COLUMBIA, S.C. -- For over 50 years, residents of the mostly Black, largely rural Lower Richland community have relied on the Hopkins Pool for swimming lessons, water aerobics and to be a gathering place on hot summer days.

But after those decades and almost no substantial repairs, the pool all but fell apart in 2023. Up to 1,000 gallons of water a day leaked out of cracks in the pool shell, and a state agency deemed it too unsafe to stay open.

“People raised holy Hell,” said Bernice Scott, a longtime Lower Richland resident and community leader.

Residents petitioned the Richland County Recreation Commission in droves to bring the pool back. They relied on it, but at the same time, even before the forced closure, the facilities left much to be desired. The parking lot was just a dusty gravel patch. There were few places to sit in the shade. And it was not particularly accessible to people with disabilities.

But now, after a nearly $1.5 million renovation and two years of work, the pool looks better than ever. The investment is vital for Hopkins and beyond, residents and leaders say. It shows an investment in a community that has often felt ignored by some in government, but it also creates an opportunity for Black youth to learn to swim at a time when Black residents are still more likely to drown than their white counterparts.

“You give us an opportunity, give any kid … an opportunity to be exposed to different things … it fills up the whole community,” Scott said.

“Crumbling apart”

The Hopkins Pool had become so deteriorated over the course of a half century that in 2023 the former South Carolina Department of Environment Control had to stop it from being used because it was simply unsafe.

“It literally was crumbling apart,” said Kareem Evans, aquatics manager for the Richland County Recreation Commission.

“This used to be a really nice hangout,” Evans said. “We get a lot of stories [from people] having a lot of fond memories growing up here.”

But in the six years Evans has worked for the recreation commission, he has seen the pool’s usership decline, he believes because of its condition. It still hosts water aerobics classes and swim lessons, but he hopes that with the new renovations more people will take advantage of that programming.

At the time DHEC shut down the pool, it was leaking up to 1,000 gallons of water a day. The state agency gave the recreation commission a laundry list of work to do to if it wanted to reopen the pool, including replacing the entire pool deck surface.

The remodel also added new lifts for people with disabilities, lights along the bottom of the pool, a new picnic shelter, renovated bathrooms and changing areas, plus upgrades to the mechanical pieces needed to keep the pool full and clean.

In total, that work cost $1.43 million and took roughly two years – a year longer than planned in part because one of the initial contractors hired to perform the work kept missing deadlines.

The project got almost $400,000 from a community development grant administered by Richland County, and another $250,000 from a state budget earmark. The recreation commission paid the remainder of the cost from its own budget.

“We put a lot of work into this,” Evans said.

In speaking to members of the public at a ceremony announcing the completed work, officials said it was thanks to the tenacity of passionate locals and support from a few key lawmakers that ultimately allowed the project to be completed.

For the public, seeing this investment actually come together has restored some confidence in residents. .

“It means that our community is important,” said lifelong Lower Richland resident Sallie Griffin. “If you don’t have the facilities and the infrastructure in your community, then you feel left out, right?”

A swimming gap

The Hopkins Park Pool was built in the early 1970s and even at its inception, not everyone in the community was happy with the results.

Kay Patterson, a now-deceased former state senator and former recreation commissioner, almost quit the commission in the late 1960s over frustrations about adequate, and equitable, pool facilities in white and Black communities.

Recalling the discord, Patterson told The State in 1998, “They built a pool at Trenholm Park, and it was heated and Olympic-size,” he said. “Then a little later at Greenview, they dug a little damn hole in the ground, big enough for hogs to wallow in. Then they did the same thing at Hopkins. Separate but equal, you know what I mean.”

The Trenholm Park Pool, built in the early 1970s, is not actually an Olympic-size swimming pool, but it is the largest of the Richland County Recreation Commission’s four public pools. The Hopkins Pool is the smallest.

Op-eds rebutting Patterson’s feelings followed those remarks, with one writer saying he enjoyed that the Hopkins pool was quieter than the larger Trenholm Park Pool.

But at least in his sentiment, Scott, the Lower Richland community leader, agrees with the late Patterson. Hopkins has a 90% Black population. The Census Tract where the Trenholm Park Pool is located is 76% white.

“He’s right,” she said, adding that it has often felt like Hopkins residents and the rest of Lower Richland have been expected to be happy with what they get.

Public pools being tied to racial politics is nothing new, not for South Carolina nor the rest of the country.

The history of public pools in the U.S. is tethered to the history of segregation. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, cities in many parts of the country drained public pools or stopped building them, according to research by Jeff Wiltse, author of “Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America.”

A lack of public pools in Black communities has over the course of decades created life-and-death consequences: Black children are a lot more likely to drown than their white counterparts, studies have shown. This is thought to be both because Black children are less likely to take swimming lessons, and because they are less likely to swim in places with lifeguards, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

This is a major reason community members are so thrilled to see the Hopkins pool not only back but improved. (And yes, it will have a lifeguard on duty at all times.)

“Swimming is particularly important because we know that a lot of times in our communities we don’t have pools, and a lot of times, there’s an idea that we don’t like to swim, or we can’t swim, but these resources belong to us,” said County Council member Chakisse Newton.

Scott said the remodel of the Hopkins pool is a good start in addressing inequities that have lingered in the Lower Richland area for years.

The Recreation Commission also operates a public pool in Eastover, about 16 miles from the Hopkins pool, and a public pool in St. Andrews, in addition to the Trenholm Park Pool in Forest Acres.

Rob Lapin, chair of the recreation commission, said repairs are also due for the Trenholm Park Pool, and that the commission will have to look at that work in the coming years.

The pools are all open between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

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