Black Folks Dont Swim Women in the Arts Museum
Updated: 12:35 p.m.
Due to severe flooding caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ida, the exhibition Puddle has been damaged and its opening indefinitely delayed. Likewise, the H2o Works Interpretive Center is closed until further notice. Much of the exhibition's content volition be attainable on its website, PoolPHL.com.
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When Cheryl Anderson Chaney was a teenager in the 1960s, her male parent taught her to swim in the Kelly puddle at the Fairmount Waterworks in Philadelphia. Her male parent tried to teach her brothers to swim there, but nobody else took to the water.
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"Information technology didn't go over too well," said Chaney, 74, who is Blackness. "You had to come back home and shower and launder your hair, and my hair was long. It was more than of a chore for my grandmother because she would handle my hair when I got back from the pond pool. You ever had to wash your hair out."
Still, she loved the water and establish joy in her silent laps through Kelly's cool depths.
Chaney was fortunate in that she had a father — an engineer with the urban center's Water Department — who proactively taught her to swim. She is likewise fortunate she grew upwardly with access to a public puddle at a fourth dimension when segregation and other exclusionary tactics kept people of color locked out of many opportunities to savour the water.
That history of segregation, swimming, and Black joy is at present on display at the aforementioned pool where Chaney perfected her strokes, in an exhibition, "Pool," created past Victoria Prizzia.
Inspired by "Contested Waters: A Social History of Segregation" by Jeff Wiltse, the exhibition traces the history of the public pool, and admission to water generally, as playing a vital role in building African American resilience. Pools were grounds on which people fought for civil rights and congenital community, the exhibit shows through historical timelines, videos, and artist installations. The testify explains how people of the African Diaspora were excellent swimmers with deep cultural and spiritual connections to h2o before 20th-century restrictions blocked access.
A historic timeline stretches along the pool room's length, betwixt windows overlooking the Schuylkill River. It explains that in the early on 20th century, public pools were open to all races, segregated by gender. In the 1930s, pond became America's number i exercise pastime, and pools became coed. As soon equally it became apparent that Black men and white women might share the aforementioned water, racial segregation settled in.
In some places, segregation was established outright. In states where segregation was illegal, alternative means to keep Black people out were instituted, like requiring a health card upon entry, a requirement often simply enforced on Blackness visitors.
In 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. went to a motel in St. Augustine, Florida, to demonstrate for the integration of its restaurant. He was ultimately arrested. Every bit role of that activeness, a number of Black protesters jumped into the motel'southward pool, which prompted manager James Brock to cascade hydrochloric acid on them. Hydrochloric acid — or hydrochloric acid — is commonly used to dissolve rust and etch physical.
The news media were present at the time, and Brock's shocking use of highly caustic acid on Black people was photographed and published in newspapers. The next mean solar day, June 19, 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act.
Among the wealth of historic data, the exhibition gives most of its space over to artists. They interpreted the history of swimming while Black — such as an animated film written and narrated by playwright James Ijames — and showcased beauty found in the human activity of water play.
A flat-screen monitor placed horizontally within a sunken portion of the pool room — visitors look downwardly on information technology, as though looking into a body of water — shows a mesmerizing video of Black synchronized swimmers, teenage sisters Rachel and Brianna Holmes of Santa Clara, California.
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One of the empty swimming lanes of the Kelly pool has been given over to artist Azikiwe Mohammed, who put two Blackness sculptural figures on either end. They are bathed in projections of low-cal appearing to flicker on the surface of water. Information technology'southward called "Two Lifeguards."
Artist Homer Jackson created xv video vignettes that speak to Blackness relationships with water, starting from Mami Wata, a river spirit associated with Westward Africa who continued to be venerated past African people in the Caribbean; and Oshun, a Yoruba river goddess honored annually during Philadelphia'southward Odunde festival.
Jackson's vignettes include poetic meditations on the Black community's alienation from water. The multidisciplinary artist, who also heads the Philadelphia Jazz Project, grew upwardly in North Philadelphia, where he recalls he did non feel welcome at public pools.
"I lived far enough away from the recreation eye that information technology was like you were risking your life to get to the recreation eye, you know what I hateful?" said Jackson. "Yous didn't go there unless it was a really organized situation, like eight of u.s. going to go pond or viii of u.s. going to play basketball. I retrieve this still holds true for Philadelphia: Recreation centers are the property of the people who live close by. If you don't live close by, you're a guest."
Jackson has always been an active person. As a teenager, he climbed the ranks as an accomplished Male child Watch. He said he had earned enough merit badges to become an Eagle Scout, but never got the necessary swimming badge. Swimming was never something he felt comfortable doing.
"I grew upwardly in the aftermath of Emmett Till," he said, referring to the grisly 1955 murder of a young Black boy by a white mob in Mississippi. "My female parent had an invisible leash on me, that y'all couldn't go also far, anywhere, at any time."
Jackson said he resisted swimming out of a fear he inherited from his female parent.
"For a long time, I didn't know who that dude Emmett was, only I hated that dude considering he messed up my fun," he said.
"Puddle" shows that Black Americans accept forged a path to the pool. Among the many video profiles is Jim Ellis, the legendary Philadelphia swim passenger vehicle who became the subject area of the 2007 picture show "Pride," starring Terrence Howard.
In an interview, Ellis recalled starting the city's start Blackness competitive swim team, called PDR, nominally standing for Philadelphia Department of Recreation, but which Ellis dubbed Pride, Determination, and Resilience.
Many swimmers from Ellis' program became world form, including Michael Norment, the first Black swimmer on the U.Due south. national squad. Merely recently, through the work of Ellis and others, take Blackness swimmers begun to suspension into the sport'south elite grade. In 2000, Anthony Ervin became the offset Black American to win Olympic medals — the gold and silvery — and, in 2004, Maritza Correia McClendon became the kickoff Black woman to win an Olympic medal as role of a swim relay team. Cullen Jones became the first Blackness American to hold a world record in swimming, in 2006.
"It was my style of finding a mode to make a difference," Ellis said. "Nosotros were protesting in the '60s and '70s, it was a big motility of finding something to practice to help African Americans in this land. My contribution was through swimming."
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A photograph at the "POOL" exhibition at Fairmount Water Works captures a moment in 1964 when a cabin manager poured acid into a pool where Blackness people were pond. Such moments in history are juxtaposed with artwork that explores the beauty and well-being that comes from our connectedness with h2o. (Emma Lee/WHYY) -
Azikiwe Mohammed'due south "Two Lifeguards" confront each other across the empty pool, illuminated by neon umbrellas. (Emma Lee/WHYY) -
The Fairmount Water Works Puddle operated equally a public indoor pool from 1962 until 1972, when it was badly damaged past Hurricane Agnes. Swimmers navigated effectually the columns that braced the ceiling. (Emma Lee/WHYY) -
Curator Victoria Prizzia steps into the projection to show the calibration of the key feature of "POOL," an exhibition on the history of segregation at public pools. The exhibition occupies 4,700 foursquare feet at the site of an abandoned indoor pool at Fairmount Water Works, which closed in 1972. (Emma Lee/WHYY) -
Azikiwe Mohammed'south "Two Lifeguards" confront each other beyond the empty puddle, illuminated by neon umbrellas. On the wall behind play videos created past Homer Jackson to explore people's connections to water. (Emma Lee/WHYY)
Source: https://whyy.org/articles/swimming-while-black-a-new-exhibit-explores-black-resilience-at-the-pool/
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