Black Aquatics: Early Modern Past, Present, and Future

abstract: This article introduces the public humanities project Open Water: Histories of Afroaquatics , which combines original early modern research with community outreach and education to address contemporary racial inequities in aquatic activity and safety. The authors trace how early modern manuscripts, books, images, and material culture–largely produced by Europeans–both documented and distorted the aquatic expertise of Black communities in Africa and the Americas. Reconstructing these suppressed histories, the authors reveal that early modern Africans were celebrated for their proficiency in swimming, diving, fishing, and boating, as well as for developing sophisticated water-based healing practices. These traditions, rooted in spiritual and medicinal relationships to water, were often appropriated and misrepresented by Europeans to serve the interests of enslavers and colonizers. Over time, these distortions fed inaccurate historical narratives that have reduced Black participation in aquatic activities and increased the risk of Black drowning. Through partnerships with educations, artists, and youth organizations in the U.S. and Britain, the Open Water project reclaims these histories for the communities from which they were taken. By connecting the early modern archive to present-day social justice work, the authors demonstrate how historical scholarship can move beyond recovery toward repair, transforming inherited narratives of exclusion into acts of collective remembrance and revitalization. abstract: This article introduces the public humanities project Open Water: Histories of Afroaquatics , which combines original early modern research with community outreach and education to address contemporary racial inequities in aquatic activity and safety. The authors trace how early modern manuscripts, books, images, and material culture–largely produced by Europeans–both documented and distorted the aquatic expertise of Black communities in Africa and the Americas. Reconstructing these suppressed histories, the authors reveal that early modern Africans were celebrated for their proficiency in swimming, diving, fishing, and boating, as well as for developing sophisticated water-based healing practices. These traditions, rooted in spiritual and medicinal relationships to water, were often appropriated and misrepresented by Europeans to serve the interests of enslavers and colonizers. Over time, these distortions fed inaccurate historical narratives that have reduced Black participation in aquatic activities and increased the risk of Black drowning. Through partnerships with educators, artists, and youth organizations in the U.S. and Britain, the Open Water project reclaims these histories for the communities from which they were taken. By connecting the early modern archive to present-day social justice work, the authors demonstrate how historical scholarship can move beyond recovery toward repair, transforming inherited narratives of exclusion into acts of collective remembrance and revitalization.