Johnnie Means relaxes in a cozy brown leather recliner, the TV turned silently to CNN, in the inviting Third Ward home he purchased with his wife, Lynn, when he was 23. He sports a black polo shirt embroidered with a cardinal, the University of the Incarnate Word mascot. The Texas Swimming and Diving Hall of Famer owns a generous collection of shirts from schools across the country, gifts from some of the thousands of students he’s coached in swimming, diving, water safety, and strength training since beginning his career with the American Red Cross in 1959.

“Everybody tells me, ‘Coach, you ought to write a book.’ And I just haven’t had the time,” Means says. “I might do that one day before I go, if I’m fortunate. But I’ve got so much in my head that I have seen and done.”

Means, 84, retired four years ago, though he jokes that he wants “to go back to work so [he] can get some rest.” He stays busy with caretaker duties and helping out friends, neighbors, and students when they need a hand. The “restful” years of his life include coaching Olympic silver medalist and former “world’s fastest swimmer” Ang Peng Siong, serving as the head coach of Texas Southern University (TSU)’s swim team for over 25 years, directing the Harris County Aquatics Program (HCAP), becoming the first (and for 30 years, only) Black swimmer in the Houston area who could certify swim coaches through the Red Cross, and desegregating competitive swimming in Texas.

“[Means is] a bleeding heart, but he is a tough soul. He instills in us a lot of ‘You’ve got to make it happen for yourself,’” says Candess Tucker, cofounder and coach at Johnnie Means Aquatics. “We were outcasts, but we went in there and we did what we had to do, just working hard and being diligent.”

Tucker’s father swam under Means’s tutelage at TSU, and she began taking lessons at HCAP as a child. Along with fellow swim coach and Means mentee Dominique Hamilton, she founded Johnnie Means Aquatics (JMA) in 2022 after the HCAP program stopped offering competitive swimming. The pair wanted to continue Means’s work in making free swimming, diving, lifeguard training, and water safety lessons available to local kids and adults. Naming the school after their beloved instructor was a no-brainer, and he still stops by sometimes to cheer on students or give advice.

“Because of swimming, I was able to go to college and receive a scholarship for it. The impact that it made on our community and the people that I grew up with, I knew that a big hole would exist if we no longer had a program like [HCAP's competitive swimming],” Hamilton says. “Not only is [swimming] a good after-school program, but it’s a life-saving skill. Our kids, all kids, need this life safety skill.”

Means learned to swim from the GIs returning home to Third Ward following World War II, who picked up the skill on duty and believed it critical for neighbors to learn, too. He went on to swim competitively at Yates High School and received a swim scholarship to attend Southern University in Baton Rouge. That’s where he met Lynn.

“I was sitting on the diving board drying up,” Means recalls of their chance encounter at the pool. “Lynn asked her instructor if she could go in deep water. And she said, ‘See that guy down there sitting on the diving board? If he’s going to stay down there with you, you can go down there and swim.’ She came down and asked me if I would watch her and let her swim in the deep water for a little while.”

They’ve now been married for 63 years. The newlyweds moved back to Houston after graduation. Lynn took up nursing studies. Means launched an Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) competitive swimming program at the only local YMCA at the time with a pool available to the Black community.

In 1961, his team received an invitation to participate in an AAU swim meet at the now-demolished Shamrock Hilton Hotel. They raised the money for fees and transportation and practiced intensely, only to have the invite rescinded when the organization found out it was a team of mainly Black children. With the help of then–University of Houston swim coach Phil Hansel and some TSU professors, Means drafted a request to the AAU asking that they reconsider.

“We wrote the letter to them and told them, ‘Well, we’re sure that you wouldn’t want to keep a bunch of kids out of a children’s program…you’re keeping them out because of the color of skin,’” he says. “You[’ve] got all of these great athletes who were Black, who just finished competing in the Olympic Games in 1960. They did a great job in representing the country.”

The AAU presented Means’s arguments to the Shamrock, which responded by canceling the meet. However, two weeks later, Hansel called Means with some good news: The event was back on after the athletics organization threatened to disallow them from hosting another meet until everyone who met the criteria to compete could use the facilities. Shamrock didn’t want to lose out on the revenue, so Means’s team would be allowed to compete. Competitive swimming in Texas had finally been desegregated, with Houston as its epicenter.

“That was the first group of Blacks that ever swam in a meet at that time,” Means says.

The Civil Rights Act wouldn’t pass until three years later. Means and his team traveled across the US and encountered the dangers of the Jim Crow laws in the Deep South. He recounts passing through Vicksburg, Mississippi, on the way to a swim meet in a TSU-branded bus. A highway patrol officer with a “big old pearl-handled pistol on, [and a] cowboy hat” and several backup cars stopped them before they reached the Vicksburg Bridge.

An exhausted Means was asleep in the back of the bus, with a pair of his students from California and New York sitting at the front. The officer addressed them first. They were unused to life in the Jim Crow South and answered honestly: They were swimmers. At the time, segregated pools and beaches were the sites of “wade-in” protests in cities like Biloxi and Sarasota. The officer started getting agitated.

Means knew he had to interfere. He moved to the front and explained that the boys “were from upstate” and “you know how they talk” there. Thinking on his feet, Means said they were actually singers headed to a choral performance. That calmed the officer down; he admitted he initially viewed them as “troublemakers coming down here to march.” He left the team alone after that, though not before sending them over the Vicksburg Bridge with a police escort.

This was hardly the only incident Means and his students would encounter. A white heckler harassed one 10-year-old boy, Sammy, with slurs as he entered a meet. Not knowing what any of those words meant, he asked his trusted swimming coach, who explained to him that the man was a bigot. When they met him again on the way out, Sammy cheerfully called him “Mr. Bigot.”

“I watched segregation at its worst as a boy, 70-some years ago,” he says. “People like myself who experienced those things, we’ll be gone after a while. And if that is not communicated to the young people—whether or not they’re Black, white, or whomever, for them to understand where they need to go and what they need to do to keep from making that back step—then they’re going to be in worlds of trouble.”

Means’s accomplishments have stacked up beyond the pool. His life’s work centers community—swimming is just the conduit through which he builds it. To him, connecting with one another helps provide valuable perspectives, an education in local history, and experiences that students won’t typically encounter in school.

At JMA, Tucker and Hamilton pass the lessons they learned from Means on to the next generation of swimmers. In many ways, they serve as the torchbearers of Means’s legacy while building legacies of their own. Since opening, they’ve welcomed around 350 students total.

“We have families that travel from far to come here specifically because of the community. I don’t know necessarily if this is something that Coach Means put into practice consciously, or if it’s something that just, over time, created itself, but it’s something that we’re trying to be very intentional about,” Hamilton says.

A mutual aid network has flourished among the JMA family, who meet up at the rec center on TSU’s campus. Parents often ask one another where they can help, coordinate during emergencies, and gather resources to make sure every child gets fed at swim meets.

“We need community more than ever to hold us up,” Hamilton says.

Means laments the loss of the organizations and community centers that once offered opportunities for residents in predominantly Black neighborhoods to congregate for meetings, recreation, and socialization. Many of these closed due to budget cuts. Some remain, like Third Ward’s Shape Community Center. But the swim program that bears his name is filling in the gaps left behind, providing a home away from home for Houston-area kids and parents looking for both a place to learn swimming and fulfill their need for companionship—Means’s two biggest joys. Aside from Lynn and the family they’ve built together, of course.

“I tell people, I’ve worked for 100 years almost and never had a job. It wasn’t a job to me. It was a passion of mine, and I loved what I was doing,” Means says.