Imagine walking into the University’s Student Union in the 1930s.
The floor of the large entrance lobby is branded with a Tiger emblem bearing the phrase “A sound mind in a sound body” in Latin.
Music plays in the rightly named “L” room, the lounge where most students congregate.
A radio in the corner plays popular music in the afternoon and, occasionally, students gather around a piano to hear renditions of the latest tunes.
Students study at desks around the lounge. Some students even write letters to fellow students fighting overseas in World War II, locating friends’ names on a list of names and addresses of students in the military.
Within the walls of this Union is a general store, bookstore, barber shop, beauty salon and post office boxes. The building also houses a main ballroom for University dances.
Friday nights, students listen and dance as a jazz quintet plays in the Cane-Break room.
Dormitories are housed in the second and third floors, while handball courts and other spaces for indoor sports are housed in the basement.
Behind the building is a 180-foot-long, 48-foot- wide swimming pool dubbed the largest university and college pool in the country.
Many students swim there and the University’s “Bengalettes,” a women’s synchronized swimming group, put on performances there.
A different kind of Union
Most students fail to realize the center of student social activity on campus was not always the present-day LSU Union.
In the early 1930s, students and faculty considered the Huey Long Fieldhouse and Swimming Pool the recreational center of campus, according to a Reveille article from August 1944.
The article said the popular spot was “where old friends gather, new friends meet, dates are made and sometimes broken.”
Years ago, students conversed, grabbed a bite to eat, played games in the fieldhouse and spent their afternoons cooling off in the pool.
Today the fieldhouse is like any other department building. It houses kinesiology and social work departments and several classrooms and offices.
Renovations over the years made the entrance lobby much smaller than it used to be. The Tiger emblem barely is noticeable as it hugs the main doorway to the Kinesiology Department’s front office and the “L” room is nowhere in sight.
The outdated Long Swimming Pool rarely is used because the University eventually built better and more accessible swimming pools.
Director of University Special Events Randy Gurie said the introduction of the Natatorium and Student Recreational Sports Complex pool gave athletes and non-athletes other places to swim.
Before the new pools, the Long Swimming Pool was the only pool the University had, Gurie said.
Students frequented the pool during hot spring and summer afternoons for swimming courses, water sports and general water recreation.
The pool also was used to help polio-stricken children, a Reveille 1950 article said.
A Reveille article dated August 28, 1942 said the motto of Coach Gordon Higginbotham, commander in chief of swimming pool activities, was “Give ’em all the swimming they want.”
Higginbotham, or “Hickey” as he was called, was famous for his passion about the swimming pool.
A 1944 Reveille article said Higginbotham was known to drink a glass of pool water to prove its purity to anyone who thought otherwise.
A Baton Rouge State Times article from May 1945 said at the time, white bathing suits and “smooching” were forbidden in the pool area.
Any students found “smooching” were called out on the pool area’s public address system and forced to leave, the article said.
Drenched in controversy
In the summer of 1964, the swimming pool and Huey Long Fieldhouse were the setting of a segregation controversy affecting the entire campus.
A Reveille article dated June 16, 1964 said the pool would be “closed indefinitely because of undetermined damage.”
The article went on to say an Alaskan earthquake from early that year caused a rupture in the pool.
University President John Hunter said the pool would reopen soon as a teaching facility but no longer as a student recreation facility.
However, many students felt other motives existed to the closing of the swimming pool.
According to a Baton Rouge State Times article in June 1964, twenty African-American students were admitted as undergraduates at the University.
The article said one of the students attempted to get a haircut at the Fieldhouse barber shop but was turned down. Another student was denied access to the swimming pool.
A Reveille article from June 25, 1964 said President Hunter “acted under a directive from the Board of Supervisors to close the pool before permitting integration of its facilities.”
History professor Paul Hoffman said in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the general rule was that social functions were segregated but any academic functions must be integrated.
“That is what people did back then,” Hoffman said. “The attitude of the president and Board [of Supervisors] at the time was they were not going to integrate.”
Because of the South’s major social divide at the time, it was politically disastrous for the University to take any initiatives in support of integration, Hoffman said.
“The University integrated only to the extent of the courts’ rulings, and they did so with great reluctance,” Hoffman said.
The Reveille article said many students felt since law required facilities to be integrated, the anti-integration administration decided to close any facility where integration could occur.
The incident at the fieldhouse and, more importantly, the pool’s closing, caused many students and faculty to sign petitions against its closing.
Furthermore, other students signed petitions for the pool to remain closed — causing a divide on campus between those who supported segregation and those who opposed it.
The petition asked administrators to “leave the opening or closing of the pool up to the faculty and students by their attendance or non-attendance under integrated circumstances,” the Reveille article said.
A Reveille article dated April 13, 1965 said the petitions garnered more than 4,000 signatures before being handed to Hunter.
News articles do not make clear what happened next.
But a Baton Rouge State Times article from April 1965 said Chancellor Cecil Taylor quietly announced the pool’s reopening.
Hoffman said a quiet resolution once controversy settles often is common at a University, especially when the issue causes such a divide among students.
In the years that followed, the University built the Special Olympics Pool, the Natatorium and other athletic and recreational pools.
Athletics instructor Wanda Hargroder said the Huey Long Swimming Pool currently is open to all University faculty, staff and students.
Rec Center Aquatics Coordinator Jacqui Tabor said the Huey Long Swimming Pool usually opens April 1, but a mechanical problem in the pump system pushed this year’s opening until after Spring Break.