Opened in 1958 as a private whites-only facility, Laurel Pool grew out of Dr. John Warren's effort, through the Lions Club and the Laurel Park Commission, to create a local pool after he saw children swimming in the polluted Patuxent River. Funding came largely from bonds and community fundraisers, including a minstrel show at the segregated Laurel High School in which prominent Laurel citizens performed in blackface before a sold out crowd. Laurel's Black residents, many of them from the historically Black Grove community, were barred from the pool and instead often looked to the Black owned and operated Carr's Beach in Annapolis for swimming. Pressure to end segregation intensified in 1967 after hate crimes in the Grove led by local Ku Klux Klan members, including an attempt to burn down a home, prompted residents to organize and demand change from Mayor Merrill Harrison. Laurel then purchased the pool so it could be desegregated, and it reopened as a municipal pool in 1968.