African-American children and adolescents are six times more likely to drown than their Caucasian counterparts. These data, reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the main public health protection agencies in the United States, underline the inequalities in the face of learning to swim in the country. And irrigate the permanent exhibition POOL: a social history of segregation, housed at the Fairmount Water Works in Philadelphia. Jeff Wiltse, professor of history at the University of Montana, discusses the social role of American public swimming pools, their difficulty of access for African-Americans and the consequences of this discrimination on American society today.
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Let’s resume. During segregation (between 1877 and 1964), many American states imposed segregation on racial grounds in daily activities, professional life and the exercise of civil rights. Public places are affected, from trains to schools to swimming pools. The latter crystallize the tensions since they are “visually and socially intimate places”, explains Jeff Wiltse in the exhibition catalogue.
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In 1952 in Baltimore, Mamie Livingston (above, right) defies racial segregation by trying to break into a swimming pool reserved for whites. (Afro-American Newspapers Archive)
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Two scenarios arise. Either there are no pools for African American communities or the pools are ridiculously large. In the 1960s, the government built swimming pools for black people. But, far from the immense and opulent expanses of water offered to whites, these “mini-pools” cannot “in no way encourage the practice of swimming”, denounces the university. Six meters by twelve for less than one meter deep, all surrounded by fences and without a cabin to change… The children then nicknamed them “giant urinals”.
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As the exhibition explains, the end of segregation did not spell the end of inequality, far from it. Many basins have closed, abandoned or deserted by white populations. It then became almost impossible to learn to swim or to arouse swimming-related vocations for a whole fringe of American citizens. Today, “nearly 69% of African-American children can not or hardly swim, compared to 42% for Caucasian-type children”, laments USA Swimming, the American swimming federation. With the help of African-American swimmers, coaches and academics, the POOL exhibition intends to move the lines.
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