“Against the Tide” Showcases Morgan State’s Forgotten Swim Dynasty

A new documentary titled “Against the Tide: The Story of the Morgan State Swimming Program” recently made its debut on April 15, covering a widely unknown story of a dominant swimming and diving program, produced by several swimmers from a successful era of Morgan State Swimming, which, from 1952 to 1976, won a combined eight Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) and Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) championship titles.

Morgan State is a historically black college and university (HBCU) in Baltimore, and has not sponsored either a men’s or women’s swimming and diving program since the 1970s. Part of making this documentary was preserving the history of this since-discontinued program’s success.

“The history of it just grabbed me, and as I began to look at it, I said, ‘Man, we need to talk about this. We need to celebrate this,'” said David Thomas, a member of Morgan State’s 1972 swim team and co-chairperson of Morgan Legacy Swimmers, in a report from AFRO News. “One of the reasons why we are so adamant about this is because the program no longer exists. One of the things we want to do as a group is promote and advocate for any type of aquatic program that we can,”

The idea for a documentary arose at the 32nd Annual Athletic Hall of Fame in September of 2025, as former athletes from Morgan State’s Championship teams knew that there needed to be a way to share the story of their program and make the public aware of the success that the program saw during those 24 years.

Below is a trailer from the David Bryce YouTube channel:

“People don’t know this story. They don’t know about the eight championships. They don’t know about six. They don’t know that everybody had to take swimming,” said vice chairperson of Morgan Legacy Swimmers and documentary producer Greg Jones in the report from AFRO News. “When you’re a unique group in water, knowing the challenges we’ve had around water and swimming, it does increase the bond that you have.”

Jones described his time in the program as a “brotherhood” and hopes the documentary will bring the theme of perseverance to the forefront.

“I think about the situations we’re in now, with the current social and political environment, and I think about what the folks before us did,” Jones said. “I’m hopeful that just a little piece of this film gives folk that sense that we may always be swimming against the tide. But guess what? We still can accomplish success in doing that.”