This article is from the fall 2024 edition of Mobile Baykeeper’s print quarterly, CURRENTS. The magazine is mailed to active members who have given more than $50 in the past year. To get on the magazine’s mailing list, donate here.
by Shalela Dowdy
The Black community in the U.S. has a complex relationship with water. During the period of slavery, many of those who were enslaved sought freedom and chose to escape to the North. One of the obstacles encountered was bodies of water that sometimes separated a free state from a slave state. To prevent enslaved people from successfully escaping, many were denied the opportunity to learn how to swim. Getting into the water was a way to change one’s scent and throw off the dogs used to hunt down those brave enough to escape.
Decades later, Black communities faced racial discrimination concerning pool access during the Jim Crow-era between the late 1800s and well into the 1900s. The discriminatory pool practices and violence during this period denied Blacks access to community pools. This contributed to a cultural climate discouraging Black people to swim, which in turn led to a fear of swimming.
According to the USA Swimming Foundation, about 70 percent of Black children are non-swimmers, which is due to lack of access, financial constraints, fear, and cultural factors. As the oldest of ten children from a single-parent household, I grew up without the opportunity to partake in swimming lessons, or become familiar with water. My mother does not know how to swim and neither does her mother which played a role in my chances of acquiring the skill set. As an undergraduate at the United States Military Academy at West Point, I had no choice but to learn how to swim because it was a required class. Even though I successfully passed the required swim course at West Point, I still do not have a great relationship with water, nor do I feel comfortable in that space. If I had been introduced to swimming at an early age, my sentiments toward the water would be much different.
In 2023, the Africatown Heritage Foundation, under the direction of Anderson Flenn, established the Africatown Swim Program. The program was created by Aaryan Morrison and has been held at the swimming pool in Kidd Park (Africatown’s only swimming pool). The program, whose day-to-day operations are run by Tyrese Bess, offers children in the community free swim lessons three times a week in the summer. Instruction has been provided by Coaches Derrick Tinsley and Davis Craig, both experienced local swim instructors.
For her, Aaryan says the most rewarding part of the program is “witnessing the kids who refused to get into the water in the first lesson jumping into the deeper end of the pool by the end of the summer.” She says it was great to observe the confidence of the swimmers grow and see them believing in themselves and their abilities to be successful swimmers.
The swimming lessons are also a family affair, due to the presence of the parents at the pool. “The parents are an essential part of changing intergenerational attitudes of fear, avoidance, and disempowerment that many folks in Black communities have about being in, on, and near the water,” she says.
The program graduated its second class of students this summer, and Aaryan believes swim programs will be integral to changing the statistic that three-fifths of drowning deaths in the U.S. each year are Black Americans. The program establishes the infrastructure needed to create and sustain a profound cultural shift.
Programs like the Africatown Swim Program are important in shaping the narrative of the Black community’s relationship to water. I attended a few swim sessions this summer, and it was great to witness Black children of all ages learning how to swim. Hopefully, this program can be the blueprint for more programs to follow and play a role in decreasing the number of drownings in the Black community, all the while re-establishing a communal love for the water.
Shalela Dowdy is a community organizer at Mobile Baykeeper.
