“Pool: A Social History of Segregation” (POOL) is a 4,700 square-foot, multi-disciplinary museum exhibition set to open September 3, 2021 in the National Historic Landmark Fairmount Water Works in Philadelphia, illuminating a history of segregated swimming in America and its connection to present-day drowning issues affecting Black communities.
For more than 100 years, pools across the United States have provided a stage for brutal acts of both conformity and social change, as people, ideas and beliefs intersected, clashed and shifted through public recreation. Even before the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, federal judges had already issued rulings declaring swimming pool segregation unconstitutional and injunctions forcing cities to desegregate public pools.
For many Black individuals and families, the answer to these growing disparities has been to avoid the water altogether or to stay in the shallow end or to pretend to be able to swim when forced into the water.
But this is just the beginning of the story, really. Past racial discrimination at swimming pools, coupled with a general shift of funds away from public pools to private swimming and recreational opportunities, have had a significant and lasting impact on Black communities—an impact that continues today:
- According to reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black children and teenagers are almost 6 times as likely as white children to drown in a swimming pool.
- USA Swimming reports that 69% of Black children have little to no swimming ability, compared with 42% of white children.
Through an inspiring collective of artists, swimming champions, aquatic activists, researchers and scholars, POOL invites visitors to challenge personal assumptions about the act of swimming together. It encourages the examination of the role of public space in civic life today and in the building of healthy communities and individuals— illuminating the ongoing failures of democracy— as ordinary people continue to push and pull towards a more just world. To change this cycle, people such as swimming champions Cullen Jones, Maritza Correia McClendon, Simone Manuel and Sabir Muhammad and aquatic activists, researchers and scholars such as Ed Accura, Naji Ali, Dr. Angela Beale-Tawfeeq, Kevin Colquitt, Malachi and Olivia Cunningham, Dr. Kevin Dawson, Coach Jim Ellis, Rhonda Harper, Dr. Miriam Lynch, Anthony Patterson, Sr., Bruce Wigo, and Dr. Jeff Wiltse, believe the answer to correcting these disparities can be found in making the lifesaving skill of swimming available to all.
Pool: A Social History of Segregation was made possible by generous support from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage the Philadelphia Water Department, and created by Victoria Prizzia of Habitheque, Inc., in collaboration with Dr. Jeff Wiltse, author of Contested Waters: A Social history of Swimming Pools in America. Admission is always free. Visit poolphl.com for more information.
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