Lest We Forget: Public History and Racial Segregation in Baltimore’s Druid Hill Park

There is an eerie quality to the present state of Druid Hill Park’s ‘Pool Number Two.' Built in 1921 for Baltimore’s African American citizens, the pool stood drained and abandoned from 1956, the year of integration, until 1995 when it was filled with dirt and seeded with the promise of translating what was once a site of recreation into a site of remembrance. The metal bones of the diving platform and lifeguard stations, now painted a vivid blue, extend up and over what amounts to more dandelion, clover, and wild onion than grass. The ladders, once used by swimmers to traverse the waterline, are submerged in the earth, appearing as though they have been swallowed up from the bottom.