User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in Mississippi

Public toilets in Mississippi, commonly called washrooms, are relatively rare at one per 100,000 people. Public toilets have been built to prevent diseases. They have also been built to improve general public access to toilets. Public toilets, especially in schools, have been places where the battle over desegregation has been fought. In more recent years, public toilets have become places where policies regarding transgender people access to public spaces have been waged.

Public toilets
washroom is one of the most commonly used words for public toilet in the United States. Euphemisms are often used to avoid discussing the purpose of toilets. Words used include toilet, restroom, bathroom, lavatory and john.

A 2021 study found there was one public toilet per 100,000 people.

History
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.

The Works Progress Administration during the 1930s tried to increase access to public toilets across the United States. Their focus though tended to be on building such facilities in national parks and other civic areas, not at improving access in urban environments. In the end, they constructed 2,911,323 outhouses, which they officially called sanitary privies. Colloquially, they were referred to as Roosevelt rooms. The greatest number of these facilities were constructed in West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Mississippi. One of the consequences of the large number of additional public toilet facilities in these states was the number of cases of typhoid fever dropped.

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.

White school girls in Mississippi worried about contracting venereal diseases like syphilis from black children in the school's toilets if their schools were forced to integrate. This was in part a result of  segregationist literature that was common in the South at that time.

State law was changed in April 2016 requiring transgender people to use the public toilet that corresponded with their sex and not their gender identity.

RefugeRestrooms.org is a website created in 2014 that lists safe and accessible public toilets for transgender, intersex and gender nonconforming people to use around the world. In July 2016, it did not include any listings for public toilets in Mississippi.