User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in Tennessee

Public toilets in Tennessee are found at a rate of around three per 100,000 people. They have a history of being used to try to address public health concerns but also of enforcing racist and sexist social policies.

= 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 were three public toilets per 100,000 people.

Cintas awards America’s Best Public Restroom. In 2019, the winner was the Nasheville Zoo for the animal exhibits displayed floor to ceiling in these toilets.

History
Railway stations began building big terminals in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s. One of their features were big public toilet facilities. Train station designer Walter G. Berg said in his 1893 that public toilet facilities should be used to keep undesirable elements out. In the South, this included colored people.

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.

Racially segregated public toilets were very common in the 1960s. 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.

The Turner v. Randolph case in 1961 was about desegregation of public library toilets in Memphis. The city argued against desegregation, saying that the prevalence of venereal diseases among black people would result in white women getting it.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, public pay toilets were viewed by feminist activists as sexist because public urinals were free but public sit style toilets were not. The Committee to End Pay Toilets in America, more commonly known as CEPTIA, tried to change this by getting municipals on public pay toilets. Their first success was in Chicago in 1973. This was then followed by municipal and state wide success in a strong of additional states including Alaska, California, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, and Wyoming.

There were no public toilets in Nashville in the early 1980s. This was an issue that impacted homeless people. As a result, people engaged in open defecation in alleyways and parking lots. Some charities like Union Mission, Salvation Army and Travelers Aid allowed homeless people to use their facilities. There was a crackdown against homeless people using the toilets at the federal courthouse in the winter of 1984 in Nashville.