Professor Jeff Wiltse’s pathbreaking Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools (UNC, 2008) and his subsequent work on swimming and racial inequality in the U.S. continue to shape public conversations about racial conflict at public pools and drowning disparities among African-Americans. See Mara Gay’s recent Op-Ed in the New York Times, “When It Comes to Swimming, ‘Why Have Americans Been Left on Their Own?‘”