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Jesse: I think that everyone deserves
 for their story to be told
and for people living today 
to learn from it in some way.
I started to look into 
the Swope Park swimming pool.
The main question 
that I tried to answer was,
"Why did Kansas City fight so hard
to keep the Swope Park swimming pool 
segregated
when it had already desegregated
all of its other city-owned
 public accommodations?"
The city had 2 main rationales 
for justifying continued segregation
at the swimming pool.
One was that it attempted to say
 that it was a public safety issue.
If you allowed a swimming pool
 to be desegregated,
then you would simply have a riot
much like there was in St. Louis
 with the Fairgrounds pool.
Second, they continued to reference
 what's called
the natural aversion to physical intimacy
in an intimate environment
 like the swimming pool.
That's just sort of coded language
 to keep races separate
in a very intimate public space.
African-American history I think
 is a part of the American story
that's largely ignored
 in most historical narratives.
And so that's part of the reason
 why I tried to investigate it
even more to shine some light on this area
that's undervalued and underserved.
Answering undergraduate research questions
can take you literally anywhere (laughs).
And the Office of Undergraduate Research
 allows you to get there.
This is sort of the university 
saying to its students
that it appreciates what they're doing
and it wants to support what they're doing
through this research award.
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