Thelma Guinn

Staff at the closing of the Government Free Bathhouse. Thelma Guinn is the second from the right.

Hot Springs National Park Archives

Helping in the Fight for Freedom

Thelma Guinn witnessed monumental events in Hot Springs National Park and the town. She worked in the national park’s Government Free Bathhouse when it ultimately closed its doors in 1957. For over 75 years Hot Springs had a location that could offer its most desperate visitors a place to access the thermal water without charge. But before the closing of the bathhouse, Guinn was busy making an impact in her community.

Newspaper articles single out Guinn for her effort to improve the lives of Black women in town, serving as the president of the City Federation of Women’s Clubs in Hot Springs. Groups like this offered a space for women to come together and discuss issues that affected them directly and act to make a change.

Ms. Guinn was also actively involved in the local chapter of the Hot Springs NAACP. The organization, revived in the late 1950s, focused on desegregating public establishments in Hot Springs. This included the bathhouses on Bathhouse Row which remained unofficially segregated for decades. The local NAACP changed this when they publically protested Black bathing restrictions and secured guarantees by the park’s bathhouse managers to desegregate their businesses. Thelma Guinn worked as the chairperson of the local NAACP’s Freedom Fund during this period. She and other bath attendants held leadership positions in the organization.

Bath attendants like Thelma Guinn and others took action to make change and create a better Hot Springs for themselves, their families, and future generations that hoped to work and play in and around the national park.