Black People Can’t Swim: The True Story of a Special Forces Combat Diver

by Damone Brown

The following is an excerpt from Black People Can’t Swim: Finding the Faith to Defy Your Odds by Damone Brown.

A man is not learned until he can read, write, and swim. —Plato

I couldn’t let it show, but those words did bother me. I was well aware of my limits and had taken over a year to earn the Green Beret. I had spent many days cold and wet coming face to face with them. But I despised being reminded of them, particularly by people that didn’t know me. Having earned the Green Beret, in 2005 when I was preparing to go to dive school, I looked around my unit for motivation. Seventh Special Group had over 1,400 soldiers at the time. This number included Special Forces qualified soldiers and support operations soldiers. Out of the 1,400 soldiers, there were zero black soldiers that wore the Combat Diver Badge. I wasn’t afraid of the water, but I wasn’t swim team material either. Maybe it was true, could black people really not swim?

Today there is an alarming amount of black people that do not know how to swim. The USA Swimming Foundation reported in 2023 that 64 percent of African American children have little to no ability to swim. Why is this number so high? Years of racially segregated pools may be the blame. But there is a culture among some black people that think it unimportant to learn to swim. For some, fear of the water has been passed down generationally, others have the mindset of swimming being a white sport, and not for black people. Whatever the reason, it is important for blacks to learn to swim, for one simple reason—learning how not to drown.

It hasn’t always been this way. Although many black Americans today have little affinity for swimming, there is a rich history of swimming dating back to Africa before slavery. At the start of the seventeenth century, European explorers boasted of the swimming ability of West Africans. Pieter de Marees, speaking of the freestyle swimming of Africans from the Gold Coast, said they “swim very fast, generally easily outdoing people of our nation.”[i] Swimming was embedded into the life and culture of the West Africans. Their coastal communities gave them access to oceans, lakes, and rivers, and the ability to experience the water from a young age. Much like today, swimming created a way for Africans to relax and cool off from the sweltering African heat together as a community. Beyond community, the skill of swimming offered jobs such as fishing and diving. Gold Coast Africans were especially sought out to be employed as pearl divers. Marees also noted:

They are very fast swimmers and can keep themselves underwater for a long time. They can dive amazingly far, no less deep, and can see underwater. Because they are so good at swimming and diving, they are specially kept for that purpose in many Countries and employed in this capacity where there is a need for them, such as the Island of St. Margaret in the West Indies, where Pearls are found and brought up from the bottom by Divers.[ii]

The slave trade brought not only the West Africans to the Americas, but their abilities to swim as well. Francis Frederic, a former slave, implies that most slaves knew how to swim in his statement, “Unlike most slaves, I never learned to swim.”[iii] Lynn Sherr in her book, Swim: Why We Love the Water, offers support for the robust history of swimming among slaves stating, “Before the Civil War, more blacks than whites could swim.” She continued, “There are many stories of shipwrecks in which black slaves rescued their owners.” It’s necessary to grapple with the parts of our nation’s past that are difficult, but it’s also necessary to positively move beyond the difficult parts of our nation’s history toward the future.

Many people are unaware of how the Underground Railroad got its name. The story is told that in 1831, Tice Davids, a Kentucky slave, escaped slavery by swimming across the Ohio River. While chasing him in a boat, Davids’s owner lost sight of him. Believing Davids had drowned, he remarked that he must have taken an “underground railroad,” and the phrase has been in use ever since.[iv]

Mikael Rosen in his book, Open Water: The History and Technique of Swimming, states that, “At the beginning of the nineteenth century, apparently 80 percent of the black population knew how to swim, versus 20 percent of white Americans. Many slave plantations were located close to lakes and rivers, and a quick bath in nature with some soap was the only chance for slaves to freshen up after a day of sweaty and dirty work.”[v] In the early days of slavery, many slaves began learning to swim between the ages of four and six.[vi] Recognizing the swimming abilities and lung capacity of their slaves, some slave owners put their slaves to work as pearl divers and lifeguards aboard boats. But after seeing that swimming provided an organized system of escape, owners began to prohibit their slaves from swimming. Soon slave owners began to take more drastic measures to keep their slaves from escaping by swimming. They began to instill a fear of the water. They dunked their disobedient slaves in water and told stories of dangerous creatures living in the water. This new fear of the water coupled with preventing slave children from learning to swim began to remove the West African swimming tradition from the African American culture.

Due to slavery and the fear of the water, black people had limited access to water. At the turn of the twentieth century, America started to build pools, despite the African American culture’s decline in the use of swimming for recreation and safety. The first public pools were built in inner-city disadvantaged neighborhoods. These pools were racially inclusive and served as bath houses for low-income and working-class individuals. Initially, American swimming was divided along gender and class lines, but after World War I in the 1920s, men and women were allowed to swim together, and pools became family gathering spaces that fostered communal socialization. Everything changed after World War I when racial discrimination became accepted and institutionalized throughout the country. Carter G. Woodson described the environment of soldiers after World War I, “Negro soldiers clamoring for equality and justice were beaten, shot down, and lynched to terrorize the whole Black Population.”[vii]

Americans had more leisure to swim and engage in other recreational activities since they worked less and earned more. The increasing freedom for men and women to interact in pools sparked fears about interracial mingling. To prevent black men and white women from mingling in this location, governmental officials implemented racial segregation. “As a result, blacks were banned from entering public baths and beaches and ‘white only’ signs went up next to public pools.”[viii] While the North employed violence and intimidation to keep black people out, the South utilized Jim Crow legislation to maintain pool segregation, and pools became violent battlegrounds for racial strife rather than recreational areas.

This is difficult for me to fathom. As I write this in 2024, I think about swimming with my children. I am reminded of perfect summer weather, where people of all races, genders, and social classes commune safely together at pools. I can recall countless cannon balls, lots of splashing, and uncountable games of Marco Polo.

Prior to this, racial desegregation resulted in wide- spread desertion of public pools. White Americans evacuated cities and moved to the suburbs, where they built backyard and private pools. Wiltse writes, “Between 1950 and 1970, millions of Americans chose to stop swimming at municipal pools.”[ix]  Shortly after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which prohibited segregation based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. As cities stopped funding public pools due to lack of use, pools began to close. Many of the pools that didn’t close fell into disrepair, lacking funds to keep up with the maintenance. The opening of private pools allowed controlled access to both pools and swim lessons.

One of my favorite stories of heroism is of Fred Rogers. In 1969, though segregation was no longer the law, Black Americans were still prevented from swimming alongside white people. Fred Rogers knew that pools continued to refuse entry to blacks and that racial tensions were rising; just a year earlier, Martin Luther King, Jr., had been assassinated. Yet, in this atmosphere, Fred Rogers asked Francois Clemmons, a black police officer to join him on his television show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Mr. Rogers performed a simple but meaningful act inviting Officer Clemmons to cool his feet off in a kiddie pool. Officer Clemmons initially declined the invitation because he didn’t have a towel, but Mr. Rogers said Officer Clemmons could share his.

In less than three minutes of episode 1065, Fred Rogers and Officer Clemmons showed that a black man and a white man could peacefully share the water by taking off their shoes and socks and swishing their feet together in the kiddie pool. They exposed the bigotry of denying black citizens access to pools, or other places in society. The long history of discrimination in pools and elsewhere could not be erased by this one episode, but Mr. Rogers’s brave act was a huge step toward black and white people swimming together.

Growing up as a military brat in the ’70s into the early ’80s, I had the privilege of always being near a military base where I had access to both indoor and outdoor pools. Living in a suburban neighborhood, my family didn’t join local swim clubs, but I was always welcome to tag along with friends whose family did have access. In my college years, I worked as a life- guard over the summers. I remember being shuffled from the prestigious suburban pools to more urban pools. I didn’t mind because I relished the time to help young boys and girls that looked like me fall in love with the water, much like I had.

Today, this problem continues as there are an estimated 10 million residential pools and only 300,000 public pools. It is no longer as much about race, but with the closing of many public pools, access to pools is limited to those who can afford it. The racial gap in swimming that persists among blacks today is not due to inability, but due to lack of access. Within the last several years, there have been notable black swimmers that have climbed the ranks in US Olympic swimming.

After nearly drowning, Cullen Jones’s parents put him in swim lessons, he learned to swim at only five years old, and eventually became the first black swimmer to both hold a world record and win an Olympic gold medal. He is a four-time Olympic medalist (two gold, two silver) and a two-time gold medalist at the World Championships. Sabir Muhammad while at Stanford University was the first African American swimmer to set an American record (100 butterfly) in 1997. Also from Stanford, Simone Manuel was the first African American to an individual Olympic gold medal at the 2016 Olympic games. As the 2024 Olympic Games approach, Anthony Nesty, who first made history in 1988 by becoming the  first  black  male  swimmer  to win an Olympic gold medal will make history once again,  becoming  the  first  black  US  Olympic  head swimming coach as he leads the men’s swim team this summer in Paris.

Swimming is more than a sport. It is an essential life skill that must not be taken for granted. Learning this essential life skill will not only decrease the number of drownings, but just like in the seventeenth century, it can open a host of not only leisure activities, but employment opportunities as well.

The history of blacks having limited access to pools was not the end of my story. The story takes a sharp turn. Even though blacks were once excluded from combat roles and restricted from attending dive courses in the military, I would one day soon have the opportunity to attend dive school.

______________________________

This first appeared in The Havok Journal on October 3, 2024.

Damone Brown is a former Special Forces Combat Diver and founder of Olive Drab Technologies, LLC. His journey from enlistment to becoming one of the few black Combat Divers is a remarkable testament to his dedication, skill, and spirit. Damone’s story is one of breaking barriers and achieving the extraordinary, serving as an inspiration to all who dare to dream big. He resides in the Washington DC area with his wife and children.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.

---

[i] Dawson, Kevin. “Enslaved Swimmers and Divers in the Atlantic World.” The Journal of American History. Vol. 92. No.4, 2006. 1331.

[ii] Pieter de Marees, Description and Historical Account of the Gold Kingdom of Guinea (1602), trans. Albert Van Dantzig and Adam Jones (Oxford, 1987), 186, quoted in Kevin Dawson, “Swimming, Surfing and Underwater Diving in Early Modern Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora.’” Chapter in Navigating African Maritime History, edited by Carina E. Ray and Jeremy Rich, 81-116. Research in Maritime History. Liverpool University Press, 2009.

[iii] Dawson, 1345.

[iv] Pitts, Lee. “Black Splash: The History of African American Swimmers.” 2007.   1.   12   April   2024.   https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/ read/7600375/black-splash-page-1-international-swimming-hall-of- fame.

[v] Rosen, Mikael. Open Water: The History and Technique of Swimming.

[vi] Dawson 1344.

[vii] Delmont, Matthew. Half American – The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting in World War II at Home and Abroad. New York, NY. 2022.

[viii] Rosen, 55.

[ix] Wiltse, Jeff. Contested Waters A Social History of Swimming Pools in America. University of North Carolina Press, 2010.