Club born of segregation stays in the swim

Jacquelynn Puriefoy-Brinkley felt no sense of triumph when she walked through the door of the shuttered swim club.

President at the time of the Yeadon Borough Council, she felt only a sweep of emotion so overpowering that she had to escape. She hurried out the door.

That was about 10 years ago at the Yeadon Swim Club, a facility that 40 years earlier had been an unwelcoming place for the black community. Inside, she saw the embodiment of the concept "separate but unequal."

Yet that painful time and place in Delaware County led to a historic outcome that has given countless hours of splash-filled fun to black families: This month, the Nile Swim Club of Yeadon observes its 50th anniversary as the nation's first African American-owned and -operated private swim club.

After the welcome mat was yanked from under a group of black and Latino youngsters visiting a swim club in Huntingdon Valley, the Nile remains a symbol of the minority community's efforts to confront inequality.

"My life experiences have taught me that you are so much richer when you are exposed to different people," Puriefoy-Brinkley said. "Anybody who isolates themselves or their children are missing out on what is so important in life."

The Nile Swim Club outlasted the private Yeadon Swim Club, which closed because it couldn't pay its taxes.

The Nile "is a testament to our determination to provide for our children," said Puriefoy-Brinkley, still a Borough Council member, whose father, Carson Puriefoy, was one of the founders of the Nile and its first president.

The club sits on 41/2 acres on the west side of Yeadon in what was once the borough's black section, a small enclave of African American professionals. In the 2000 census, the 1.6-square-mile borough was 80 percent black.

The Nile, named for the river in Africa, has an L-shaped pool, a smaller kiddie pool, the original clubhouse, and a pavilion and snack bar. The club holds splash parties and crabfests, and has hosted celebrities including the Supremes and Harry Belafonte. The club's season runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

Music plays through loudspeakers, and kids jump excitedly into the pool under the watchful eye of parents and lifeguards. Some swimmers take a break at the snack bar, where they fill up on hot dogs, french fries, and even pancakes in the mornings.

"It's just a cool place to hang out," said member Cleo Levetter, 12, of Lansdowne.

Five decades ago, equal opportunities for youngsters such as Levetter were on the minds of the families who joined together to found the club.

Carson Puriefoy had filled out an application to join the new Yeadon Swim Club. When he saw that his application had been tossed in a trash can, the organizing began.

"I remember them coming home to our kitchen table and saying, 'Our kids are not going to stand at the fence and watch white kids swim,' " Puriefoy-Brinkley said.

The organizing began while municipal pools were being integrated in court actions often filed by the NAACP, said Jeff Wiltse, author of Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America. In white suburban communities, private pools were started to avoid the threat of a lawsuit, he said.

Members of the Nile's founding families - among them the Puriefoys, Stewarts, Browns, Masks, Hendersons, Johnsons, and Robinsons - went door to door selling $250 bonds to fund construction.

Neighbors bought land from the borough in 1958. The Nile founders then hired an African American architect. The club opened on July 11, 1959.

"Our choice was not to ignore the situation and not give money to lawyers to fight it," said Robert Mask, 95, one of the founders. "Our solution was to set up our own, not just to swim but to set up examples for our children of how things can be done."

Club membership stands at 300. At its height, there were more than 500. Members are primarily African American, but they are also white, Latino, and Asian. Membership costs $500, and annual dues start at $125.

Over the years, the Nile has survived integration and competition from other kinds of recreation. Club officials plan an extensive renovation, a proposal pushed by former president Thomas Gary, who died in February.

The project includes a new facility that would have a snack bar, a shower, a fitness center, small meeting rooms, and a dining hall. The plan started last year as a $5 million project but has been scaled back and postponed because of the economy, club president Darrell Henderson said. So far, about $250,000 has been raised. Construction likely will start in 2011.

When it begins, the emotions of the moment could surface for Puriefoy-Brinkley, just as they did that day a decade ago when she walked into the Yeadon Swim Club. Even though she felt no reward in the irony when she stood inside the shuttered club, the feeling of poetic justice came later when the borough bought the facility and much of the Yeadon club's contents ended up at the Nile.