Project Summary

West Chester University History students led by faculty members Janneken Smucker and Robert Kodosky conducted oral histories focused on the Nile Swim Club of Yeadon, Pennsylvania, one of the oldest African American suburbs in the United States. In 1959, after the Yeadon Swim Club denied African American residents membership because of race, West Yeadon opened the Nile Swim Club. It is the oldest owned and operated Black swim club in the United States. The interviews provide the foundation for a website to be constructed by students in the fall of 2025 that will complement the narrative presented in The Nile Swim Club of Yeadon: A History. In addition, students conducted peer interviews with one another about their own experiences with race and recreation growing up in the region and archived as part of the Nunn Center’s Student Projects: West Chester University Student Peer to Peer Oral History Project.