Race-row pool 'turned away' black children

A US swimming pool was at the centre of a 1960s-style race row today after its members allegedly turned away black and Hispanic youngsters and pulled their own children out of the water.

The state of Pennsylvania has launched an investigation into the claims by a day camp chief about the private pool in Huntingdon Valley, a predominantly white suburb of Philadelphia.

The Creative Steps camp in north-east Philadelphia had contracted for its 65 children to swim each Monday afternoon at The Valley Club, camp director Alethea Wright said.

But she said shortly after they arrived on June 29, some black and Hispanic children reported hearing racial comments.

“A couple of the children ran down saying: ’Miss Wright, Miss Wright, they’re up there saying, What are those black kids doing here?’,” she said.

The gated club is on a leafy hillside in a village that straddles two townships with overwhelmingly white populations. It says it has a diverse, multi-ethnic membership.

Miss Wright said she went to talk to a group of members at the top of the hill and heard one woman say she would see to it that the group, made of up of children aged from about five to 13, did not return.

“Some of the members began pulling their children out of the pool and were standing around with their arms folded,” Miss Wright said. “Only three members left their children in the pool with us.”

Several days later, the club refunded the camp’s €1,400 without explanation, she said.

Miss Wright said some parents were now “weighing their options” over legal action.

She said that the children were upset and that she was looking for a psychologist to speak to them next week. Some children had asked her whether they were “too dark” to swim in the pool, she said.

Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission chairman Stephen Glassman said the body would investigate immediately.

“Allegedly, this group was denied the use of a pool based on their race,” Mr Glassman said. “If the allegations prove to be true, this is illegal discrimination.”

The investigation was requested by the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.

Democratic Senator Arlen Specter called the allegations “extremely disturbing” and said he was looking into the matter.

America’s highest-profile black swimmer, Olympic gold medalist Cullen Jones, said “hearing about what’s happened to these 65 kids is both disturbing and appalling”.

Chuck Wielgus, executive director of USA Swimming, the governing body for the US swim team, said he was stunned.

“This is the sort of thing you’d hear about in 1966, during the height of the civil rights movement, not in 2009, and not in the City of Brotherly Love, of all places,” he said.

Swimming club president John Duesler told Philadelphia television station WTXF that several members complained because the children “fundamentally changed the atmosphere” at the pool but the complaints did not involve race.

In a statement on its website last night, the club called the allegations of racial discrimination “completely untrue” and claimed overcrowding from more than one outside camp was the problem.

“We had originally agreed to invite the camps to use our facility, knowing full well that the children from the camps were from multi-ethnic backgrounds,” it said.

“Unfortunately, we quickly learned that we underestimated the capacity of our facilities and realised that we could not accommodate the number of children from these camps.”

The club said it “deplores discrimination”.

“Whatever comments may or may not have been made by an individual member is an opinion not shared by The Valley Club Board,” it said.

Amy Goldman, a member of the club for two years, said the pool was not particularly crowded and the children from Creative Steps were “well behaved and respectful”.

She said there had been black members at the club in the past, but could not remember seeing any this year.

Yesterday about two dozen protesters, most of them white, held signs in front of the club’s locked gates and chanted slogans including: “Jim Crow swims here!”

Spencer Lewis, from Conshohocken, said he believed the club owed the children an apology.

“I don’t believe everyone here has racist thoughts, but what was said was insulting and offensive,” said Mr Lewis, who is black.