This article ran in the August 1983 issue of SURFER. It has been slightly edited and shortened.

In the late spring of 1951, one of the strongest south swells in memory struck the chiseled hub of California coastline known as Malibu. From point to pier the waves rattled in, cresting at a solid eight-to-ten feet. A call went out to the Malibu crew—California’s surfing elite—and they soon struggled from shore to lineup to launch themselves on a primal dance across towering waves.

Near midday, the sea mounted its counterattack. On the beach and in the water, a wave charged over the horizon which dwarfed all predecessors. As three frantic souls scratched over the top, the wave pushed up even higher before delivering a hammering blow to those caught inside the impact zone. In the wave’s boiling wake, boards and bodies swirled about like the garnish to a massive stew.

The second wave hit. As it pitched forward, sizzling with froth and rage, the three spared surfers streaked across its unbroken face. The wave walled up as it neared the pier and two of the surfers pulled out over the top. The third chose to venture further, now rushed along by the crosscurrent that washed through the pier at a stiff six to eight knots. He was now dangerously near the pier substructure. In a reflex gesture to save a new and loved surfboard, he made a fatal mistake. He did not abandon his board, but instead attempted to straighten his course as white water exploded around him. Onlookers stood by, helpless witnesses, as he was hurled full-force into the pilings. Two lifeguards watching from the pier were in the water in a matter of seconds. They searched all day but found nothing.

An item appeared the next morning in a Los Angeles newspaper: “Eyewitnesses today described how Nicholas Gabaldon, 20, a student at Santa Monica City College, was swept to his death yesterday afternoon while surfing near the Malibu Pier.”

In this raw, pre-wetsuit, pre-leash era, with surfboards checking in at 40 or 50 pounds, surfing accidents resulting in death by drowning, while relatively few in number, were not uncommon. But there is a uniqueness to the legend of Nick Gabaldon. Other tragedies have been forgotten but Nick’s epitaph continues to resound at Malibu's Surfrider Beach.

Many who tell the tale don’t remember his name. To them, he’s simply “the black guy killed at the pier.”

It is not exactly clear whether Nick was California’s first black surfer. Stories exist during this period of a guy at San Onofre, or some fellow at Windansea. He certainly was 

 of California’s first black surfers. Go a bit further along on surfing’s family tree, you’ll find that black America’s presence on California waves evaporates completely.

According to Doc Ball, founding father of one of California’s first surfboarding organizations, the Palos Verdes Surf Club, in the mid-thirties they counted among their white membership one Hispanic surfer and one Japanese-American. No blacks.

Even in the post-war years, as surfing first grew to become a mass experience, there would not be many black Americans hopping aboard. This was a time when lines of segregation throughout American society were clearly delineated and unyielding. Patterns of racial isolation were as well established in California as they were in other geographic regions. Lines of racial demarcation for blacks were cemented in California city streets that ran far short of the beach. Surely the beach, like its coastal residents, seemed uninviting.

Two things happened to help plug black America into the world of surfing, and both stand today as important media events.

The first switch was thrown on February 4, 1962, when a fledgling ABC Sports program called 

, then just 10 months old, covered the Makaha International Surfing Championship. In years to come, surfing competition became a regular feature on 

Then, in 1966, in the tumble-weed town of Wichita, Kansas, filmmaker Bruce Brown presented a special premiere of his now-classic surf film 

The purpose of opening the movie in Kansas was to prove to skeptical distributors that a film on surfing could appeal to audiences who didn’t live on the coast. The plan worked. In two weeks, 

Many of those who tuned in to ABC's sports programming, as well as a number of those who eventually bought a ticket to see 

In the 1970s, California’s surfing population went past the half-million mark. Still, despite, the media blitz, black surfers continued to enter the water at a mere trickle. In 1975, black surfer Tony Corley—a surfer since the ’60s—sent a letter to the editor. His opening was simple and direct: “Attention: Black Surfing Brothers.” Tony’s correspondence was an attempt to draw together the scattered and culturally isolated black surfing population he knew existed. His plea elicited over two-dozen letters in response from around the country (one letter was from Hawaiian surfer Buttons Kaluhiokalani), as well as some not-unexpected hate mail (“Stay out of the water, coon. . .”).

Tony’s efforts to connect with and encourage black fellow surfers has evolved into an active network of about 30 surfers. His informal organization is known as The Black Surfing Association, or BSA, and its directory, which Tony supplies to members and constantly updates, is prefaced by Tony’s articulation of a common bond:

Our distinctive group, which is increasing in number, is greatly diversified in our individual perspectives and pursuits. Our politics, philosophies, vocations, and social relations are as varied as our personalities and spiritual realizations. Yet, with our varied lifestyles, we are bonded together by two cosmic forces: blood and water. The blood, being our ancestral African roots, and the water, being the oceans and seas of the world.

To surf, you need not try out for a team or apply for membership in the country club. When access to waves meets with a fine spark of inclination, surfing can commence unencumbered; dues will be paid in the water, thank you.

But as more black Americans find their way into the lineup, we would do well to recall a time—not that long ago—when access was the missing part of the surfing equation for certain Californians. In a recent series of articles in the 

 on black Los Angeles, a long-time resident of the black community recalled a time, prior to World War II, when blacks were not even allowed the use of many city beaches.

Black African settlers were present in Central Mexico as early as the 1520s, and it has been recorded that blacks participated in many of the earliest sea expeditions along the California coast. A substantial part of California’s formative population were black immigrants. It is conceivable that a black man may have been the first explorer to witness the machine-line precision of a Rincon wave or the raw beauty of Windansea.

Blacks today make up roughly 8% of California’s population. More than 30 surf (but possibly less than 50). Yet, it is possible that the next great California surfer to emerge from the progressing ranks—like a blaze of ebony in an ivory world—could be black. If so, they can thank the following surfers for showing the way.


In 1940, Nick Gabaldon was nine years old. He was part of a black population in California that measured less than two percent of the state’s total. More than half of all black Californians lived in Los Angeles. It was a year of great economic change within the state. The world was geared for war and California’s wartime production machine responded to the call. Johnny was once again about to march off to battle. A growing number of jobs were vacated by the recruitment of white males into the armed forces, and eventually this trend forced a relaxation of anti-Negro union hiring policies. The lure of good-paying jobs, according to the 

, brought an influx of blacks to the state that reached nearly 300 a day by the summer of 1942.

Although jobs offered an economic foothold to a growing black community, the “milk and honey” life that similarly-paid whites enjoyed was often kept out of reach. At some point during the war years, for example, a beach area in Los Angeles was established for blacks. One city document refers to it as a 200-foot roped-off area in Santa Monica. It was here that Nick Gabaldon learned to surf.

As the 1940s drew to a close, Nick began showing up at Malibu. At first, one knew exactly how he got there. Nick initially learned to surf while working with the Santa Monica lifeguards, where he had been assigned to patrol within the sandy turf known as “Negro Beach.” But how did he get to Malibu? Though hard to fathom, the story persists that in the beginning, Nick paddled. Tired of the Santa Monica beachbreak, Nick thirsted for something finer. He was told the best waves were to be found at Malibu. So he launched his surfboard within the confines of “Negro Beach,” paddled 12 miles to Malibu to savor the classic waves, then called upon his weary arms to return him to his all-too-familiar port of entry.

Nick was an impressive figure of a man. He stood over six feet tall, and had the physique of a boxer (he'd fought as an amateur). He was characterized as quiet, unassuming and likable. The Malibu surfing establishment at the time was a tight-knit group numbering about two dozen. At first, Nick took care to place his towel down away from the crowd. Even after he got to know the surfers, Nick would revert to keeping his distance whenever anyone new was introduced to the group. “He was a very pleasant guy,” recalls Malibu regular Bill Shea. “But he was apprehensive about his social status.” Even after his quick acceptance into the group, as Nick would stand with the crew around the fire on cold gray days, he remained somehow distant and alone.

Against the more pronounced racial attitudes of the ’40s and ’50s, Nick Gabaldon was without question accepted into the small and prestigious Malibu group. To Malibu great Matt Kivlin, Nick is remembered as “a well-liked fellow with good ability.” Adds Bill Shea: “He just wanted to earn his place in the sun—and he was most welcome.”

To Matt and Bill and their contemporaries, their feelings toward Nick were not shaded by color. Nick was simply a surfer.


For more than two decades, we’ve all had to learn to live with the dreaded surfer image, conjured up by a ’60s media onslaught and by the lyrical catchphrases of the Beach Boys and Jan & Dean. This has perhaps implanted a stronger and even more distorted picture of surfing in the minds of black people. Forget the sport's dark-skinned Hawaiian roots. Within the black community, surfing today is seen as a white man’s sport; another plaything devised for and practiced by affluent fair-haired boys and girls. To be a surfer has not been viewed as a widely accepted mode of expression for a black man, woman, boy, or girl.

Thus, when David Landsdowne (current Regional Director of the Western Surfing Association) decided to become a surfer in 1965, he was met with resistance on two fronts—at home and on the beach. Having grown up in Watts, his high school peers thought David's interest in surfing was definitely uncool. But David felt he was on to something. Surfing opened up other worlds to him, and the fact that he was doing something so different reinforced his feelings of individuality. “I was a true outcast,” David says today with a certain relish. “I was even labeled an Uncle Tom. But I really wasn’t bothered by it.”

Like so many surfers from that period, David’s first interest in the sport came from what he saw on television. But his baptism would come after his family made a short move to the more affluent black Los Angeles neighborhood of Baldwin Hills. There he quickly connected with a few equally stoked local kids who rode skateboards. David and his new friends eventually gravitated to the nearby Playa Del Rey surf break called Toes. At the time, Toes was patrolled by a coarse group of kids from Culver City. “They’d come down to the beach and yell stuff like, ‘Nigger go back to Africa,’” Landsdowne recalls. “I told them I’d go back to Africa if they’d go back to Europe and give the land back to the Indians. Other than that, I’m here and I’m surfing.”

As David continued to show up day after day, he not only staked out a place in the line-up, but the racial slurs and the hostility faded. The ultimate irony followed: He became so accomplished a surfer that the same group of tough locals asked him to join their surf club. By then David had himself become one of the locals, and a prominent member of the Southern California surfing scene.


Like David and many other young blacks, one of those who watched closely the surfing presented on 

 was a young athlete from Atlanta. “I used to watch the competitions from Hawaii,” USC football standout August Curley recently recalled. “It seemed sort of neat, these guys out there riding 10-foot waves. It was something that in the back of my mind I always wanted to try, but I never knew if I’d get a chance or not.”

This seed of interest was filed away as August continued to mature in size—all the way to 6'4"—and blossom in athletic stature. He developed into the complete high school jock. Besides football, he was a star forward on the basketball team and pitched for the baseball team. With all this prowess he left for the West Coast with an athletic scholarship at USC. His first stop was not the beach. “I didn’t think about surfing until the end of my freshman year (1978), when we played the University of Hawaii.”

Curley was walking down the beach at Waikiki with a friend. They spotted a surfboard rental stand and decided to give it a try. When he returned from Hawaii, he bought a board and began to hit the waves in addition to USC’s opponents.

August is now convinced that surfing helped him as a football player. “I found my balance is better on the field. I don’t fall as easily.” But his latest sporting love is not always understood by his hometown friends. “They wonder why I do it,” he says. “They are more fascinated by it than anyone. But their hesitancy is more related to the danger of it, I think, than to the question of my being black in a predominantly white sport.”

August has never suffered even a mild injury while surfing. Yet during the second game of this past season, while leading the USC team in tackles, he tore the ligaments of his right knee and ended his college football career.

The good news: Curley has recovered and has been drafted by the Detroit Lions.

The bad news: Detroit is a long way from the surf!


A tall and athletic young man in his early 20s, Trek has been cast upon a hard journey befitting his name. He has trained daily for the past two years to make the 1984 Olympic team as a swimmer. If successful, and if he can win a medal, he will shatter yet another racial myth—that blacks can't swim.

 for one. A 1971 article titled “An Assessment of ‘Black is Best,’” postulates that physical differences in races have a determining effect on athletic potential in a given sport. It stated that some researchers found that the black American, on average, has denser and therefore heavier bones than those of whites. This, combined with distribution of fat and small lung capacity, creates what swimming coaches call “sinkers.”

The article briefly mentions that buoyancy is only one factor in swimming (there has been at least one world record holder who weighed in as a sinker). Also, blacks as a group don’t always match this scientific description. Trek puts it in a somewhat different perspective. “Let’s face it—it costs money to have a pool in your backyard!” What Trek hopes to establish is not only that blacks can and do swim; they can swim competitively and win. Trek will quickly tell you that flotation is not the problem. The most hazardous undercurrents to navigate are the prevailing attitudes and possibly swimming’s high-society club structure.

As Trek attempts to step into the bigger picture known as “first black syndrome,” he seems sustained by a kind of pioneer spirit. In his mission as a surfer-swimmer he treads much the same water as the father of modern surfing, the great Duke Kahanamoku.

To Trek, all of this is a natural progression for a kid from Brooklyn who grew up loving the ocean and riding its waves. Trek’s mother was a part-time lifeguard, and his father a merchant marine. The ocean and bodysurfing were a family affair. By his early teens, Trek was settled in Los Angeles and board surfing was the natural next step. “I didn’t really have much peer pressure about it,” he reflected, “because I have never been the kind of person who was part of a group.” He now laughs when he recalls being referred to as “that weird white boy,” and can now muse about the times when standing at a bus stop in the inner city with a surfboard created problems for him: “Gangs were the thing around the neighborhood. I knew I didn’t need them, and I didn’t need to follow anyone, so they’d try and take it out on me.” Many a trip to the bus stop was stalled by an inevitable rumble.

In 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke professional baseball’s color line, there were many skilled black baseball players waiting in the wings to take their shot. But the phenomenon of black athletes in non-team sports seems only now to be asserting itself. In the ’50s Althea Gibson won Wimbledon and the US Nationals and was voted 1958’s Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press. On the men’s side, Arthur Ashe would soon follow Gibson's lead.

Today, athletes like Calvin Peete, one of the hottest players in professional golf and last year’s fourth-leading money winner, are excelling in sports long considered the exclusive domain of whites—gaining positive national recognition along the way. Peete recently told the 

 “I haven’t changed my goals. I still want to win my first million (dollars) and then I’d like to win a major tournament. If I do those two things, I’ll get enough media exposure that it should influence black kids to find themselves some golf clubs.”

Opportunities and attitudes have lagged far behind deeds when considering those black athletes who chart their course outside of the sports mainstream. If sports can be considered a reflection of society then perhaps the emergence of the black surfer is another manifestation of a turning of the tide.

“BLACK SURFERS OF THE GOLDEN STATE,” by JEFF DUCLOS (1983)

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