ROWING
To Whom It May Concern:
To get rid of that “Bay Window,”
Just hurry up and learn to row;
And if your back is getting weak
Pull on the oars once every week.
—Harrison.
Thus far have Colored athletes pushed onward. But the following are a few mentioned fields of athletics in which Colored youths have not become very active or efficient mainly because of the lack of certain facilities and sufficient appliances and accommodations for proper and seasonable trainings.
Rowing crews have not been developed in any of the Colored universities, colleges and schools to any outside recognized extent. This fact is quite explainable and excusable when it is taken into consideration that few of these institutions are located near natural and adequate bodies of water for such purposes. Bordentown School, Bordentown, N.J. and Hampton Institute, Hampton, Va., are perhaps the two most favorable exceptions in this case. Both of these schools have peaceful streams of gurgling waters that flow so near as to softly caress the oft kissed lips of their water-edged lawns.
Calmly setting upon the banks of the Hampton River, an arm of the Merrimac-Monitor famed-Hampton Roades, Hampton Institute has running before its very doors a half mile of nearly straight and unusually smooth body of water that is wide enough to float at least three crews abreast. Peacefully nestling on a high projecting hill, Bordentown School can look miles either way upon the historical Delaware as it gently flows below making a wide, graceful bend from upward Trenton to downward Camden.
There are already hopeful signs appearing which show that both of these institutions in the near future will take full advantages of their natural and wonderful water facilities by developing rowing crews that some day will be second to none in the country. By the time this stage of their rowing development has been reached, it is hoped that the racial, and sportsmanship feelings between white and Colored colleges will have become so brotherly and peacefully allied, that, the rowing crews of Annapolis will be friendly competing against Hampton oarsmen, and the shellmen of Princeton will be friendly churning the Delaware waters against the crews of the Bordentown School. And when such times do come about, the writer feels sure that the oarsmen of Hampton and Bordentown will guarantee to keep enough water between themselves (either at the bow or stern) and the shells of Annapolis and Princeton to wash away and keep down any waves of “color line” that might suddenly arise to dampen the sportsmanship and one-hundred percent Americanism atmosphere of the occasions.
SWIMMING
Diving-Treading-Floating.
I worship this my hobby’s call,
And all youths ought to learn it all
In water that is deep and wet
Where confidence they can beget
So as to rescue one’s own life
And other folks in drowning strife
—Harrison.
General swimming as a recreation and pastime by the Colored people in the United States has in the past been sadly neglected for some excusable and some unexcusable reasons. The chief excusable reasons have been that with few exceptions they have not had access to the places where they could indulge in this sport and that they did not have the money with which to promote and construct such places for themselves. The main, unexcusable reason has been that they, with but few exceptions, were too timid and scared of drowning to enter water deep enough and stay there long enough to learn how to swim.