​Many public pools were segregated until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Afro American Newspapers/Gado via Getty ImagesI first encountered her when my sister and I visited an exhibit at the Fairmount Water Works in 2022 that was called: “POOL: A Social History of Segregation.”In the black-and-white photograph, a young Black woman named Inez Robie Patterson appeared to be captured right before she dived off the side of a pool wall. Her triceps were flexed, arms straight back with palms facing the ceiling. Her knees were bent, and her toes touched a thin, black-tiled line on the pool deck. Her hair was neatly covered in a white swim cap. Her eyebrows were beautifully thick, and her mouth formed a slight smile. Her white swimsuit had a lifeguard corps insignia, signaling her expertise in water safety. As a Black woman, swim instructor, lifeguard and lifelong swimmer, I found myself drawn to her. My doctoral research in African American literature, history and environmental thought led me to study what I call Patterson’s “aquatic life”: the written and photographic record of her relationship to swimming. I wanted to know: Who was this beautiful Black mermaid, and why was swimming so vital to her? How had she lifted her community?I waded through the digital archive of The Philadelphia Tribune, the city’s oldest historically Black newspaper, to find out.A role model for Black girl swimmersBorn in Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1911, Patterson’s love of sports began at an early age.
Inez Patterson attended Temple University and was later inducted into their Women’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 1987.
Courtesy of the Special Collections Research Center. Temple University Libraries. Philadelphia, PA.As a girl, she excelled in hockey, basketball, and track and field. As a teenager at West Philadelphia High in the mid-1920s, she sharpened her swimming skills and entered a swim meet at the McCoach Recreational Center – now the Marian Anderson rec center – in South Philadelphia in September 1927. According to The Philadelphia Tribune, she took home six first-place finishes: in the underwater swim, the side stroke, the standing front dive, the running front dive, the swan dive and the front somersault. Camaraderie was a priority for Patterson. Wherever I encountered her in the archive, whether walking through the Fairmount Water Works exhibit or reading old issues of the Tribune, she seemed to be looking forward to the progress being made by Black girl swimmers and the community they formed and shared in the water. A young sports columnist on a missionAt 18 years old in 1929, Patterson started her Girls in Sports news column in the Tribune, where she encouraged other Black girls to join her in the pool. Although she feared that Black girls in West Philadelphia had little interest in swimming, she soon learned her community had “some young aspirants that show bright prospects in the swimming world.” In October 1929, she