For instance, the writer several years ago made personal investigations among many Colored fishermen, oystermen and crabmen who live along the shores of and spend the biggest part of their lives on the Chesapeake Bay in little boats that every year are numerously overturned by sudden squalls and storms. And to his great and painful surprise he learned from those men themselves that the majority of them could not swim a stroke, while among those who had learned to swim, but few had confidence enough in themselves to believe they could even swim a half or one mile. And yet those men daily risked their lives and ventured out upon that deep and uncertain body of water without attempting to revive and develop that valuable and necessary instinct that is born in every human being and every dumb animal. As the result of such thoughtless neglect of their own personal welfare, many of those cheerful, honest, frugal, hard-working, plain-living and law-abiding people are drowned each year because of their not knowing how to swim.
But today, through the cities’ public recreation ponds being opened to Colored youths, the increased erections of Y. M. C. A.’s and Y. W. C. A.’s of the Colored branches with modernly inclosed pools, Colored universities, colleges and large schools gradually constructing gymnasiums containing up-to-date natatoriums, and business men of the Race buying and improving seashore hotel resorts with beach bathing privileges such as Dale’s at Cape May, N. J., Bay Shore near Old Point Comfort, Va., Fitzgerald and Ovington Hotels and Walls’ beach at Atlantic City, N. J., and Idlewild, Ill., a new interest in learning the art of swimming is being increasingly aroused among Colored people throughout America. When fine swimming centers such as the Chicago Wabash Avenue Y. M. C. A. puts before its Race boys the placards and advertisements—“One Thousand Boys Wanted To Learn How To Swim”, it shows that Colored swimming instructors are using every persuasive means to get their youths interested and skilled in this most useful and refreshing pastime. These teachers fully realize that when their art is rightly learned and properly performed it not only brings into exercise practically every muscle of the body but also enables its possessor when necessary to save his own as well as the lives of others. Thus, with these encouragements, interests, facilities, privileges and proper instructions rapidly increasing; it is not “building castles in the air” to prophesy that within a reasonable length of time the Negro race in America will produce a Colored Norman Ross and a Colored Ethelda Bliebtry as champion swimmers.
SKATING.
Dutch Roll Figure Eight-Grape-vine Twist
Great are my joys on skating night,
When moonshine* flows in streams so light,
While some strong lassie keeps my stride
As o’er smooth ice we fancy glide.
(*I mean the moonshine from the sky
And not from raisins, corn nor rye.)
—Harrison.
When in future winters young men and women of the Race are justly admitted to the ice-skating rinks; they sensibly decide to spend less of their time in hot-stuffy parlors, etc., and with ice skates stay out more in the free, fresh, health renewing air upon the parks’ frozen lakes and streams: they will certainly find among themselves a talented skater who may later build up to a white Chas. Jewtraw, short distant; a Mrs. F. F. MacMillian, fancy; or a J. F. Donohue, long distant, ice skating champions.
TENNIS
It’s All in The Game
This is a pastime full of fun
And makes the players jump and run;
But when the ladies “serve” “love all”,
Some fellows’ hearts begin to crawl.
—Harrison.
As they are constantly laying out and regularly using new private and club tennis courts all over the country, the Race will in due time mould one of its Tally R. Holmes into a Wm. T. Tilden or Jay Gould championship quality; just as it will some day take one of its Miss Slowes or Miss Channels and bloom her into a Mrs. Molla Bjurstedt Mallory top-rung record holder.