The Color of Water
The work of color does not end at the shoreline
by Robert W. Stephens II
Water is odorless, colorless, and formless — until touched by human hands. It slips through fingers yet holds entire histories in its depths. Water remembers.
I was a child when I first learned that water, in America, had color. At a Sears and Roebuck store in Savannah, Georgia, I stood between two fountains: one marked “White,” the other “Colored.” The irony was lost on only me — water, so neutral in nature, made political by a sign. I moved toward the wrong fountain, not out of defiance but curiosity. My grandmother’s swift correction came not with anger, but with the weight of history. In her eyes was a warning born of memory, of knowing that even the most innocent misstep could carry consequence when water is divided by color. That moment was my early lesson in survival, and the strange alchemy that can turn something as pure as water into a weapon of separation.
That fountain was not just a spout of water — it was a mirror of the country’s soul, its delusions of purity stained by a deliberate coloring of human difference. My grandmother’s rebuke echoed with ancestral pragmatism, shaped by eras where survival depended on understanding the invisible boundaries others enforced. Her voice, firm but careful, carried the logic of a people who had long been navigating the dangerous terrain of reason warped by race. In that moment, I began to understand that color wasn’t just seen — it was enforced, taught, and policed. And water, in all its purity, had been conscripted into the service of division.
Long before that day in Savannah, water had already carried the burden of color. It was the vessel of displacement, the silent accomplice in one of history’s most violent passages. Across the Atlantic, millions of Africans were torn from their homelands and carried over vast, indifferent waters to lands where their skin would mark them for labor, for brutality, for unfreedom. The ocean, once a source of life and trade, became a corridor of captivity — a grave for many, a transformation for all. Water delivered them, not as people, but as property, to a world that would later find new ways to divide, label, and control. In that way, color was written into water long before those signs were hung above fountains.
But the work of color did not end at the shoreline. Once imposed from without, it began to seep within. In the wake of slavery and colonial rule, color became a scale, even among the oppressed. Within the Black community, hypodescent meant lighter skin often carried currency — access to marginal advantages, assumptions of beauty, or perceived intelligence. My sister was a recipient of this logic. Her hue, like mine, is not light, and that hue denied her admission to one of Black Savannah’s most prestigious social events — because of color. This was colorism: a hierarchy shaped by the same logics that placed signs over fountains. It taught us to police each other by shade, to see ourselves through the eyes of those who first colored the water. These divisions, often unspoken but deeply felt, fractured solidarity and buried pain in the silence of comparison. Color, once a tool of domination, became a tool of self-doubt. The water, it seemed, could stain even from the inside.
Now I have grandchildren — children of mothers who are white and fathers who carry the same hue I. They are as beautiful as they are loved, each one a living testament to how far the story has traveled. The signs are gone, but the echoes remain. Sometimes I look at them and wonder: what water will they be asked to drink? Will they be taught to choose? Or will they be forced to? The story changed, yes — but the scars didn’t vanish. They flare like old wounds in the presence of fresh injustice. I see it when a headline scrolls across the screen, when a classroom denies a truth, when a name is mispronounced or a history untaught. And I feel again the sting of my grandmother’s rebuke — not as punishment, but as prophecy. She was preparing me for a world that still hasn’t decided what color water should be.
But not all water carried pain. I remember the baptisms at Tremont Temple Baptist Church, and the fire hose Baptisms on Ogeechee Road in front of the United House of Prayer, where water meant rebirth, not rejection. It was holy, affirming — poured over us not to separate but to sanctify. The same element used to divide us at public fountains became, in private ceremonies, a declaration that we were whole, worthy, and claimed. Even in a world drawing lines, we found ways to cross them, to blur them, to make new meaning. My family didn’t just endure — we created beauty amid boundaries. We named our children with purpose, cooked meals with history, and built lives filled with laughter and song. We danced in rain we weren’t meant to feel and drank from wells of hope dug by those who came before us. The water didn’t own us. We made it ours. Our lives were filled with laughter and song. The water didn’t own us. We made it ours.
I think often about that day at Sears, the hush in my grandmother’s voice, the urgency in her eyes. That water was never just water. It was history, hierarchy, and harm — poured into a cup too small to hold it all. But it was also a beginning. A beginning of awareness, of questioning, of memory. Today, I watch my grandchildren play under open skies, their world seemingly freer, yet still shadowed by the same currents. The color may not be marked, but the lines are not gone. Still, I believe in our ability to reclaim the water — not to bleach it, but to honor its depths. To remember its stories. To teach its lessons. And to ensure that the next child who stands between two fountains will know not only which one they can drink from — but why they should never have had to choose. They, like me, want a world where hatred has no sanction.
