When Jim Crow laws were enacted after Civil War Reconstruction ended, African Americans found that, though they were still free to work in the Hot Springs bathhouses, they did not have free access to bathing in them. As a result, bathhouses owned and operated by African Americans emerged in the early 1900s. The Federal government owned the hot spring water and sold it to the bathhouses, which were regulated by the federal government as well, but local tradition prevailed during the years of segregation. Take a look at where African Americans bathed before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
