Cullen Jones, the first Black American to hold a world record in swimming, is now an ambassador for the USA Swimming Foundation’s Make a Splash initiative, which has provided free or low-cost swimming lessons to more than 4 million children.
Photo by Mike Lewis, courtesy USA Swimming

Thousands of public pools opened in the U.S. during the first half of the twentieth century, but Black swimmers were excluded from the majority of them until the late 1950s and 1960s.
Community Swimming Pool, Greenbelt, Maryland, 1939, photo courtesy Library of Congress Photo Archive

Many northern cities neglected maintenance of their municipal pools during the 1970s and 1980s, resulting in a wave of deterioration that reflected the larger decline of urban America.
McCabe Pool, Detroit, 1989, photo courtesy Detroit News Photo Archive

Of the 11 WPA pools opened in New York in the 1930s, only one was located in a predominantly Black neighborhood—Colonial Park, now Jackie Robinson Pool, in Harlem.
Photo courtesy NYC Parks Photo Archive

Harlem’s Colonial Park Pool (now Jackie Robinson Pool) became an important center of social activity for the Black community, especially in summer, when it opened in 1936.
Photo courtesy NYC Parks Photo Archive

From 1933-1940, the federal government funded nearly 1,000 public swimming pools throughout the country as part of the New Deal. Many were large pools that served as the center of summertime social activities in many communities.
Photo courtesy NYC Parks Photo Archive

The public pool facilities built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s including heated pools, underwater lighting, diving towers, even beaches for lounging and socializing.
Diving at Faber Park Pool, Staten Island, 1938, photo courtesy NYC Parks Photo Archive

Although many of the public pools built in the 1930s and 1940s weren’t legally segregated, their placement in largely white neighborhoods created physical and psychological barriers for many Black swimmers.
Red Hook Public Pool, New York City, 1970, photo courtesy NYC Parks Photo Archive

By the 1960s, funding for large public pool projects dried up. Inexpensive “mini-pools” were a way to provide swimming, however limited, to underserved urban neighborhoods.
Sterling Place Pocket Park Mini-Pool, Brooklyn, 1967, photo courtesy NYC Parks Photo Archive

Portable “mini-pools” were an attempt to provide swimming opportunities to underserved urban families in the 1960s and 1970s. By 1972, New York City operated 74 mini-pools throughout the city.
Marcus Garvey Portable Pool, New York City, 1968, photo courtesy NYC Parks Photo Archive

In 2006, Cullen Jones became the first Black American to hold a world record in swimming as part of the U.S. 4 x 100-meter freestyle relay team. In 2008, he also earned an Olympic record in the same event.
Photo by Mike Lewis, courtesy USA Swimming

A Black swim club meets at the Kelly Natatorium, the indoor pool once located at the Fairmount Water Works, in 1962.
Photo courtesy of the Fairmount Water Works and Philadelphia Water Department Collection

In 1962, the owner of the Monson Motor Lodge in St. Augustine, Florida, used muriatic acid to drive a group of segregation protestors out of the pool during a “swim-in.” Photos of the incident helped to persuade legislators to vote in favor of the Civil Rights Act.
Bettmann/Associated Press

In 1952, 17-year-old Mamie Livingston (right) challenged racial segregation in Baltimore, Maryland, by seeking admission to a whites-only public swimming pool.
Afro-American Newspapers Archives and Research Center, Baltimore

Maritza Correa McClendon was the first Black female swimmer to win an NCAA Championship, the first to make the US Olympic Swim Team, and the first to medal in the Olympics, winning a silver medal in 2004.
Photo courtesy USA Swimming

In the summer of 1936, New York City opened 11 public pools constructed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). These state-of-the-art facilities could accommodate up to 5,000 swimmers.
Highbridge Park Pool, 1963, photo courtesy NYC Parks Photo Archive

During the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) built elaborate pool facilities to provide cheap and healthy entertainment for booming urban populations.
Astoria Pool, New York City, 1936, photo courtesy NYC Parks Photo Archive

In the summer of 1962, demonstrators in Cairo, Illinois, protested the tactic of skirting anti-discrimination laws by putting public pools into the hands of private management, transforming them into “clubs” for whites only.
Photo: Danny Lyon/Magnum Photos

In the summer of 1962, the public pool in Cairo, Illinois, became the stage for peaceful protests against segregation led by famed civil rights leader John Lewis and other activists.
Photo: Danny Lyon/Magnum Photos

In 1955, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered an end to illegal segregation at Boulevard Pools in Northeast Philadelphia, creating an important precedent for other pool desegregation battles.
Boulevard Pools, 1935, Philadelphia Record Archives, reproduced with permission from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania

A Black swim club finds a rare space of welcome in the 1950s at the YMCA Christian Street in Philadelphia.
John W. Mosley Photograph Collection, Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, Temple University Libraries