Public toilets in Mississippi | |
---|---|
![]() Public toilets at an emergency FEMA facility in 2005. | |
Language of toilets | |
Local words | washroom restroom john |
Men's toilets | Men |
Women's toilets | Women |
Public toilet statistics | |
Toilets per 100,000 people | 1 (2021) |
Total toilets | ?? |
Public toilet use | |
Type | Western style sit toilet |
Locations | ??? |
Average cost | ??? |
Often equipped with | ??? |
Percent accessible | ??? |
Date first modern public toilets | ??? |
. | |
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
editwashroom is one of the most commonly used words for public toilet in the United States.[1] Euphemisms are often used to avoid discussing the purpose of toilets. Words used include toilet, restroom, bathroom, lavatory and john.[2]
A 2021 study found there was one public toilet per 100,000 people.[3]
History
editThe 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.[4]
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.[5] 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.[4]
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.[5] Racially segregated public toilets were very common in the 1960s.[5]
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.[6][7]
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.[8]
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.[9]
References
edit- ^ Hess, Nico (2019-08-04). Introducing Global Englishes. Scientific e-Resources. ISBN 978-1-83947-299-2.
- ^ Farb, Peter (2015-08-19). Word Play: What Happens When People Talk. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-101-97129-1.
- ^ QS Supplies (11 October 2021). "Which Cities Have The Most and Fewest Public Toilets?". QS Supplies. Retrieved 10 October 2022.
- ^ a b Tisdale, E. S.; Atkins, C. H. (November 1943). "The Sanitary Privy and Its Relation to Public Health". American Journal of Public Health and the Nations Health. 33 (11): 1319–1322. doi:10.2105/AJPH.33.11.1319. ISSN 0002-9572. PMC 1527454. PMID 18015900.
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: CS1 maint: PMC format (link) - ^ a b c Yuko, Elizabeth (5 November 2021). "Where Did All the Public Bathrooms Go?". Bloomberg News. Retrieved 12 October 2022.
- ^ Young, Neil J. "How the Bathroom Wars Shaped America". POLITICO Magazine. Retrieved 2022-10-23.
- ^ Harwell, Debbie Z. (2014-08-05). Wednesdays in Mississippi: Proper Ladies Working for Radical Change, Freedom Summer 1964. Univ. Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-62674-408-0.
- ^ "Loi anti-transgenres : "la bataille des toilettes" fait rage aux Etats-Unis". TF1 INFO (in French). 2016-05-10. Retrieved 2022-10-20.
- ^ Writer, Staff. "Safe restrooms for trans people? There's an app for that". New Bedford Standard-Times. Retrieved 2022-10-31.