Ten-year-old Aiden Reed had every reason to be a little nervous when he took a dip in a swimming pool in Washington.

“I almost drowned,” the young African American recalled an incident at another pool when a lifeguard had to save him.

Since then, Aiden has found the courage to face his fears and get back in the pool to take classes at Swim Up, a nonprofit group that offers free classes.

Of nine new swimmers on an October afternoon, eight were African American, a drowning-prone group. In the United States, the drowning rate among black children ages five to nine is 2.6 times higher than among white children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For black children ages 10 to 14, drowning rates are 3.6 times higher, the CDC says.

According to USA Swimming, a national association, 64 percent of black children know little or nothing about swimming, compared to 40 percent of white children.

A tragedy in August 2010 brutally illustrated the situation. During a barbecue with friends in Shreveport, Louisiana, DeKendrix Warner, a black teenager, waded into shallow water in the Red River.

He couldn’t swim. Neither did the six friends and cousins ??who went in to try to save him. Warner slipped and fell into a pool of much deeper water. A passerby jumped in and saved him, but the six others had also followed him into the deep water. Family members on the shore who couldn’t swim watched helplessly.

DeKendrix survived, but the six teenagers, ages 13 to 18, all drowned.

In the United States, there is no federal requirement to teach swimming in schools. The reason why so many black children cannot swim, according to activists and historians, lies in the history of slavery and racial inequality.

“Enslaved Africans could escape slavery with swimming skills,” said Ebony Rosemond, executive director of Black Kids Swim, an organization that helps African American youth learn to swim.

“It was in the best interest of those who owned people to make sure they didn’t have the skills or were too scared to jump in the water,” she said.

After the abolition of slavery in 1865, white supremacists terrorized African Americans, “lynching them, abusing them, and hanging their bodies near bodies of water,” Rosemond added.

With the civil rights movement came desegregation. Courts ordered cities to open their public pools to blacks. But many, particularly in the South, chose to close them instead, said University of Montana historian Jeff Wiltse, author of A Social History of Swimming Pools in America.

Such racial discrimination “severely restricted black Americans’ access to pools,” he summarized in a 2014 article. “Swimming never became an integral part of black American recreational and athletic culture and was not passed down from generation to generation.”

Today, many initiatives are trying to rectify this, like Swim Up.

Mary Bergstrom, a co-founder, recently gave out hats and swim shorts to children in the afternoon. “Go in the water,” she urged. One of them jumped in and yelled, “It’s cold!”

The children learn skills step by step. First they float on their backs, then kick their feet to propel themselves forward with their arms outstretched, guided by Bergstrom, a lawyer and former competitive swimmer.

Aiden, whose fear of water is a thing of the past, swims easily. One of his distracted buddies forgets to breathe, and Bergstrom gently pats his head to get him to catch his breath.

“We’re almost to 100 kids that we’ve somehow taught to swim or taken away their fear of the water,” Bergstrom said.

“Ultimately our goal is to get … that into schools and it can be burden-free for families. You can make it part of the curriculum and make a difference,” she said.

Not far from the pool is Howard University, the only historically black university in the United States with a competitive swim team whose swimmers sometimes teach swim-up youth classes.

On October 1, they entered Burr High School to thunderous applause as they took on rival Georgetown. About 1,200 people attended the event, which was conceived by their coach, Nick Askew, to raise the profile of black swimmers.

“We can create a fan experience like no other, the fact that we can also back it up with some amazing swims… is one of those things… that a lot of people will hold on to and encourage them to touch the water to learn to swim,” Askew told AFP.

The Howard Bisons held their ground, although both the male and female teams lost to their Georgetown rivals.

Niles Rankin, a 21-year-old competitive swimmer with Howard, said Coach Askew has a goal for his athletes.

“He wanted us to get our name out there, to be something of a symbol for other black swimmers,” he said.

“You can do it… You can be a black swimmer.”