...
...They said they referred any blacks who expressed an interest to a neighboring, predominantly black swim club (started because blacks could not get into any other club in town...
...There was general agreement that the problem was widespread, but the clergy thought it would do more harm than good to raise the issue or do anything about it...
...Dormant members, whom regular swimmers had never seen, drowned out the reformers...
...According to the director, they convened so many priests because they had received similar complaints about other pools in the county and presumed that racial discrimination was common...
...After the publicity surrounding our picketing, several previously rejected pool applicants came looking for us...
...Some club officials had already seen our children, however, so the visit was perfunctory...
...Old records were missing, destroyed in a mysterious fire that occurred during the Human Relations Commission's investigation...
...The pressure for integration seems inexorable...
...The Lans-downe Ministerium is a forum for most of the local church leaders...
...But, after another year of filing depositions, setting and postponing trial dates, and other legal maneuvers, in June, 1988, the trial actually took place-four years after we had first applied to the club...
...Our war-weary group met to consider the options...
...Why, then, should we go the same route and face the same defeat...
...Besides, we really did want to swim in our own town...
...we both have experience and training with the United Farm Workers, and I work as education director for 1199, (the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees...
...Vargas, a new player in our tournament, dramatically accelerated the pace of events...
Vol. 116 • February 1989 • No. 4
