CHARLIE SIFFORD
Born on June 2, 1922, in Charlotte, North Carolina, Charles Sifford developed a passion for golf, going on to win multiple Negro Open championships and challenging the Professional Golf Association’s whites-only rule. Sifford succeeded in desegregating the organization despite harassment and death threats, and was a contender in subsequent PGA tours. He wrote the 1992 autobiography Let Me Play. Sifford died on February 3, 2015, at age 92.
Considered the Jackie Robinson of golf, Charlie Sifford broke the game’s stringent color barrier in 1961 when he became the first black athlete to compete on the PGA tour. His early exposure to golf came on the courses of North Carolina, where Sifford worked as a caddie. He earned 60 cents a day on the course—nearly of all of which went into the pocket of his mom to help keep the household going.
Sifford was a quick learner, however, and by the age of 13 he could shoot par. He realized then that he wanted to make golf his full-time job. He also realized that he wanted what, to many, seemed impossible: the chance to play in golf’s biggest tournaments against its best players.
The most glaring admission from Sifford’s resume is The Masters, which did not begin inviting PGA winners to Augusta National Golf Course in Georgia until the 1970s. But the significance of Sifford’s achievements has not been lost on the still predominantly white golf world. In 2004, he was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame, just the 104th athlete and first African American to receive the honor. Then, in early 2009, came the creation of the Charlie Sifford Exemption, which allows for the invitation of a player to the Northern Trust Open (formerly the Los Angeles Open) who represents the advancement of golf’s diversity. In 2015 a Los Angeles County street was named in his honor. On November 24, 2014 Sifford received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.
BEN DAVIS
Golf legend Ben Davis—Joe Louis’ one-time teacher and the first African American in the country to serve as head pro at a municipal course was born on Feb. 19, 1912. He passed away on April 9, 2013 at age 101.
Davis was born Erellon Ben Davis in Pensacola, Fla., moved to Detroit in 1925 and graduated from Detroit Northern High. In 1936, Davis began giving golf lessons at Pine Crest Driving Range in Ferndale, MI. In 1952, working for Rackham Golf Course in Huntington Woods, he became an icon and taught for more than 50 years.
Two years later, as the head pro at Rackham, he became the first African American to hold that position at a U.S. municipal course and the first African American member of the Michigan Section of the PGA (1966). Davis and Louis — the Detroit heavyweight boxing legend — became friends, and for years Louis hosted an annual tournament for amateurs at Rackham. Davis also was an accomplished tournament player and won the 1974 Michigan PGA Seniors title. He was inducted into the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame in 1992.
In 2007, to mark his 95th birthday, Huntington Woods proclaimed his birthday as “Ben Davis Day” for being “instrumental in the desegregation of golf as a major sport in southeast Michigan.” Coverage of Davis’ 99th and 100th birthday celebrations are chronicled in the African American Golfer’s Digest.
CALVIN PEETE
A renowned professional golfer, Calvin Peete made history by winning 12 major PGA (Professional Golf Association) tournaments between 1979 and 1986. One of the most prolific winners and one of the straightest hitters on the PGA Tour in the 1980s, Peete won the PGA’s driving accuracy title for ten consecutive years (1981-1990). Before the emergence of Tiger Woods, Peete was the most successful African American on the PGA Tour.
Born in Detroit, Michigan on July 18, 1943, Peete was the eighth of nine children born to Irenna (Bridgeford) Peete and Dennis Peete, a Detroit auto factory worker. He was raised in Detroit, Hayti, Missouri, and on a farm in Pahokee, Florida.
At age 12, Peete fell from a cherry tree near his grandmother’s house in Haiti and broke his left elbow in three places. Surgeons repaired the fractures but the elbow joint remained permanently fused, so Peete could never fully straighten his arm. Some golf swing analysts believe that this condition contributed to Peete’s driving accuracy. It allowed him to create a golf swing path that brought him to return the club squarely from the back swing, back to the same position at impacting the ball. Peete was nicknamed “Mr. Accuracy” by other golfers for his ability to hit the ball consistently onto the fairway.
Peete lived in Florida during his teenage years and dropped out of school at age 15. For several years he supported himself by selling clothes, watches, jewelry, stereos and other wares to migrant farm workers up and down the east coast from areas like Florida to Rochester, New York. He first picked up a golf club in Rochester in 1966, at the “old age” of 23. Moving back to Florida, golf became Peete’s obsession, and he looked for driving ranges with floodlights so that he could practice at night. He also took a night job managing apartments in Fort Lauderdale so he would have more time for golf.
In 1971, Peete became a professional golfer. In 1975, he completed the PGA Tour Qualifying School and his first PGA Tour victory came in 1979, winning the Greater Milwaukee Open. In 1982, he had four PGA Tour wins. He continued a winning streak with two wins in 1983, one in 1984, two in 1985, including the Tournament Players Championship, and two in 1986. Among the others were the Texas Open and the Phoenix Open. The Players Championship was his most coveted win and earned him the position of being the most successful African American golfer at that time. In 1982, Peete earned his high school equivalency so as to be eligible for a U.S. Ryder Cup Team position. He was a member of the U.S. Team in 1983 and 1985.
After 1986, Peete’s back and shoulder problems slowed him down although, he earned over $2.3 million on the PGA Tour through 1993. At age 51, Peete started competing on the Senior Tour and retired from golf in 2001.
Peete is the father of five children (Calvin, Jr., Dennis, Nicole, Kalvinetta, and Ricky) from his first marriage. They were born between 1968 and 1975. He married Elaine (Pepper) Peete in 1993; they are the parents of two daughters—Aisha, born in 1993 and Aleya, born in 1996.
Calvin Peete passed away on April 29, 2015 at age 71.
MAGGIE HATHAWAY
Maggie Hathaway was an avid golfer, sports writer, activist, blues singer, and actor. A native of Campti, Louisiana, Hathaway traveled to Los Angeles in 1931 in hopes of playing piano in one of the clubs on Central Avenue, also known as “Black Broadway”. Instead, she began her acting career in the area working as an extra in Hollywood films, fair-skinned, she was usually placed in roles as an “Egyptian” or an “exotic.”
After auditioning for Cabin in the Sky, Hathaway was hired as a body double for Lena Horne throughout much of the film; she later worked as Horne’s stand-in in Stormy Weather. However, her Hollywood career ended when she refused to play an extra in a biopic about Woodrow Wilson which required her to wear a bandanna and sit on a bale of cotton. She then returned to singing in cabaret in Los Angeles clubs, recording several songs including “Bayou Baby Blues,” “School Girl Blues,” “A Falling Star” and “When Gabriel Blows His Horn” with The Robins and “Here Goes a Fool” as a solo artist.
During the civil rights movement, Hathaway would become a major activist in the Los Angeles-Hollywood region. After she took up golf as a pastime after winning a bet against Joe Louis in 1955, she began agitating against local golf courses which restricted black patrons from usage; by 1958, she began writing a golf column in the California Eagle about black professional players, and by 1963 she launched Minority Associated Golfers to support young black golfers. Her agitation spread to broader issues, and in 1962, Hathaway became the founding president of the newly-chartered Beverly Hills-Hollywood branch of the NAACP. In 1967, she joined with Sammy Davis, Jr. and Willis Edwards in holding the first NAACP Image Awards.
She was married to at least four husbands, including King Coleman (from 1979 to 1984). The Jack Thompson Golf Course in Los Angeles was renamed the Maggie Hathaway Golf Course in 1997.
CHARLIE OWENS
Charles Owens was an American professional golfer who has played on the PGA Tour and the Senior PGA Tour. Owens was born in Winter Haven, Florida on February 22, 1932. He played football at Florida A&M University and served in the U.S. Army. He suffered injuries to both knees and his left ankle during a parachute jump at Fort Bragg, North Carolina in 1952 which left him handicapped.
Owens turned professional in 1967 and joined the PGA Tour in 1970. During his seven years on the Tour, he won the 1971 Kemper Asheville Open, a “satellite” PGA Tour event. Owens played with a limp and played all golf shots cross-handed. The biggest year of his professional career came on the Senior PGA Tour in 1986, when he won twice in a three tournament span, and finished eighth on the money list with $207,813.
Owens was allowed to use a cart while competing in most instances due to his disability, and once staged a protest at the 1987 U.S. Senior Open against the USGA for its ban on carts at that event.
Owens also is credited with inventing and popularizing the “long (52″) style putter” which he used to overcome the yips.
Owens formerly lived in Tampa, Florida and recently resided in Winter Haven until his death on September 7, 2017. He won the Ben Hogan Award in 1987 and was inducted into the Florida Sports Hall of Fame in 1987 and the African American Golfers Hall of Fame in 2007.
PEETE BROWN
Pete Brown was an American professional golfer who is best known as the first African American to win a PGA Tour event with his win at the Waco Turner Open. He was born on February 2, 1935.
Brown was born in Port Gibson, Mississippi and grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. He started in golf as a caddy at the municipal course in his hometown. He suffered from non-paralytic polio in the late 1950s but recovered and resumed playing competitive golf.
He turned professional in 1954, winning the Negro National Open consecutively in 1961 and 1962. Brown received his PGA Tour card in 1963 He was not the first African American to obtain his PGA players card; that honor belonged to Charlie Sifford. Brown’s victory at the 1964 Waco Turner Open did, however, earn him a place in history as the first African American to win a PGA event. He played on the PGA Tour for 17 years and posted a second tour win at the 1970 Andy Williams-San Diego Open Invitational in a playoff over Tony Jacklin.
Brown played on the Senior PGA Tour (now Champions Tour) beginning in 1985. His best finishes were a pair of T-6s in 1985 at the Senior PGA Tour Roundup and the MONY Syracuse Senior Classic.
Brown and his wife, Margaret, are the parents of six daughters. He was the head pro at Madden Golf Course in Dayton, Ohio for more than 20 years. He lived in Evans, Georgia from 2012 to 2015.
Brown died in Augusta, Georgia on May 1, 2015 at the age of 80.
