Wading in for civil rights

Black swimmers went to the beach to protest racial segregation in 1950s and early ’60s America. Words by Elaine K Howley

On 1 January 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order that changed the legal status of three million enslaved people living in the Confederate States (Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee) from “slave” to “free” in a single pen stroke.