The Legacy of Black Aquatics
When people think about Black communities and swimming, too often the story starts with exclusion, segregation at pools, intergenerational fear, and lack of representation.
But that isn’t the whole story. Long before those barriers were built, there was a powerful legacy of Black swimming.
In Africa, swimming was a way of life. Communities across West Africa were famous for their skill in rivers, lakes, and oceans. Historical records describe expert divers, swimmers, and watermen from places like Senegal, Ghana, and Nigeria, strong enough to dive deep, fast enough to outpace currents, and skilled enough to rescue and fish with ease.
As historian Kevin Dawson notes, African swimmers and divers were some of the most accomplished in the world long before European contact. Swimming wasn’t leisure; it was survival, livelihood, and culture.
This knowledge travelled with the diaspora. Enslaved Africans carried their swimming and diving skills across the Atlantic, where they were recognised for their expertise in the water, as divers, fishermen, and lifesavers. There are records of enslaved swimmers in the Caribbean and the Americas teaching others, rescuing shipwrecked sailors, and sometimes even using water as a means of resistance and freedom.
These stories are rarely told. Instead, the later chapters of segregation and exclusion dominate the narrative. But the truth is: Black aquatics has always had a foundation of strength, skill, and pride.
Today, that legacy continues. Across the world, grassroots swim groups, community initiatives, and international athletes are reshaping the narrative, not starting something new, but returning to something ancient and powerful. In the UK, organisations such as the Black Swimming Association are reconnecting communities with water, while swimmers like Alice Dearing are breaking new ground in open water.
At Bold Waters, we see ourselves as connected to this continuum, part of a movement that honours history while creating space for new generations to lead.
Black History Month is a reminder to celebrate this heritage, to tell the stories that have been hidden, and to show the next generation that swimming is not just survival. It is history, identity, and pride.
Water is where we have always belonged.
Written by Melona Headley, Founder of Bold Waters
Further Reading
Dawson, Kevin. Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018.
Henery, Celeste. “Black Swimmers and Diasporic Understandings of Water.” African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS), 2019.
Black Swimming Association (UK). Closing the Gap Report, 2024.