Raised by her grandparents from the time she was eight months old, Velmar Byrd grew up on a farm in North Carolina under the shadow of Jim Crow. She and her family grew their own vegetables, raised chickens and pigs, and lived largely off the land.
It was a full life — but swimming wasn’t part of it.
“Nobody in my family talked about swimming,” Byrd recalls, even though there were ponds, creeks, and beaches nearby. “I wasn’t going to jump into any of those creeks. No, no, no.”
Inez Watson is a child of Jim Crow, too, and grew up in segregated Baltimore. But she began swimming as a youngster at Druid Hill Park, one of the few city pools open to Black people. She swam every day during the summertime and, as a teenager, took diving lessons and taught people to swim.
Her community, however, wasn’t so interested.
“The fear may be instilled in young children,” Watson says. “People hear reports of a child drowning or an adult drowning, and then it becomes, ‘You’re not going near the water.’ And that fear gets passed down.”
Now, Byrd and Watson, both senior citizens, are swimming ambassadors of a sort. They are not only swimming every day for their own health but also extolling the virtues of swimming to other Black people. They have spent their lives proving that fear doesn’t have to be inherited.
Last month, two U.S. Soldiers who went missing during a training exercise conducted in Morocco were later found to have drowned. That both of the soldiers were Black—and one of them was known to be a non-swimmer—fits a painful but predictable pattern.
Almost 40 million U.S. adults report being unable to swim. And roughly 1 in 3 Black adults say they can’t swim–compared to 15% of the overall adult population who are non-swimmers. Most Black adults have never taken a swimming lesson.
The causes are layered: a legacy of segregated pools and beaches during the Jim Crow era, generational gaps in swimming culture, and a fear of water — a view that has been quietly handed down through families for decades.
No Fear Here
Both Watson and Byrd are living proof that fear can be conquered.
Watson, 89, who calls her athleticism “a gift from God,” and she continues to spread the good news about remaining active. She regularly teaches fitness classes with her daughter and is engaged in her community – when she’s not enjoying the company of her four children, 13 grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren.
Byrd swims and does water aerobics at least twice a week, and “I come out feeling good,” she says simply. But she had a more challenging journey to the water: she learned to swim at age 69 after moving to Connecticut as a young woman.
When Byrd first moved from North Carolina to Connecticut as a young woman, a friend offered to teach her to swim at a nearby park pool. Byrd bought a bathing suit. She showed up.
But her friend, it turned out, didn’t quite know how to teach swimming — she just loved the water.
“I think at that age, we were just showing our bodies off,” Byrd says, laughing. “I wanted to learn.”
Decades would pass, and she was approaching 70 years old before she took her first real lesson. Taking the plunge was about more than just fitness. Learning to swim was about overcoming a fear passed down through generations.
“I had to unlearn some of those fears in order for me to move forward,” she says.
After graduating from college, Byrd joined the Peace Corps and served two years in Ethiopia. Decades later, Byrd is now a semi-retired educator who spent 56 years teaching in public schools. After retiring a few years ago, she “re-fired”–her word for coming out of retirement – and returned to the classroom.
She’s now a substitute teacher for a middle school and a high school.
Later, around age 69, she signed up for a group swim class at a local YMCA. One of the group members was so terrified of the water that the group dynamic suffered. Byrd eventually learned about a special care hospital that offered swimming lessons.
That’s where she met the instructor who would change everything. She started lessons at 70. Her instructor, she says, would not let her give up.
“Everything I’ve done has been about quality of life. I saw that it was fun and when I got older, I realized it [swimming] can save your life,” says Watson.
That’s what she wants people to see.
“Any kind of fear is a blockage,” Byrd says. “That comes with swimming, too.”
She believes the most powerful intervention begins with parents — encouraging them to start their children in the water as infants, before fear has a chance to take root. Babies, she notes, are natural swimmers.
She also thinks about language: how we talk about drowning, how we talk about water, which can build walls or open doors. The same fear that keeps children away from pools can be redirected.
Her message to anyone on the fence is straightforward.
“There are hundreds of thousands of swimmers. They’re still living. I can learn to swim and live.”
