Cairo, Illinois: The Handwriting on the Wall

Arièle Dionne-Krosnick is a Ph.D. candidate in Architecture at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Her dissertation, “Swimming Pools, Civil Rights, and the American City in the 1960s,” proposes that Black civil rights protests that took place at swimming pools contesting unjust racial and spatial segregation had the potential to radically transform the symbolic and physical built environment of American cities. She was a 2024 recipient of Rose Library’s African American History and Culture Visiting Fellowship. 

As part of the 2024 Rose Library Short-Term Fellowship, and over the course of five days in the archives, I surveyed hundreds of photographs, news articles, press releases, audio files, memoranda, publications, and reports from seven archival collections. I am working on a dissertation project titled Swimming Pools, Civil Rights, and the American City in the 1960s that considers how the 1960s civil rights movement impacted the architecture and built environment of American cities, with a specific focus on protests taking place at swimming pools. I came to the Rose Library archives hoping to find specific references to three specific protests that are of particular relevance to my work: the pool protest in Cairo, Illinois, on June 23, 1962; the dive-in at the Monson Motor Lodge in St. Augustine, Florida on June 18, 1964; and the West Side uprising in Chicago, Illinois from July 12 to 15, 1966. I was able to find archival materials related to all of my sites, but for the sake of this blog post, I’ll focus on the Cairo pool protest and take you through some of my key findings and their relevance to my work.

The Cairo pool protest on June 23, 1962, was part of a desegregation initiative led by local youths who formed the Cairo Nonviolent Freedom Committee (CNVFC) with the assistance of members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) direct-action wing. They developed Operation Open City, a program aimed at desegregating all areas of civic life but particularly focused on public facilities like restaurants, the local roller-skating rink, and the swimming pool. The segregated swimming pool was the only pool in Cairo, one of Illinois’ southernmost cities. The Black residents were forced to swim in the river instead. Because of its geographic location, even in a northern state like Illinois, Cairo was southern in every way: very small, very rural, and very segregated. The protest at the city swimming pool deployed several tactics including marching, praying, and singing. Photographer Danny Lyon, who was the SNCC staff photographer from 1962 to 1964, documented the events. One image, showing the protesters kneeling in prayer, was transformed into a popular SNCC recruitment poster printed with the appeal: “Come Let us Build a New World Together.” The swimming pool was successfully integrated for two weeks before it was paved over and closed for good.

Though the city of Cairo officially mandated the desegregation of its public accommodations, economic and political discrimination persisted, and during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Cairo continued to be the site of violent racial clashes. Though the SCLC does not seem to have been directly involved in the 1962 Cairo desegregation campaign, the organization did offer support to the Black United Front of Cairo, which was active from March 31, 1969, and led by Rev. Charles Koen along with other religious and community leaders. Most of the materials that have been archived are concerned with this later period of the struggle in Cairo, but I was excited to find mention of the segregated swimming pool and the civil rights actions in the early 1960s.

I was able to find two central piece of evidence that show how the swimming pool protest became part of the official civil rights history of Black resistance in Cairo. The first is a report titled “Cairo, Ill: Law with Justice?” that recounts the ongoing violent crisis in Cairo, as a means to counteract the biased local news media.[1] A chronology of events includes the early direct-action efforts of 1962-63: “Civil rights actions, including selective boycotts, compelled desegregation of places of public accommodation. Retaliatory violence against blacks increased,” and some of the outcomes in 1964: “Cairo swimming pool opened and operated for 13 days on nonsegregated basis. KKK and other racist pressure groups forced permanent closing of Cairo’s only public swimming facility.”[2] 

Additionally, I was able to find the transcript and audio recording of a 1971 episode of Martin Luther King Speaks, a radio program run by the SCLC, about the ongoing racial struggles in Cairo, entitled “Cairo, Illinois: The Handwriting on the Wall.”[3] (For more information about Martin Luther King Speaks, see this blog post by Rebecca Sherman in 2010). The episode starts with a brief history of Cairo, narrated by the announcer, who says:

“The best way to explain the situation in Cairo, Illinois is to give a brief history of it. In nineteen forty four there was a lawsuit against the city school board because whites were paid higher wages than Blacks, for the same jobs. In nineteen sixty two there was token integration in the schools. Blacks were allowed to enrool (sic) after whites were enrolled. Later in nineteen sixty two and in nineteen sixty three there were sit-ins to open public facilities among them a swimming pool.”[4] 

The program continues with a speech by Leon Page, coordinator of the United Front of Cairo, about the ongoing struggle in his city and the ideologies underpinning the tactics of the United Front on three levels: the economic boycott inspired by the nonviolent teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; principles of self-defence from Malcolm X; and the religious figure of a militant Christ.[5] Another piece of visual culture further emphasizes the militant religious posture of the United Front: a 1971 rally flier is illustrated with a Black preacher carrying a bible and a gun.[6] 

As an architecture historian and visual culture scholar, I am always interested in the ways in which images and information circulate, and how activists chose to represent their built environment. In a March 1971 issue of the United Front News, photographs of substandard housing emphasize the living situation of the city’s Black community.[7] The “Cairo, Ill: Law with Justice?” report shows a city under siege, with militarized police and white supremacists patrolling the streets with impunity. But it also shows Black activists re-claiming the city space by gathering in public, marching and protesting with signs, and organizing petitions and boycotts. With the images in the report, alongside the photography from the United Front News newspaper, I can start visualizing the city scape of Cairo though the words and images the United Front chose to represent themselves with.

This is just the beginning of my work on Cairo’s civil rights and architectural history, but I found evidence that the civil rights activists in Cairo were exceptionally aware of their built environment and the inequalities in their housing and institutional architecture. The holdings of the Rose Library were a veritable treasure trove for civil rights historians, but I hope this short article will inspire scholars of the built environment to extend the scope of materials they consider as evidence for their work.

[1] Bleveans, Jack, et al. Cairo, Ill: Law with Justice? (sponsored by the Alliance to End Repression, Chicago, Ill. n.d.) African American Miscellany Collection, Box 11, Folder 4

[2] Bleveans, Jack, et al. Cairo, Ill: Law with Justice? (sponsored by the Alliance to End Repression, Chicago, Ill. n.d.) p. 4. African American Miscellany Collection, Box 11, Folder 4

[3] “Cairo, Illinois: The Handwriting on the Wall,” Martin Luther King Speaks, Program 7119, May 9, 1971. SCLC records, Box 606, Folder 15; Audio, Martin Luther King Speaks, Program 7119, May 9, 1971. SCLC records, Box 206, Folder 23

[4] “Cairo, Illinois: The Handwriting on the Wall,” Announcer copy, p. 1. SCLC records, Box 606, Folder 15

[5] “Cairo, Illinois: The Handwriting on the Wall,” Leon Page speech, p. 2. SCLC records, Box 606, Folder 15

[6] Cairo Solidarity Rally flier (Black United Front of Cairo, June 17, 1971). Black Print Culture Collection, 1821-2012, Box 41, Folder 10

[7] United Front News, March 27, 1971, p. 2. African American Miscellany Collection, Box 11, Folder 4