US | swimming pool Pool Bans Black Kids? What Decade Is It? Racial discrimination sends us back to the 1950s By Matt Cantor Posted Jul 10, 2009 10:53 AM CDT Copied Nine-year-olds Quadir Preston, right, and Asjah Anthony, second from right, demonstrate in front of the Valley Club in Huntingdon Valley, Pa., alongside other supporters. (AP Photo/Mark Stehle) A largely white suburban Philadelphia swim club’s barring of black and Latino campers was so backward “I thought I had fallen into a time warp,” writes Annette John-Hall in the Inquirer. Things like this happened in the 1950s—when singer Dorothy Dandridge booked a room in a Las Vegas hotel, the staff actually drained the pool—but “this isn't 1950s Las Vegas. It's 2009 Philly.” “I didn't understand because we're all the same. We're just a different color,” said one camper. The club’s president told the camp’s head that he’d had to “disinvite” the children because of a member vote, but a member says that’s not true: his fellow poolgoers had recommended a schedule change, not a ban. As the story has gone national, protesters have gathered—but pool management isn’t talking. Read These Next Beyonce leaves national anthem unfinished. Musk says his new party is in business. Kerr County considered a flood warning system years ago. A Texas man's disappearance is fodder for true-crime mania. Report an error