BATON ROUGE — In the 1930s and 1940s, Black people were excluded from swimming in the pool at City Park despite Black tax dollars being collected for pool maintenance.

Now, at the start of Black History Month in 2025, Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church Pastor Fred Jeff Smith looks back and says Black children found other ways to cool off during the hot summer days.

“Black people swam in creeks and ditches and some in the river. Regularly people drowned in these water holes that existed,” Smith said.

In response to the discrimination, United Negro Recreational Association Board President Rev. Willie K. Brooks led efforts to raise money for a place for black families to swim freely in Baton Rouge.

Brooks Park, named after the pastor of Little Rock Missionary Baptist Church, was opened in 1949 and became a safe haven for the Black community.

Activists attempted to integrate the City Park pool in 1963, but the pool was closed and filled in.

“They were so opposed to sharing the swimming facilities that they rather the swimming facilities be closed and filled in,” Smith said.

Smith said he knows the origins of Brooks Park because his father told him the story as a child. Smith said it's important to learn and share stories of the past, recognizing the resilience of those who helped make a difference.

"I didn't learn this at Baton Rouge High, I didn't learn this at LSU. I learned this because my father put me in a car and drove me around and showed me where this was and where that was and told me who this was and who that was," Smith said. "We're not sharing our story within succeeding generations."

He said it's imperative to share the stories of past struggles rather than to act like things like segregation did not happen. It's important to learn from them and move forward, he said.

"We don’t want to acknowledge from where we have come because it sets up a different framework for where it is for where we are trying to go," Smith said. “You have to acknowledge the reality of where we are so we can all collectively move in a direction that we all want to go."

He said learning history is the key to bringing change.

“It speaks to the resilience of black people that they could forge a path on their own. We need to aspire to be more than what other people say we are,” Smith said.