When Latrice Rose-Moore thinks of childhood summers, she remembers the small kiddie pool in her yard fondly, but also that her family didn’t go to the Allegheny County wave pool or any Pittsburgh city pools during the hottest months.
For years, Rose-Moore didn’t swim. The lack of exposure to the water growing up made her wary, and by the time she reached adulthood, the wariness had turned into fear.
She isn’t alone in this, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which reports that 64% of Black children and 36.8% of Black adults can’t swim. The nation counts around 4,000 unintentional drowning deaths a year, and Black children are around three times more likely to drown than their white counterparts.
The reasons for this are both historical and cultural. Experts say that institutional racism, a lack of representation on professional swim teams, and inherited fears can keep Black Americans out of the water.
There was a time in the early 1900s when Black Americans swam at higher rates than white Americans. That changed in the 1930s. The decade ushered in a time when men and women could swim together, creating the perfect storm for discriminatory laws to exclude Black Americans from pools. As their access to bodies of water fell, rates of swimming fell, and post-segregation measures such as privatized pools, neglect of public pools and the filling in of some pools entirely kept the rates down.
Since Black Americans were barred from using pools, they’d sometimes opt for less supervised and more unpredictable bodies of water, such as lakes or the ocean, increasing incidents of drowning and other accidents. Historians believe this created a fear of the water passed down through generations.
In recent years, locally and nationally, there’s been an effort to reclaim Black Americans’ practice of swimming and ensure Black children’s safety through lessons, crash courses in water safety and competitive teams. Leaders of these initiatives say their goal is to address the disparity and avoid another generation of Black youth being kept out of the water due to a lack of access and fear.
#BlackBabiesDoSwim
Studies show that if a parent doesn’t swim, there’s a low likelihood that their child will ever learn.
With that in mind, Rose-Moore decided during pregnancy that she didn’t want to pass her fears onto her children. At the time, she was reflecting on the interconnectedness of pregnancy and the water and the institutional prejudices that had long kept Black Americans landlocked.
That’s why, when Rose-Moore’s online support group-turned-nonprofit Melanin Mommies PGH evolved into the real world, it seemed natural to have play dates at the pool where mothers and babies could spend time in the water together.
“Our goal is to fight the disparities within swim[ming] just based on the history of African Americans not knowing how to swim, not being exposed to the water, and our history of water being used to discriminate against us, to abuse us,” Rose-Moore said.
Still, Rose-Moore knew that there was a difference between playing in the water and staying safe in the water, so a decade ago Melanin Mommies launched the #BlackBabiesDoSwim initiative to provide lessons through a collaboration with the Hill District-based Thelma Lovette YMCA. Classes were divided into age ranges from six months to 10 years. Over the course of six to eight weeks, at a discounted rate, students learned water safety, got the chance to hone their front and back strokes, and gained confidence in the water.
Now, Rose-Moore is proud to say that her two daughters are comfortable in the water.
The swimming initiative was one of the most popular offerings of Melanin Mommies, enrolling more than 100 children since it began in 2016. The program is currently on pause but the organization is in talks with the Kingsley Association, in Larimer, and national initiative Swim 1922 about plans to revive it in 2027.
When Black swimmers faced violence
“Whites only” signs are most often associated with the South, but Alonna Carter-Donaldson, an associate curator at the Sen. John Heinz History Center’s African American Program, said that in 1930, a Black Pittsburgher would have had as much trouble entering a public pool in the Steel City as they would in Birmingham, Alabama. In theory, the Pennsylvania Equal Rights Bill of 1887 prohibited segregation, and the Highland Park Pool and the Paulson Pool in Lincoln-Lemington-Belmar were open to everyone. In practice, Black residents’ were kept away.
For decades, Carter-Donaldson said, Black swimmers’ attempts to swim in the Highland Park Pool or the Paulson Pool were met with violence, to which law enforcement showed indifference. During that time, those most likely to experience violence, Carter-Donaldson said, were children.
“There was a lot of pushback, and there’s also a lot of anxiety about Black men and white women being together in sort of an intimate space, like a pool,” Carter-Donaldson said. “So yes, [the law] was unfortunately ignored. … When swimmers … or parents, I should say, would go to report some of these instances of violence, the police officers sometimes would turn their backs and say that they also disapproved” of Black residents using the pools.
One of the bloodiest incidents of violence included a mob of 200 people beating two Black men, which in 1932 prompted the Robert H. Terrell Law Club, an advocacy organization that lobbied for the Black community’s interests, to petition Pittsburgh City Council to act. The persistence of locals, the advocacy of the NAACP and victories during the Civil Rights Era pushed the Highland Park Pool toward integrating by 1952.
In the meantime, however, the violence Black Pittsburghers faced led to them swimming less.
“[The] threat of violence, threat of being drowned or killed, would absolutely curtail people from wanting to even attempt to learn how to swim or visit a pool or be anywhere near a body of water. And I should also preface and say that these instances, obviously in Pittsburgh, were not isolated,” Carter-Donaldson said. “A lot of this stems from the Red Summer of 1919,” which saw riots nationally, including the stoning of a Black teen who’d drifted into the white area of a segregated beach in Chicago.
Financially draining
Sometimes fear isn’t the only barrier to entering the pool; it’s joined by the cost of swimming classes. The #BlackBabiesDoSwim program charged for lessons at a discounted rate, but Rose-Moore is trying to raise money to expand the program and reduce the cost or make it free. Meanwhile there is another program trying to make swimming classes more affordable through scholarships.
Making Waves is an initiative run by Outdoor Afro, a national nonprofit with a Pittsburgh chapter, that celebrates the Black community’s connection to nature through hiking, camping and birding. “As Outdoor Afro expanded water-based programming like paddling, rafting, boating and fishing, we saw how important swim confidence and water safety are to full participation in outdoor recreation and family life,” said Rue Mapp, founder and CEO of Outdoor Afro.
Mapp said that in her childhood, her father built a pool in their backyard and taught her to swim. Since that can’t be the case for everyone, Making Waves offers scholarships of $200 per student or $400 per family toward introductory swimming lessons.
“Making Waves grew from a recognition that too many families face financial and fear barriers to something as foundational as introductory swim lessons,” Mapp said.
Since 2019, Making Waves has provided scholarships, sometimes called “swimmerships,” to 6,000 children and caregivers across multiple states. Through connections with local organizations and swim instructors, Mapp said, Making Waves’ goal is to increase safety and access for Black families after years of segregation made both things so scarce.
“Making Waves is about changing that reality,” Mapp said. “We want families to feel confident, capable and connected in and around water — whether that means swim lessons, a family day at the lake, paddling a river or simply knowing their children can move safely and confidently through the world.”
Reviving the Stingrays?
Collaboration with Rose-Moore’s initiative wouldn’t be the Kingsley Association’s first foray into reducing swimming disparities. For nearly 15 years, the Kingsley Association was the home of the Stingrays, a competitive swim team coached by Hosea Holder Jr.
“Coach Hosea Holder was the oldest Black coach registered with USA Swimming, and taught swim competency and trained champions in the Pittsburgh area for over 48 years,” the Kingsley Association said in a statement. “Even after being denied AAU (American Athletic Association) membership, Coach Holder’s mentality of ‘fight the fight’ helped him press on and [he] created a swimming legacy that will be felt in Pittsburgh for decades to come.”
Born in Birmingham and educated in Pittsburgh, Holder’s coaching career began in 1965. He felt strongly that Black youth in the Pittsburgh area should be exposed to the water as much as other sports.
Although the Kingsley Stingrays haven’t been active in years, the organization hopes to revive the team and bring swim classes and competitive swimming to underserved communities.
In the meantime, Rose-Moore said that she measures the #BlackBabiesDoSwim initiative’s success in the children’s comfort in the water. In the beginning of the cohorts, Rose-Moore said, the kids were nervous, but after a few weeks, they were feeling confident in the water. Sometimes so much so that a few of the initiative’s graduates have gone on to join the Hill District’s swim team, which Rose-Moore hopes will continue to be the case for the future.
“That’s a moment that I’m extremely, extremely proud of, because it just reminds me of, historically, how African Americans were denied access to pools, ” Rose-Moore said. “And those Black families weren’t able to even be in the same pool as those families, because as African Americans, they would look at it like, ‘oh, they were tainting the pool … They can’t have that same privilege.’ So just to be in our facility and have this type of program, I’m very proud of that.”
Atiya Irvin-Mitchell is a Pittsburgh-based freelance writer and can be reached at airvinmitchell@gmail.com.
This story was fact-checked by Ada Perlman.
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