Master Chief William Goines, first Black Navy SEAL, passes away at 88

The first Black sailor to serve as a modern-era Navy SEAL wasn’t allowed to use the public pool in his Ohio hometown. Still, William Goines left Lockland, Ohio at 19 to join the Navy, soon became one of just a handful of early Black ‘frogmen’ and was eventually the only Black sailor picked to help form the first SEAL teams.

“I never knew there was a public swimming pool in Lockland. … We were never allowed to swim in that pool,” he told the Cincinnatti Enquirer in 2016. Still, he learned to swim in the Little Miami River and occasionally got to visit a pool that allowed Black to use the pool in the town of Hartwell.

“They allowed black kids to swim there on Saturdays only from 8 o’clock to 12 o’clock,” Goines said. “At 12 o’clock the whistle blew, and we were out of the pool, and they would drain it and get it ready for the white kids.”

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