Centennial Park Swimming Pool

You’re now at Centennial Park—which formally opened with the Centennial Exposition in 1897. The park still features a full-scale replica of the Greek Parthenon, which was the centerpiece of the exposition. Feel free to explore the entire park, but for this stop you are headed to Metro Parks’ Centennial Art Center located at the corner of 25th Avenue and Park Plaza. The Parthenon was permanently restored and rebuilt in the 1930s and a swimming pool complex opened in 1932. However, the pool served as a white-only facility. 

As you stand in front of the former site of Centennial Park’s pool, we want to finish the story of Hadley Park from our last stop because segregation touched every part of society—even public parks, playgrounds, and pools. Thirty-five years after Hadley Park was established, the park board opened a public “coloreds-only” pool in 1947. The pool featured three diving boards, an open grill, chairs and deck space. Then, in 1961, the Hadley Park pool closed abruptly as did every public pool in Nashville. So why did Hadley Park’s pool close in 1961? Well it was because of an event that happened right here in Centennial Park. 

On a hot day on July 18, 1961, two young African Americans shifted from a sit-in to a swim-in. Initially thought to be the groundkeepers, Kwame Lillard from TSU, and Mathew Walker Jr. from Fisk, entered the pool complex and swam until they were forcibly removed. Rather than desegregate swimming pools, the city of Nashville closed all public pools in the city for two years. 

According to historian Jeff Wiltse, author of Contested Waters, the pools represented an especially sensitive flashpoint of racial tension: “Pools were both physically intimate and also visually intimate. . . And there have always been fears, in terms of using swimming pools, about being exposed to dirt and disease of other swimmers. . . . But the primary cause . . . was gender integration” between African American men and white women.

Centennial Park’s pool was permanently closed and filled with concrete. Later it was reconstructed into the Centennial Art Center in 1972. The pool itself was repurposed and now serves as a sculpture garden. In 2022, a historical marker was dedicated to honor the courage of Kwame Lillard and Matthew Walker, Jr. and to acknowledge this dark chapter in our city’s history. Hadley Park’s outdoor pool reopened in 1963 but later closed when the community center added an indoor facility.