Swimming and Black History Month

Dear SwimJim Family Member,

As Black History Month draws to a close, SwimJim wanted to share with you swimming’s important role in African American history before and after the Civil War.

Swimming pools were a flashpoint in the Civil Rights Movement and the eventual dissolution of Jim Crow laws by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  However segregation’s long history in the US produced a cultural disconnect between blacks and swimming that persists in a drowning rate of African Americans that is double that of whites.

In this special newsletter, we have excerpted a sliver of what there is to learn at the International Swimming Hall of Fame’s special exhibition “Black Splash: The Amazing History of Swimming in Black and White”.

You can learn more at the ISHOF’s website at www.ishof.org or at their museum and archive just south of Las Olas Boulevard and A1A in Fort Lauderdale.

Sincerely,

Though the vast majority of whites were unable to swim, most blacks learned swimming as an ordinary part of plantation life.  Many others worked aboard merchant and whaling fleets, while the Union Navy was comprised of one-quarter blacks in 1863.

As many slaves escaped by swimming away from their captors, slaveholders eventually prohibited their slaves from swimming.   In fact, the term “underground railroad” was coined when a slave named Tice Davids swam across the Ohio River to freedom in 1831.  His master, who could not swim, said Davids must have disappeared through “an underground railroad” when he got to the far shore. Although generally associated with Harriet Tubman, it was Davids’ swimming feat that led to that term.

Modern technology allowed swimming pools to be built in every city across the US and national learn-to-swim programs are launched to combat drownings.  Yet Jim Crow laws segregate society and blacks are not allowed access to public pools or to safe, monitored beaches.  Thus drownings among blacks begins to increase as swimming is excised from African American culture.

The modern civil rights movement can be traced to black veterans of WWII demanding access to beaches and public swimming facilities.  Virtually every attempt to integrate pools and beaches results in violence.  In 1956, North Carolina blacks were threatened by a mob of 3,000 angry whites after demanding access to public pools to safeguard their children from drowning.  As Congress debates passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, integrationists in Florida stage a “swim in” at a St Augustine motel and are doused by the manager with muriatic acid.  The front-page images of this act are credited with the passage of the Act.

The racial tensions of integration take time to dissolve, but in the seventies, Enith Brigita is the first black woman to medal in swimming in the ’76 Olympics.  Several other African American athletes take titles, records and medals in future Olympics, NCAA and national competitions.  However African Americans continue to drown in disproportionate numbers to whites.