The HyLife: History and race explored at Prince George’s Pool

By JESSICA ARENDS

When Judy Walsh-Mellett watched the mayors of North Brentwood and Brentwood replace a racial barrier on the border between their two towns with a symbolic sculpture of unity at the Windom Road Historic Barrier Park this summer, a lightbulb went off for her. 

She wrote a letter to the board of Prince George’s Pool (PG Pool), where she has been a member since 1990, describing how the sculpture and its new narrative made her proud. She wondered if the same might be possible at PG Pool, which has had a history of contentious race relations.    

Shortly after, Walsh-Mellet joined Diversity, Inclusion, Sharing and Community Outreach (DISCO), an autonomous collective unaffiliated with the pool, which exists to “recognize the privilege of membership in private institutions and help the pool be a better neighbor in the local community,” according to their online discussion group.

This summer DISCO collaborated with Julye Williams, facilitator and founder of The Project 2043 Institute, to create the six-session community discussion series “Making Waves: Exploring History, Race and the Pool,” where members and non-members could explore the global, national and local history of racial separation and how to create more inclusive spaces. 

The impetus to host race discussions at the pool coalesced during the pandemic, according to pool and DISCO member Margaret Boozer-Strother.  

“Some of us as members were feeling very, very privileged to have access to this space during an incredibly difficult time,” Boozer-Strother said. 

PG Pool was among the 22,000 private swim clubs that opened in the U.S. in the 1950s in response to the federal government desegregating pools. Most of these pools, according to the “Segregation and Swimming Timeline in the U.S.” by Portland Center Stage, were in the white suburbs.  

In 1974, Raymond Bowlding, with the help from the NAACP, successfully challenged the pool’s policy that essentially prevented African Americans from joining because new members had to be sponsored by two existing members, according to a 2015 Life & Times article. A new 1975 pool charter removed the sponsorship and county residency requirements, and the pool dedicated a pavilion in the memory of Bowlding in 2015.

When local membership from the community dwindled in the 1980s, the pool looked to D.C. and Montgomery County to find new members. According to Boozer-Strother, that strategy became too successful because then people in the local neighborhood weren’t able to join. With a current waitlist of 2,206 people, it takes about 10 years to rise to the top of the list. 

In 2023, the surrounding neighborhood organized a petition, which suggested offering daily passes on a sliding scale and reserved spots on weekends to people from historically underserved communities in order to be more inclusive.     

“There is an outside group who is angry and upset. I am in that group,” said Monica Casañas, the mayor of Colmar Manor, a Latina and DISCO member who recently became a pool member after eight years on the waitlist. “When I see the immigrant families who live around here and the neighbors come to the door looking to swim and get turned away — that kills me.”

Pool members had also seen concerns posted on listservs and in social media and heard directly from neighbors, including graffiti around Mount Rainier that read, “One day I’ll be a member at PG Pool,” according to Boozer-Strother. The community discussions were a way to talk directly with neighbors about these issues. DISCO, which meets monthly, has helped the pool’s board implement positive changes such as installing a chair lift and an all-gender changing room. DISCO also supports projects of the pool’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee.

During the third “Making Waves” community discussion, punctuated by joyful splashes and smells from the grill, about 35 people talked about how they arranged Aristotle’s climate theory of human variation, Bacon’s Rebellion and the Virginia Slave Codes on a timeline.

  “It was just so insidious,” said Walsh-Mellett during the third session, in July, as she reflected on the historical events. “If someone fought against a racist law, the law would just be changed.” 

The point of the timeline, according to Williams, is to see how race is not a biological phenomenon, but rather socially constructed by those who are in power to maintain their power over certain groups. For example, when biracial indentured servant Elizabeth Key sued and won her freedom in 1656 based on her father’s status as an Englishman, Virginia changed its slave codes so bondage was determined by the race of one’s mother rather than father. 

“History is foundational,” said Williams. “What are some of those key things that impact a private pool in a now very diverse community? What does that do to your psyche? Whether you’re a person of color or not? To be told, ‘You can’t go to this barber.’ How does that affect how you see yourself?” 

There are now monthly community days at the pool, which allow non-members who live in Mount Rainier to use the pool for a daily fee, but those are only three days during the summer season. Additional ideas proposed during the third discussion included making unused guest passes available at the gate for non-members who want to drop in for the day.   

Hyattsvillian and pool member Lara Oerter said she was personally motivated to join DISCO and attend the community discussion sessions. “I need to regularly engage in conversations about race in order to check my own white privilege and to learn more about how people of color experience and have coped with decades of institutional racism,” Oerter said.   

“It’s gotten a lot better,” Casañas, the Colmar Manor mayor, said. “Now I see people who look like me and are grilling asados. That to me is pretty cool.” 

To learn more about future discussions, visit groups.google.com/g/pg-pool-disco.

Jessica Arends is the arts, culture and lifestyle columnist for the Life & Times.