Jim Crow-era laws, along with segregated pools and beaches, are a key reason why so few Black people know how to swim — and why a thousand or more drown each year — and, the numbers have increased every year since the pandemic.
Now, community groups and nonprofit are working to reverse the trend.
Now, community groups and nonprofit are working to reverse the trend.
The statistics are grim: More than 4,500 people died from unintentional drowning each year in the United States from 2020 to 2022, an increase of about 500 compared to 2019. The increase reverses decades of decline in drowning rates.
The CDC found that, for Black people, rates of drowning fatalities were 28% higher in 2021 than in 2019, according to a CDC Vital Signs study released in May. Black children ages 5 to 19 are 5.5 times more likely to drown in swimming pools than white children of the same age, and Black children ages 11 to 12 are 10 times more likely to drown.
There are more than 10 million swimming pools in the United States, according to The Association of Pool & Spa Professionals. Yet almost 40 million adults don’t know how to swim at all, and Black adults were more than twice as likely to say they do not know how to swim compared to the 15% of all adults who don’t swim. Just 37% of Black people said they’ve taken swimming lessons.
See “As Drownings Rise, Groups Teach Black People to Swim, Not Sink” (June 14, 2024)
