One of the line items in the proposed 1924 appropriations for the District of Columbia was $50,000 for a bathing beach at the Tidal Basin for the African American residents of the District. While
white residents had enjoyed a formal beach since 1918, an equivalent for blacks was never established. In 1925, the Senate not only chose not to approve funding for a "colored beach," but
cut out all funding for the white beach, solving the question of equal facilities for white and black by
closing all the beaches.