Nearly 100 years ago, Philadelphia’s Inez Patterson integrated pools and encouraged other Black girls to swim too

Nearly a century ago, Inez Patterson was determined to make swimming accessible to Black girls in Philadelphia. Born in nineteen eleven, Patterson excelled in multiple sports as a teenager, and in nineteen twenty-seven, at just sixteen, she swept a swim meet with six first-place finishes. But her lasting impact came through encouraging her community: at eighteen, she started a column in The Philadelphia Tribune calling on other Black girls to join Philadelphia's first Colored Swimming Club at West Philadelphia High. According to The Conversation, Patterson later integrated Temple University's swim team, refusing to accept segregated practice times and insisting on swimming whenever her white teammates did. In nineteen forty-two, she made history as the first Black woman to become a certified swimming official. Though she passed away in nineteen forty-four, her mentorship influenced a generation of swimmers—one protégé credited her with breaking barriers that shaped Black aquatic culture in Philadelphia for decades to come.

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