At 42, Tameka Bostick decided she wanted to learn how to swim. Bostick said she tried to sign her teenager up for lessons, too, but her daughter said she wanted her mother to learn to swim first.

"'Ma, you do it first and see how it is, and then I'll do it,'" Bostick recalled to CBS News right before starting her beginner swim class in Westbury, New York, run by the not-for-profit organization Black People Will Swim. "I did want to learn how to swim, so I was like, 'You know what? I'll do it.'"

Bostick said she grew up in New York City housing projects and didn't have much access to pools in the community, so she didn't have a chance to learn.

Tameka Bostick,42, is learning to swim for the first time. Jared Ochacher CBS News

"There is a stigma Black people can't swim," said Bostic

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