In America, access to swimmable water is closely tied to race.
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NEWSLETTER | JUNE 6, 2025
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I COULDN’T TAKE my eyes off my kids. Guy, age six, and Bruno, nearly four, jumped into the pool with shouts of glee, as if they could swim, only to sink, still grinning, to the bottom. On our first visit to Forest Vale pool, their overconfidence frightened me.
Once I determined that they could tiptoe in the three-foot shallow end of this pool, where all the little kids were swirling around, I relaxed a little. There were a couple of dads ribcage deep, holding their red cups of beer over the splashing, ducking heads of their daughters. They would block any beach balls or toddlers from drifting into the deep water. I pulled myself out of the cold water, settled on a strappy lounge chair, and watched the driveway.
Minivans and SUVs crunched down the long, potholed driveway every half-hour or so, delivering more of my children’s classmates and their parents. So far, everyone here was White. I assumed some of the Black or Latino families from school would show up soon.
Allison had been inviting us for weeks. “You guys should come to the pool,” she said, as we squeezed past one another in the hallway each afternoon.
What pool? Did Hapeville, the small town where our kids went to preschool, have a public swimming pool tucked away somewhere? We lived in neighboring East Point, a city south of Atlanta, Georgia, with no public pools.
I asked if the pool was public or what, and she was cagey. “Eh, you’ll see.”
Author Hannah Palmer explores how systemic racism has limited access to water — including pools, lakes, and rivers — in Southern Black communities, and shares her personal quest to find shared spaces to swim.
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Photo by Isadora Pennington
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