Paulana Lamonier started Black People Will Swim in 2019 and has since provided free and low-cost lessons to over 2,500 Black and brown people

Valerie Spears hadn’t planned on taking swim lessons when she RSVP’d to her high school reunion in New York City.

But when Spears, a 72-year-old retiree who lives in Akron, Ohio, learned about a free class in Queens, she decided to pack her bathing suit.

Top: Young swimmers and an instructor at the swimming lesson organized by BPWS on Thursday, 20 June 2024.
Above: Donna Hall, 58, and her son, Samuel De La Cruz, 11, share a tender moment. They have been taking lessons with BPWS for two years.

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© Photograph: The Guardian

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© Photograph: The Guardian

Fred Rogers breaks the color barrier in a kiddie pool with Officer Clemmons in 1967. Fred Rogers Previously. The only known violation of Betteridge's Law of Headlines: Is Mister Rogers' Neighborhood the greatest television show ever made? by Emily St. James for AV Club. Segregation & Swimming Timeline in the United States. An episode of the podcast 5-4 discussing the Supreme Court case Palmer v. Thompson, in which the court decided that the Equal Protection Clause does not prohibit the city of Jackson, Mississippi from avoiding integration by closing its public pools.