Jim Crow Murdered Joe Delaney
And Jim Crow, with many accomplices, continues his serial rampage with impunity while we pretend he's long dead
Today (as I’m writing this on June 29) is the 41st anniversary of the day Jim Crow murdered Joe Delaney and two young boys in Louisiana.
Joe Delaney, an NFL running back, died from drowning while attempting to save several children who found themselves drowning in a recreational watering hole in Monroe, Louisiana where Delaney was spending a relaxing off-season day in 1983. (Note: You can read any number of excellent laments and tributes about Delaney on-line, including this one that I recommend as a starting place for this particular rabbit hole.)
Jim Crow oughta be indicted for their murders.
Jim Crow made swimming a gated, privatized, elite and white-privileged fundamental survival skill. Because a child's swimming proficiency and access to lessons is directly correlated to parental swimming proficiency, Jim Crow continues to get away with murder to this day.
Jim Crow is not a relic of the past.
It is not old history we need to put behind us.
It is not an archaic rule about bus seating or redundant water fountains.
In this way - through this one example of its present-day lingering effects - we are reminded of our own complicity in Jim Crow by allowing its legacy to brutalize communities with the impunity we extend to it.
I believe Americans reveal our ugliest selves when it comes to choosing who we swim with.
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My town, Greenville, South Carolina, revealed its ugly side in 1963 when it went beyond filling in its pools. The Cleveland Park pool was briefly converted to "Marineland," a place where sea lions could swim so that Black children couldn't. Greenville's only "Black pool," Green Forest, was simply closed. Arguably, the ugliest moment was reserved for the third public pool, Gower Estates, which the city sold to residents as a membership-only pool, setting off a wave of neighborhood pool construction.
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It's in these pools that Jim Crow has since enjoyed its safe space for swimming as public pools were eradicated by the widespread construction of large white-only community pools that were reserved for residents of subdivisions (many of which had restrictive covenants that prohibited Black residents, but were all the same closed off to Black residents as a matter of custom).
This trend baked in the idea that swimming - a fundamental survival skill - is a rationed, private amenity that need not be widely accessible.
It’s not an historical coincidence that there are ripple effects to the present where Black swimmers currently drown at a significantly higher rate than any other group. For those who think that Joe Delaney’s death was too long ago, consider instead the Lake Hartwell drowning death of former Clemson running back Tyshon Dye in 2019. Dye, who was just 11 months older than Delaney was at the time he was taken from us, is just one recent and notable example of the deadly effects that come from our local fervor to make swimming an exclusionary enterprise.
In the 36 years between Delaney’s and Dye’s drowning deaths, we haven’t made a serious intentional effort to unravel and reverse the impact of Jim Crow on swimming.
Indeed, if anything, we’re finding new ways to use bigotry to murder people.
The local swim league here in Greenville is a prime example of this as they have adopted rules for swimming participation that are trans-exclusionary.
Sadly I need to make a side argument here as to why concerns about kids gaming gender for a competitive edge in swimming are utter bullshit - a manufactured outrage that’s particularly vile because it comes with just enough “logical” appeal to catch on and take root.
USA Swimming - which is the national governing body our local swim league follows determined that only elite competition needs to have gender classification rules. And, by “elite competition” we’re not talking high school prodigies seeking scholarships. Elite means the world stage or meets where national records might be set. Where the win-loss stakes are genuine and not the stuff of an overbearing parent’s imagination. Sadly, when people watch the debates over how to regulate gender classifications at elite levels, they fail to differentiate between that level of competition - where the competitors often have body types and body chemistry that would be looked upon as statistical outliers, making rigid gender definitions tough to enforce or live with.
Here's the USA Swimming statement which - apart from elite competition sanctioned at the highest levels - expresses support for transgender inclusion.
"While recognizing the need for the aforementioned guidelines in elite competition, sport is an important vehicle for positive physical and mental health, and, for this reason, USA Swimming remains steadfast in its continued commitment to greater inclusivity at the non-elite levels."
"At the non-elite level, an inclusive process has been established by which an athlete can elect to change their competition category in order for them to experience the sport of swimming in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity and expression.”
Swimming, of all sports, has a moral imperative to meet participants where they are.
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It’s swimming, not cricket. It’s swimming, not basketball. It’s swimming, not curling.
Engagement with young people and welcoming them as lifelong swimmers is a matter of safety and survival, which just doesn’t resonate with Americans because we are monsters when it comes to gatekeeping who we swim with.
It should be plain that the levers the swim league is pulling are the exact same levers white Greenville pulled in 1964 to protect and preserve Jim Crow. It shouldn’t have happened then, nor should it be tolerated now, when we have benefit of hindsight. There’s no way we can extinguish our deeply embedded culture of white supremacy while its bellows continue to be pulled by people who remain practiced in that craft, regardless of which vulnerable or disinherited group they target.
Sadly, the foreseeable lethal effects of these exclusionary choices seem to carry no weight once adults choose to punish and ostracize already vulnerable children as a 'matter of principle.' Nothing compels the swim league to summon the ghosts of its past by casting aside the interests of vulnerable children.
They could easily choose a path of historical redemption by offering a life jacket and affirmation to present day vulnerable children.
But will they?
Only because Greenville - which is hardly alone here - is perpetually hellbent on repeating its worst history, I expect the swim league to execute this flip turn that takes the organization back to its Jim Crow starting blocks.
When Jane Delaney is murdered some years from now, we can blame Jim Crow for that, too, but the truth of it is that Jim Crow never acts alone and we ought to name his accomplices and co-conspirators because, like Jim Crow’s present-day victims, the felons who work in concert with Jim Crow are people with names who deserve to be indicted too.