By Jeffrey T. Sammons
March 9, 2015 —The recent passing of Charlie Sifford and the glaring absence of Tiger Woods (self-identified as multi-racial but embraced by blacks as one of their own) from tournament play remind us of a bright African-American golf history and simultaneously signal a very bleak future for blacks in the game broadly construed–from professional and collegiate players to course ownership to organizational management to golf publishing and writing to industry leadership to credentialed instructors to charity tournaments and even to caddies.
Blacks are a vanishing breed at almost every level except recreationally–hence consumers–where we constitute approximately 1.3 million out of some 25.7 million golfers. We cannot, however, fully appreciate what has happened to African Americans in golf without placing this sad state of affairs in the larger context of very recent American race relations from which the game cannot be divorced as it is an integral American social, cultural, and economic institution.
As certain as death and taxes, black people are losing ground in the United States of 2015. Gains seemingly made have eroded and, in some instances, virtually disappeared. The legal victories for civil and voting rights and the prospect of a post-racial society, seem to have led many to underestimate the lasting significance of race and racism and the temporality of legal remedies. Integration was a noble objective but in reality, it has fallen far short of expectations. First of all, it came with devastating costs to viable black institutions. Second, principle and practice often have been divergent.
Effective integration requires meaningful inclusion into all areas of American life from business to housing to education to sport to politics. Few could argue convincingly that blacks are integrally included except for sport but then largely as high-paid labor. Even in politics, we see that a black president, should he be so inclined to advocate aggressively for blacks, has little power against a recalcitrant congress, powerful lobbyists, and a judiciary seemingly committed to turning back the clock on civil rights. Last, as President Obama pointed out recently, integration demands our constant vigilance and pressure, but we have fallen asleep at the wheel.
In March we passed the fiftieth anniversary of that “Blood Sunday” march on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama yet find black people today fighting the battle for voting rights all over again as states gerrymander districts, require photo identification for registration, and engage in all manner of voter intimidation to suppress the black franchise with the apparent blessing of the Supreme Court through its invalidation of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which places the burden of enforcement on individuals. Not unrelated are the continuing economic struggles of Blacks.
The Economic Policy Institute reported in February that the black unemployment rate is nearly double that for whites, and blacks disproportionately suffer from long-term unemployment. Many well informed observers now write and talk about the reality of “resegregation”. According to a 2014, ProPublica report “Segregation Now,” in Tuscaloosa, Alabama nearly one in three black students attends a school that looks as if Brown v. Board of Education never happened even after the South by the 1970s had the most integrated schools in the nation. Yet this phenomenon transcends region for as recently as February of this year a superior court judge in Connecticut approved, after a 26-year old struggle, an agreement mandating the implementation of new initiatives aimed at eradicating racial and ethnic segregation faced by Hartford students of color.
Few could have missed news of the recent findings of the Justice Department that the city of Ferguson, Missouri finances, in part, its operation through traffic fines, court fees, and late-payment penalties largely extracted from black residents, who also often see jail time for these minor infractions. Unfortunately, according to a recent New York Times report, Ferguson is far from alone but most prominent because a killing of an unarmed black by a white police officer has shone a spotlight on it. The practice reminds one of the convict lease system of the late 19th and 20th centuries, when often innocent victims helped to fund governments and individuals through their labor and/or virtual sale.
A recent bestselling book with the ironic title, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander details the ways in which the criminal justice apparatus and its employment of mass imprisonment have created a new caste system largely trapping poor blacks. Sadly even educators and administrators of children contribute to the process through what is known as the school to prison pipeline in which incidents once handled internally are now routinely turned over to police.
This is to say nothing of residential segregation, perhaps, in the least expected places. A University of Michigan study based on the 1990-2010 census suggests that New York is the second-most-segregated metropolitan area in the U.S., exceeded only by Milwaukee, and that about 78% of white and black people would have to move in order to achieve perfect integration. A 2013 report “The State of Exclusion; An Empirical Analysis of the Legacy of Segregated Communities in North Carolina” produced by the UNC Center for Civil Rights, highlights a practice called “underbounded” in which municipalities cut black communities out of their borders, thereby denying them critical services, utilities, and amenities with devastating consequences for quality of life, including decent schools.
Thus it should come as no surprise that golf, long resistant to inclusion seems to be trending in the same direction as the nation. Charlie Sifford, recent Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, the only black member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, first black on the approved player list of the PGA of America’s tour division in 1960, and winner of the 1969 Los Angeles Open was also the inspiration for an exemption at the Northern Trust Open (successor of the LA Open) to a minority who represents advancement of diversity in golf. Even after Sifford’s estrangement from the exemption, its first 6 recipients were black. This year the honor went to a Carlos Sainz, Jr. of Filipino and Bolivian descent.
Collegiate golf has become the most important training ground for professional golf, but it is a virtual wasteland for blacks as they are virtually absent from representation in predominantly white colleges, and even historically black institutions such as Lincoln University of Missouri, recent winners of the PGA Minority Golf Championship, which featured mostly white players. Even more white is the composition of the women’s champions Bethune-Cookman College of Daytona Beach although the institution is 94.3 percent African American The event, which had been founded as a championship for historically black universities and colleges in 1987 expanded to a diverse minority event with the PGA’s ownership and management in 2006. Ironically, Eddie Payton one of the event’s founders is held responsible for the trend toward the domination of these teams by white or Latino players. In 1995, Payton’s Jackson State golf team became the first HBCU to qualify for the NCAA tournament. Winning was more important than mission and tradition.
Black women have had an even more difficult struggle at the professional level than black men as only six have played on the LPGA Tour in its 65-year history: Althea Gibson, Renee Powell, Laree Pearl Sugg, Shasta Averyhardt, Sadena Parks, and Cheyenne Woods, niece of Tiger. Unfortunately, the relatively meager purses and extremely limited endorsements and sponsorships in the women’s game make survival on the tour extremely tenuous. Mariah Stackhouse of Stanford University in 2014 became the first African American to have played on the U.S. Curtis Team. Yet, she is also an exception to the rule as a black female collegiate golfer.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that black women constitute roughly two percent of the competitors in the NCAA tournament and at least five black colleges have dropped women’s golf programs recently for financial reasons, denying scholarships to women and educational opportunities in the process. Hank Stewart the golf coach at Texas Southern University has pleaded for black golfers “to step up” and help support women’s golf programs at HBCUs. The same needs to be done for promising young players such as Ginger Howard on the Symetra Tour.
When golf was rigidly segregated, blacks created parallel institutions including organizational and governing bodies such as the United Golfers Association and its affiliates. No matter its inadequacies, the UGA was an institution that helped to foster an environment for blacks and the game that has not been approached by anything since. Its professional tournaments, often referred to as the Chitlin Circuit gave Charlie Sifford, Ted Rhodes, and Pete Brown, among many others, the competitive and financial opportunities that would position them for the PGA tour. The UGA made golf an important feature of black culture. Under the UGA’s auspices golf was a family and community affair that gave participants pride in their ability to be competent, responsible, and respectable citizens. Moreover, exclusion from golf denied blacks a claim to standing as ladies and gentlemen with whom the game became associated.
An organization without venues to facilitate its members’ enjoyment of the game, spurred its leaders and participants to buy and/or build courses of their own. Dr. Calvin Sinnette’s Forbidden Fairways lists a total of twenty-seven black-owned golf courses in existence over the expanse fo the black golf experience. Most famous among them were Mapledale in Stowe, MA, Shady Rest in Scotch Plains, NJ, and New Lincoln Country Club in Atlanta, GA. As humble as they might have been they were prized as “a place of our own” not only for golf but as social, cultural, and, even, intellectual centers. None of these facilities exists today as black-owned and/or operated golf courses.
Shady Rest is now Scotch Hills a municipal course and only a determined fight by a coalition of black and white citizens has resulted in efforts to preserve the long-neglected and rapidly deteriorating clubhouse. When, in 1951, Alfred “Tup” Holmes and his partners committed the act that led to the Supreme Court decision of 1955, integrating public golf courses in Atlanta and the state of Georgia, they probably had no idea of the impact it would have on the New Lincoln Country Club, which, although never quite the same, lasted until the early 1980s. Interestingly, the 9-hole course had been the site of many black championships, but when the UGA decided to move its championship to one of the newly integrated public courses, the authorities forbade spectators. Control has its privileges.
With the recent closings of Julius “Dr. J” Erving’s Heritage Golf Course in Atlanta; two facilities owned by Hercules Pitts’ Lake Arbor and Marlborough Golf Clubs in Prince Georges, MD, and The New Rogell Golf Course in Detroit–approximately five black-owned and/or operated golf courses remain. They include Freeway Golf Club, Sicklerville, NJ; Meadowbrook in Garner, NC, now known as the St. Augustine University Golf Course and Recreation Complex; *Bull Creek Golf & Country Club, Louisburg, NC; Woodbridge Golf Club, Mineral Wells, WV; and Clearview Golf Club, East Canton, OH. Not mentioned in the above is Salamander Hotels and Resorts’ the Grand Golf Resorts of Florida to be discussed along with Clearview below.
Clearview, founded by William Powell in 1946, is the only black designed, built, owned, and operated course in existence. In 1978, the course added an additional nine holes. Renee and Larry Powell have carried on their father and mother’s legacy, in preserving this national monument to inclusion. One need only sit on the hill below the 18th green and take in the surroundings on a late summer day just before sunset with its shimmering light cast upon the trees and feel Mr. Powell’s presence and witness the results of one man’s vision. He built a course open to all and they came, but not unlike so many golf courses regardless of racial concerns, Clearview’s long-term future is uncertain and the facility only survives because of the superhuman efforts of Renee, Larry, a committed skeletal staff, selfless volunteers, and a few very supportive friends. A visit to Clearview is more than a golf experience it is a spiritual revelation.
At the opposite end of the spectrum and in a class of its own is the golf portfolio of the Grand Golf Resorts of Florida, which includes Innisbrook Golf Resort and Spa, Reunion Resort and Spa, and Hammock Beach Resort, featuring 162 holes of golf. Owned by Sheila Johnson, this golf empire even hosts a PGA Tour event–the Valspar Championship–on its famed Copperhead Course. To those who have been clamoring for a first-class African-American owned golf resort, it is a must-see destination for groups large and small. If blacks do not support such an enterprise what grounds do they have to condemn others for denial of opportunity and inclusion.
No matter how one looks at the present plight of blacks in the game, the glass is not half full it is nearly empty. Even the positives below can be seen as exceptions that prove the rule. In 2015, there is one exempt black on the PGA Tour. In 2014 no black golfer qualified for the U.S. Open With the departure of Pete McDaniel and Farrell Evans from the beat, there are no major full-time black golf writers. As caddies have become highly paid independent contractors, blacks have all but disappeared from their ranks at the highest levels of the game, replaced by aspiring professionals as well as family members and friends of players. Maybe a closer look should be given to Augusta National’s decision in 1983 to allow players to select their own caddies regardless of race.
Damon Hack is apparently the only black on-air presence on Golf Channel. Mike Tirico announces golf for ESPN. Joe Louis Barrow, Jr., as Chief Executive Officer of the First Tee is the highest ranking black executive in the administration of the sport. Daric Ashford as President and CEO of Nike Golf is the highest ranking black on the industry side. Sheila Johnson is Secretary of the United States Golf Association and Gregory Morrison just joined its Executive Committee. Black members of the PGA of America total approximately 90 out of more than 27,000. Only 3 are black women. No constituency is as important to access to and learning of the game than the PGA professional. Maybe those 90-some will form a caucus to leverage their meager numbers and influence. The Bill Dickey East-West Classic a major fundraiser for the Bill Dickey Scholarship Fund has gone the way of so many other major black charity events such as Bryant Gumbel’s United Negro Fund Tournament and the Julius Chambers Invitational for LDF to name a few. Industry support and sponsorships dwindled for these events as they have for African-American focused junior golf programs.
There is no doubt that a great deal of attention is being paid to the history of black golf as demonstrated by the African American Golf Archive of the USGA and PGA and the World Golf Hall of Fame’s “Honoring the Legacy: A Tribute to African–Americans in Golf“. Yet history is only useful to the extent that its revelations of the past have meaningful application to the present and future. Interest and advancement of history must not be a substitute for action.
In the mid-1990s, the Minority Golf Symposium, with representatives from all area of the business and administration of the game, was a beacon of hope for inclusion from the integration of private clubs to employment at all levels. Unfortunately, a combination of personnel changes, economic recession, and industry disinterest in diversity led to its transformation and eventual dissolution with little to show for its great promise. Given the acceptance by many of a color-blind and post-racial society and cover by the Supreme Court of the United States in its virtual destruction of affirmative action, nothing will change for the better unless the aggrieved and excluded among us make their concerns known to the powers that be.
Ask questions before you purchase a membership, book a tee time, buy equipment, and take a golf trip. If you do not like what you see make your voices heard. Those few on the inside need your help in demonstrating that demand for change is coming from without. Last, support blacks in the industry, including this publication, which is the ONLY one of its kind and the ONLY one that probably would publish this essay.
*Bull Creek Golf & Country Club is currently closed and has been sold.
Jeffrey T. Sammons, Ph.D. is a Professor of History at New York University, the author of Harlem’s Rattlers and the Great War: The Undaunted 369th Regiment and the African American Quest for Equality and is currently writing a book on race and golf. He is a former member of the United States Golf Association’s Museum and Library Committee, and was a founding member of the African American Golf Archive. He currently serves on the board of the Clearview Legacy Foundation.
