When most people think of surfing, they most likely think of blond-haired, blue-eyed white dudes shouting “Cowabunga!” like one of the Ninja Turtles. But those perceptions aren’t the full picture, and a group of Black surfers is changing the way people see surfing to know it’s as much for Tyrone and Keisha as it is for Tyler and Becky. 

“A Great Day in the Stoke,” the largest gathering of Black Surfers in the U.S., returns to Huntington Beach, a seaside community southeast of downtown Los Angeles, on Sept. 14th to foster the growth of Black competitive surfers and inspire the Black community to feel welcome in the water. The event, which also includes beachside yoga, vendors, and surf lessons as a DJ played crowd-pleasing bops, also has a commemorative element: participants took part in recreating the iconic 1958  photo “A Great Day in Harlem” which had 57 jazz musicians of the day assembled, only this time with 500 Black surfers to show solidarity and strength in numbers. 

“I wanted to have a Black surf competition, just to see all the Black surfers come together in a space of happiness and joy,” says Nathan Fluellen, a Black surfer, TV show host and travel enthusiast known as Worldwide Nate. He tells BET he started “A Great Day in the Stoke” during the most intense days of the pandemic, not long after the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor inspired action and coalition-building across numbers of sectors of our community. “Our mission is to increase the number of Black competitive surfers across the African diaspora.” 

Their efforts are in line with trends. Though surfing is still a predominantly white sport, with some 61 percent of surfers Caucasian according to data from the Surf Industry Members Association, Black surfers are gaining in numbers, with a nearly 50 percent increase in the last decade, making for nearly half a million brothers and sisters out there in the waters today. Of course, people of color invented the sport in the first place, and the Pacific Island/Asian, Hispanic, and Black surfers who make up the combined 40 percent of people riding waves are arguably just making modern-day representation look like surfing’s actual origins, as it’s also favored in Brazil and African nations too.   Just by gathering and putting out images of Black and brown people on boards at home with the water, “A Great Day in the Stoke” helps shatter myths many people hold about surfing and Black people in the water that aren’t true. Fluellen says he’s heard them all: that Black people can’t swim, that our bodies don’t float, that Black women won’t swim to protect their hair. “I think it's more fear,” he says. “I’ve heard people talk about not being able to see at the bottom of the ocean, or just having a sense that something else is down there that they don't know.” 

But by bringing hundreds of Black surfers together,  “A Great Day in the Stoke” shows everyone that Black people belong everywhere, including uncharted waters. “This is something we all can enjoy and benefit from,” Fluellen says. “Statistically 70 percent of Black people have low to no swimming skills. And that high statistic leads to high drowning rates; Black boys ages 11 and 12 are 10 times more likely to drown than their white counterparts. So if we can show Black people enjoying the water, living uninhibited, the pure joy and excitement that surges through your veins, we can show our community that we don't have to live in the boxes mainstream media tries to say that we can only thrive in.”