Cairo, Illinoisa prime example of how racial strife can kill a community closed its public pool rather than open it to blacks. Whites formed/joined a country club with a private pool. Blacks got to swim (and drown) in the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Southern Illinois is much more of the South than the North.
And I knew a co-worker (also white) whose family was too poor to give him ten cents to go swim at the municipal pool. So he swam in one of the rivers of our area that had a beach. He didn't drown either.