Revitalizing the St. Mark’s Neighborhood Swim Pool with a Community Celebration

The Roberson Project on Race, Slavery, and Reconciliation is proud to present the public art event The Air We Breathe Is Not Invisible on Sunday, May 4, 2025 from 2–6 p.m. This vibrant community gathering will reactivate the historic St. Mark’s neighborhood swimming pool, or “Swim Pool” as the neighborhood’s residents called it. Once a beloved gathering place for African Americans from Sewanee and surrounding communities, this site will be revived for a day of celebration, remembrance, and community building. The event follows Vanderbilt University artist Vesna Pavlović’s reimagination of the site in the fall of 2024. Inspired by the “Swim Pool” history and memory, Pavlović collaborated with the Roberson Project and the University’s Facilities Management to turn the pool into a garden of Spanish Bluebells. This event is free and open to everyone. To learn more, please visit: <https://robersonproject.sewane...;.

The St. Mark’s Community Center and Pool will come alive with the anticipated blooming of more than 2,000 bluebell corms, planted this fall to recall the facility’s heyday. There will be music, food, and other lively activities. Attendees can enjoy a live DJ performance featuring music reminiscent of the pool’s past, along with a classic barbecue provided by local community members. Games, ping pong, and other activities will offer entertainment for all ages.

In addition to the festivities, visitors will have the opportunity to contribute their voices and memories through recorded storytelling and photography using disposable and instant cameras, helping to document and preserve the rich history and continuing life of this space. Community engagement will be a central focus, rebuilding relationships with surrounding communities.

“We have long looked for a way to recall and celebrate the joy of the neighborhood swimming pool’s past,” said Woody Register, director of the Roberson Project. “Our hope is that this day of renewed life and play in the neighborhood will do just that.”

Dr. Register continues, “We were inspired by the uplifting words of Pastor John Patton, who grew up in Sewanee’s St. Mark’s neighborhood and now pastors at Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in Cowan. His words, that ‘the air we breathe is visible in the movement of trees stirred by a breeze,’ we thought was like people’s memories of the “Swim Pool.” The pool itself cannot be seen, but perhaps memories of it can be stirred to life by the watery blue of the flowers and the laughter and voices of the activities that we are planning with the St. Mark’s Community Center.”

“Sewanee may be known for its stone gates, dogs and Sewanee Angels. Inside these gates is a more important history and it is that of the historic Black Saint Mark’s community. Thanks Roberson Project for allowing us to tell our Sewanee history. The “Negro swimming pool” was already a thing of the past when I came along. The shell of it was still visible when I was a kid. A shell that tells the story of segregation, community, gathering, fun and a form of safety. The truth and the whole history cannot be told without the Black history. ‘YSR’” - Evelyn Patton

The Roberson Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation at the University of the South is an ongoing initiative investigating the university’s historical entanglements with slavery and slavery’s legacies. Our Project’s name memorializes the late Professor of History, Houston Bryan Roberson, who was the first tenured African American faculty member at Sewanee and the first to make African American history and culture the focus of their teaching and scholarship. The Roberson Project seeks to honor his inspiring legacies at Sewanee: the devotion to rigorous teaching, the pursuit of scholarship, the dedication to social justice, and the personal example of high moral character. In doing so, the Roberson Project seeks to help Sewanee confront our history in order to seek a more just and equitable future for our broad and diverse community.

Please visit our new website at: <https://robersonproject.sewane...;.