A state agency is investigating a Huntingdon Valley swim club for possible racial discrimination after the club revoked a contract to let children from a Northeast Philadelphia day camp swim in its pool.
Officials and antidiscrimination groups expressed concern over the allegedly race-motivated decision and protesters assembled outside the Valley Club's locked gates twice yesterday.
Among them were Silvia Carvalho, 32, of Northeast Philadelphia, and her daughter, Araceli Bagwell, 9, who had been among the city campers swimming at the club.
"This is pathetic," Carvalho said. "The next day, she was telling me she was a minority. I don't want her looking at herself that way. We are not going to allow someone to humiliate us like this."
Homer Floyd, executive director of the state Human Relations Commission, said the civil-rights agency began its investigation after receiving requests from the NAACP and other groups.
"We thought that with issues like this - swim clubs and so forth - we had crossed that hurdle, but clearly we have not," Floyd said.
In a letter to the club, U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter (D., Pa.) suggested the day campers be allowed to return.
On June 29, 65 black and Hispanic children from the city camp Creative Steps Inc. made their first visit to the Montgomery County club and heard some members make racial remarks and escort their own children away from the pool, Creative Steps executive director Aletha Wright said.
Last Friday, the Valley Club refunded a $1,950 check to the camp in Oxford Circle to terminate the agreement allowing children from kindergarten through seventh grade to swim at the club.
A statement on the club's Web site yesterday said its leaders were "deeply troubled by the recent allegations of racism, which are completely untrue."
The statement says the day campers were turned away because they overwhelmed the 110,000-gallon pool.
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