Part One in a Series of Five or More
(Updated: April 30, 2023 and May 9, 2023)

Gyles Park 

On August 8, 2022, Aiken City Council voted unanimously (1) to approve a Master Plan (2) for the City’s parks recommending possible divestment of five neighborhood parks north of Colleton Avenue. Four of these parks are located in the predominantly Black, working class neighborhoods surrounding the Schofield campus. They are also within the original 1834 Dexter-Pascalis survey of Aiken. 

Among the five parks is Herbert Gyles Park — one of Aiken’s oldest designated parks — established in 1912 and named after Aiken’s then-mayor, Herbert E. Gyles. 

In addition to its age, Gyles Park holds special historic and cultural significance. According a 1953 Aiken Standard article, this park was designated in 1912 to serve as a park for Aiken’s Black citizens, and was rededicated to this purpose on October 26, 1953.

Gyles Park was again rededicated thirty years later in a ceremony and “rededication festival” held on July 23, 1987, as conveyed in a newspaper account — minus mention of the first forty years of its history from 1912 forward, and minus the words “Negro” and “colored.” (3)

According to the 1987 Aiken Recreation and Parks director, it had “been years” since Gyles Park — with its freshly painted slides, swings and seesaws — had been used. (4) The article did not mention how many times, if any, the slides, swings and seesaws had been re-painted and maintained over the prior three decades.

Through today’s lens, donating a park to Black people might seem a progressive move in the 1912 Jim Crow South. History, viewed out of context, is often romanticized and easily misinterpreted. 

Some Context

A park located adjacent to and directly downwind of a 1912 train depot in the era of coal-fired engines was a sooty, smoky, dirty place to spend one’s time — and all the worse for its proximity to the railroad tracks, which would have made the area a uniquely dangerous place for children to play. One could surmise that the park was better suited, not so much as a park for children, but as a practical gathering place to stage the mules, carriages, and “Negro” laborers and servants appointed to the task of awaiting the comings and goings of Winter Colony northerners, Low Country southerners and their visitors who would require assistance to haul their cumbersome baggage, personages and visitors from the passenger station to the winter cottages and resort facilities. 

It was the custom during that time, and still is, to orient lower class, Black and minority neighborhoods adjacent to and downwind of toxic, noxious industries, city dumps, and/or the “bottoms” of a town, and to station the upper classes at higher points on the landscape. Train tracks, interstates, rivers and other natural barriers have long served as the dividing line between classes and races.

Recall that it was only nine years ago, in 2014, when the City of Aiken was making plans to build the long-requested, long-deferred northside park atop the old City dump at the edge of the Schofield neighborhood. The City had, in fact, already spent the prior ten years, since 2004, (5) alternately dragging its heels and working behind the scenes with landscape architects (6) and others to bring this plan to fruition.

This, after kicking the can down the road since the 1980s on requests to improve and upgrade recreation facilities on Aiken’s northside, while spending many millions on Aiken’s southside facilities. This, after subjecting generations of northside residents from the 1920s into the late 1970s to the need to coordinate their outdoor hours and laundry days to avoid the stench of burning and smoldering garbage, trash, yard waste, old furniture, dead animals, etc. at the City dump.

Below: Two screenshots from the Aiken City Council meeting minutes dated, March 9, 1970, regarding a 500-signature petition brought before Council by northside residents in complaint of the landfill. 

The Winds of Change

A 1951 Aiken Standard article spoke of the Herbert Gyles Park:  “A memorial to the good citizenship of Mr. Gyles is the Herbert Gyles park at the Southern Railway passenger station.” 

When the Herbert Gyles Park was rededicated in 1953, circumstances were different from 1912 or even 1951. For one thing, the passenger train was no longer in service. For another, Jim Crow was on its last legs. Court cases were pushing desegregation on every front. Southern leadership, feeling the winds of change bearing down upon them, went into overdrive creating “separate but equal” spaces and facilities to neutralize accusations of inequality and to preempt efforts to desegregate . As if to reinforce this newfangled equality, the word, “Negro” was prominently displayed in the newspaper announcements of these separate-but-equal facilities.

The rededicated Herbert Gyles Park of 1953 was appointed with “the most modern of equipment,” including two six-seat swings, a six-board seesaw, a sandbox, wading pool, merry-go-round, two slides, a horseshoe court, and two picnic tables. In the publicity surrounding this event, the park was unofficially redubbed as Gyles Negro Recreation Park, Gyles Park Negro Playground, Gyles Park Playground for Negro Children, the Negro Park, and so on. 

Enter the Bomb Plant

The much anticipated influx of bomb plant employees in 1953 only hastened the “separate but equal” impetus. Swimming pool access was a particularly prickly issue among segregationists at that time. Aiken already had at least three pools where White people could swim — the City pool on Newberry Street; the public swimming pool at “The Bath Club” on the Hofmann estate on Laurens Street; and the Fermata pool, which, by 1953, had been established as a Whites-only social club. There were no swimming pools for Aiken’s Black residents. 

In addition to the swimming pools were numerous Whites-only parks, ponds and lakes including Gregg Park, Clearwater Park, Vaucluse Pond, Aiken State Park, Johnson’s Lake, Scott’s Lake, and Richardson’s Lake. There were also numerous unofficial swimming holes in ponds, clay pits and streams throughout the county which enjoyed de facto segregation, as it was simply understood that Black people didn’t step foot into certain areas.

During 1951-1953, with tens of thousands of construction workers, DuPont employees and their families arriving to town, the winds of change bore down harder, still. The fact that the bomb plant was a federal facility only made the efforts to preserve Jim Crow all the more challenging, as federal laws — toothless as they were — still required creative effort to skirt. 

Two New Pools for Aiken

In March 1954, the City pool on Newberry Street was filled in and plans made to build a new City pool for White people. But first, in July 1954, the City began construction on the “Aiken Negro Pool” later to be named Smith Hazel Pool

By autumn 1954, the pool was finished, and local leaders could now boast that — between Eustis Park, the Smith Hazel pool and the recently-equipped Gyles Park — Aiken now had “equal” recreation facilities for all of its citizens.

By year’s end, the construction of the pool at the circa 1897 Eustis Park complex was well under way to add a swimming pool to the existing tennis courts, baseball diamond, football field, and picnic grounds under the pines. A vibrant, community fundraising campaign was added to the mix to build a recreation center and teen canteen with a snack bar, the latter of which was completed in 1956. The pool officially opened in May 1955. Designed by Paddock of California, it was described as containing “the most modern equipment available” (7) including underwater lights, state-of-the-art filtration and an underwater vacuum. It also featured a second pool, a wading pool, for the younger set.

The completed Eustis Park facility enabled a full menu of recreation offerings for Aiken youth and adults — tennis lessons, baseball and softball games, swimming lessons, swim meets, concerts, dances, horse shows and festivals, plus dance lessons, and arts, crafts and ceramics classes, summer day camps and other special programs for teens and children.

The Smith Hazel pool site offered a smaller menu of extra activities and events, mostly seasonal parties, which were advertised as “weather permitting,” since there wasn’t a building to accommodate them. In 1963, and only after years of public calls for an activity center for Aiken’s Black residents, the Smith Hazel Recreation Center was built.

Swimming Lessons

Local Red Cross water safety classes had been held at the segregated Aiken State Park since the late 1930s. The influx of DuPont workers and their families in 1953 drove a campaign to offer classes throughout the county. (8). In 1953, classes were offered at eight of the Whites-only swimming venues. No options were offered to Black people. The situation was the same in the summer of1954, except that the Red Cross offered swimming lessons for Aiken’s Black residents over at the Jones Pool in Augusta, Georgia. (9)

In the summer of 1955 Red Cross classes were offered at the Smith Hazel Pool. In the summer of 1956, they were again offered at Smith Hazel, as well as “at a pond to be selected in a few days.” Swimming lessons were available for White people at numerous sites throughout Aiken County, including Aiken State Park, Johnson’s Lake, Scott’s Lake, Eustis Park, Fermata Club, Gem Lake, Double Springs, Gregg Park, Panic Pond, Gregory Lake, and the LBC recreation pool. (10)

Some Context

The establishment of these parks and recreational activities was backdropped by the larger story of the Civil Rights movement which was unfolding daily in newspapers, magazines and the evening news, giving Americans of all colors witness to the forms of retaliation faced by those who engaged in peaceful protest against segregation — the fire hoses, billy clubs and police dogs being sicced on children in 1963, the fire-bombing of a bus in Aniston, Alabama in 1961, the 1960 insecticide fumigation of sit-in protesters at a Krystal restaurant in Nashville, and the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham killed four girls. Seeing these images — and on television, in particular — began to open more and more people’s eyes and minds to what the Civil Rights movement was really about.

Circumvention 

The “separate but equal” artifice was too expensive and impractical to erect with golf courses, public beaches and state parks. The response, then, was to simply close them down. Edisto Beach State Park, for instance, closed in 1956 in response to a lawsuit challenging its segregation — and it remained closed for ten years.

The SC park system had twenty-six parks (11) at that time:

• 20 were segregated, Whites-only parks
• 3 were segregated, Blacks-only parks — Pleasant Ridge, Campbell’s Pond, and Mill Creek.
• 3 parks provided separate-use areas for Blacks and Whites — Lake Greenwood, Hunting Island, and Huntington Beach.

The 1067-acre Aiken State Park was a segregated, Whites-only park that was built by both White and Black Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers during 1934-1936. Oral stories tell of the grueling labor involved with hand-digging Fish Lake (see modern-day photo of Fish Lake at top of article). During the 1950s, the park, which is situated along the South fork of the Edisto River, featured several ponds, a spring-fed lake, and several artesian wells. Original amenities included cabins for overnight stays, swimming facilities, a bath house, a refreshment stand, boating, fishing, nature trails, and picnic grounds with tables, grills and barbecue pits. This grew to include a campground and baseball field. (12)

In 1963 — and, again, in response to a suit challenging South Carolina’s segregated state park system — the SC Forestry Commission, which oversaw the parks, closed down the entire park system, including Aiken State Park. They remained closed until 1966.

It was a similar story on municipal golf courses of that era, which were in the midst of a post-WWII boom. New courses were built, and old courses were improved to meet the demand. Among the golfers heading to greens across America were Black veterans, who’d enjoyed playing golf on courses overseas during the war, and found themselves barred from entering golf courses at home. Numerous lawsuits were brought, followed by numerous court-ordered, federal mandates for desegregation of municipal golf courses. Such lawsuits were not new, as golf courses had been on the forefront of desegregation lawsuits for decades.

Some cities circumvented court orders by leasing their municipal courses to private interests for as little as $1 per year. Others sold their their grounds to private interests. Still others filled in the holes with cement and outright closed the courses.

In 1959, Aiken City Council voted unanimously to sell the Aiken Municipal Golf course to a private interest. The City was nearing its 20 year agreement to operate the property as a municipal golf course, anyway, and, according to Council’s resolution, the course had operated at a loss for the past few years and become a burden on taxpayers. (13)

The 107-acre course, which had been “reasonably valued at some $100,000” fifteen years earlier in an ordinance signed by Mayor Wyman in 1944, (14) sold for $23,150. The sale price was about the cost of two modest, 3-bedroom ranch houses in 1959 Aiken. The buyer agreed to a number of restrictive clauses. (See clipping #1 in footnotes). The course was renamed Highland Park Country Club and, in 1960, a members-only swimming pool was added to the facility.

Thirty years later, in 1990, the Augusta National invited its first Black member, an event that made front page news in the NYT Sports Pages. (15) Other area golf clubs held similarly strict membership policies, although public discussion of such matters is considered indelicate.

__________________

UPDATE May 9, 2023: Updated to add two screenshots from the Aiken City Council meeting minutes, dated March 9, 1970, regarding a 500-signature petition brought before Council by northside residents in complaint of the landfill.

April 30, 2023: An earlier version of this article suggested that the circa 1912 Gyles Park might be Aiken’s oldest Park. That distinction could arguably be said to belong to the circa 1897 Eustis Park, donated to the city by Miss Celestine Eustis, and so-named in recognition of her efforts to preserve Aiken’s trees and forests. Eustis Park served Aiken recreation for many decades, first as a bicycle park, then a multi-faceted recreation complex that featured a horse park, football stadium, baseball park, tennis courts, picnic grounds and more. Eustis Park’s original 115 acres was whittled down over the years — first by the 47 acre, turn-of-the-century Park in the Pines resort hotel, (which burned in 1913), then, over the next 40 years, to house various county government functions, including hospital grounds, a health department, and public school system facilities, which included the Eustis Park schools. By 1965, according to then-Mayor Odell Weeks, the Eustis Park recreational complex had been reduced to less than  10 acres, a number that served to justify the City’s 1965 purchase of the Virginia Acres subdivision for development into a park on the southside. Three years later, the City received a federal grand to develop the recently demolished Virginia Acres subdivision into a park. Simultaneous to this, the City began negotiations with the Aiken County Hospital Board of Trustees to sell the Eustis Park recreational complex in its entirety. (The hospital had plans at that time, in 1971, to either build a new hospital on University Parkway, or to expand into the Eustis Park grounds). Here, it must be said that discussions on this sale occurred against an extremely contentious backdrop of local tension over integration in schools, housing and public places. Negotiations on the sale commenced from 1968 until 1972 to include talk of the “friendly condemnation suit” that would be necessary for the hospital to acquire the city-owned Eustis Park property, since the property had been given to the City in trust to be used as a recreational facility. In 1971, the City announced plans to build a “community park” on the Eustis Park public school property (not to be confused with the Eustis Park recreational complex) and to also build, “one of the most modern recreational facilities in the state” on the Virginia Acres property on the southside. The friendly condemnation suit was filed in the spring of 1972. In 2019, a senior-youth center was built aside the Eustis Park community park property and named the Lessie B. Price Aiken Senior and Youth Center in honor of the long-serving Councilwoman. The article has been updated to reflect this history. 

Next in the Series: The Virginia Acres Question

The above histories are incomplete, at best. The recording of racial histories, like so much history, has traditionally been piecemeal and only brought together, piece-by-piece and perspective by perspective, over time. I welcome further contributions to the history I’ve presented here.
____________________

This series is written in memory of my father, Arthur H. Dexter. His files on these histories led me to further research and to complete some of the stories he started, but didn’t have opportunity to finish. My father would have been 100 years old today.

(1) See August 8, 2022 Aiken City Council minutes, pgs 9-10.
https://edoc.cityofaikensc.gov/WebLink/DocView.aspx?id=2752803&dbid=0&repo=City-of-Aiken-LF

(2) Clemson University/City of Aiken Parks, Recreation and Tourism Master Plan, pgs 22-23.
https://edoc.cityofaikensc.gov/WebLink/DocView.aspx?id=2749640&dbid=0&repo=City-of-Aiken-LF

(3) Greene, Kelly. “A New Beginning! Hundreds Attend Rededication Festival for Aiken’s Gyles Park. “ Aiken Standard, July 26, 1987.

(4) “Gyles Park Re-Opens Tomorrow with Jamboree, Re-dedication.” Aiken Standard. July 24, 1987

(5) Lord, Philip. “Talks Mount to Turn Landfill into Park.” Aiken Standard, February 6, 2004.

(6) World Landscape Architect. “Northside Park | Aiken USA | Pearson Russell Design.” WLA. https://worldlandscapearchitect.com/northside-park-aiken-usa-pearson-russell-design-associates/?v=7516fd43adaa

(7) “Aiken Pool Will Open Here Sunday.” Aiken Standard. May 13, 1955.

(8) “Plans Have Been Completed for the Red Cross Water Safety Program Here.” Aiken Standard. June 3, 1953.

(9) “Swimming Classes for Negro Youth.” Aiken Standard. July 20, 1954.

(10) “RC’s County-Wide Water Safety Program to Train All Age Groups During Summer.” The City of Aiken Page. May 22, 1956.

(11) South Carolina State Parks, “Civil Rights Movement.” https://southcarolinaparks.com/civil-rights-movement

(12) “Aiken State Park is Fine for Outings” Aiken Standard. June 20, 1947.

(13) “Golf Course Sold to Charlotte Pro.” Aiken Standard. February 24, 1959. (See clipping #1 below)

(14) “Aiken Golf Club Ordinance.” Aiken Standard. September 6, 1944. (See clipping #2 below)

(15) Diaz, Jaime. “Augusta National Admits First Black Member.” New York Times. September 11, 1990.