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What began as an innocent trip to a swimming pool on a hot Monday afternoon, turned into a Civil Rights lesson, for 65 African American kids who visited a private, read white, swimming pool.
From looking at the pictures of the children from the Philadelphia Creative Step Day Camp, most of them looked to be under 12 years old. These kids were told that they could come swim at the Valley Swim Club every Monday. Upon getting into the pool, most of the white kids either got out on their own, or were pulled out of the pool by their parents. Many of the Day Campers allege to have heard racial slurs aimed their way. They were then told by the lifeguards that they had to leave the pool IMMEDIATELY because “minorities aren’t allowed to swim there.”
When the president of the Valley Swim Club, John Duesler, was contacted, his initial statement was that “there was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club.” After that comment became public, Mr. Duesler and many of the parents who pulled their children from the pool are now saying that it was a “misunderstanding.” Even a child can recognize racism when he or she sees it!
By the next Friday, there was such an outrage about how these children were treated and how these white parents acted, that Mr. Duesler was compelled to speak out.
With his wife at his side, John Duesler, defended the club by saying that it wasn’t about the color of these children’s skin that forced them to be persona non grata. Now the reason is that it was a safety issue. There were just too many kids for the lifeguards to monitor. Am I supposed to believe that when the deal was being brokered there was no talk of how many children would be swimming at the pool? That a figure of $1900.00 was just thrown out there? Am I to believe that no additional lifeguards were brought on to handle the additional swimmers?
This whole incident reminded me of a movie called “Introducing Dorothy Dandridge” starring the lovely Halle Berry. There is a scene in the movie where Dorothy/Halle puts her foot in a pool and the few white patrons look on in disgust and most of them get out of the pool. The next day as “Dorothy” walks by the pool, she sees the maintenance man DRAINING THE IT! I wonder if that happened at the Valley Swim Club? The incident with Dorothy Dandridge occurred in the 1950′s. Are we are still having similar incidents in 2009?
My father was in the Navy and that gave our family access to the Navy base pool. My mother would drive my brother and I down to the pool on a regular basis. I’m talking two or three days a week. And during the summer we went swimming even more frequently. We took swim lessons and entered swimming meets. And yes, both my brother and I won or placed in many of the swim meets. Both my brother and I were doing “flip turns” at seven and eight years of age. And to see two heavyset African American kids placing in swim meets was a sight to be sure!
At my high school, for the first semester of our freshman year, we had to take swimming. After that, it was an elective. My brother and I are 19 months apart. So when I was a junior, he was a freshman. I can remember the swim coach after watching me swim, come up to me and say “you swim like your brother.” Since I am the oldest, I told him, “you mean my brother swims like me!” I then asked him what he meant by that statement but he didn’t answer. He just walked away. But I already knew what he meant and it made me smile!
If you have ever swam at a “foreign pool“, meaning one you have never swam at before, and there is a lifeguard on duty, in order to swim laps, the lifeguard makes you swim a lap to see if you know how to swim. At ten or eleven years old, I can remember swimming half of a lap to hear lifeguards yelling “ok, ok.” That was their way of telling both my brother and I that we could swim well enough to be in the “adult end” of the pool. That was a regular occurrence. So by high school, I knew EXACTLY what the Helix High Swim coach meant when he said that I “swim like my brother.” He meant to say that we both swim like REAL SWIMMERS! And I don’t doubt for ONE MINUTE, that if my brother and I “looked the part“, we would have been heavily recruited to join the Helix High Swim Team!
I recently started swimming again and I can’t tell you how good it felt to be in the water again. Yeah, I take showers. But there is something different being able to swim. And for kids to be banned from doing so, to put it lightly, just SUCKS! One step forward with Obama being elected president and 50 years worth of steps backward with the Valley Swim Club!
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