User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in Arkansas

Public toilets in Arkansas, commonly called washrooms, are found at a rate of two per 100,000 people. Public toilets have had policy around creation based on Jim Crow laws. Public toilets have been built to address public health issues.

Public toilets
washroom is one of the most commonly used words for public toilet in the United States.

A 2021 study found there were two public toilets per 100,000 people.

There was a push back against building public toilets in Jim Crow states during the period between 1865 and 1960, because it meant that local governments were not just required to build two toilets, one for men and one for women, but four toilets, one each for men and women who were white and who were colored. Racially segregated public toilets were very common in the 1960s.

Because Prohibition saw an increase in the construction of public toilets to address the new found demand, many municipalities located outside the South built sex-segregated public toilets that were essentially the same construction inside, with the same number of stalls and layout for each. In the South, public toilet facilities tended to have four toilet sections that reinforced racial segregation, one for white women, one for white men, one for colored men and one for colored women.

The Rockefeller Sanitary Commission was founded in 1909 to combat hookworm disease in the South. A survey was done of 11 southern states, which confirmed the presence of hookworm in 700 countries. A chief cause of spread of hookworm disease as open defecation in farmland. The Rockefeller Sanitary Commission program helped install public toilets and promote their use as part of their efforts to reduce hookworm disease. This was coupled with offering free exams and health treatment for hookworm disease.

Arkansas, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming sued the Obama administration in July 2016 over the administration's requirement that children be allowed to use school toilets based on their gender identity instead of their sex.