Golf and Civil Rights in Washington, D.C.

The most famous stages of civil rights activism include schools, churches, and public transportation – but golf courses? 

In Washington, DC, golf was one of the many fronts where African Americans fought for equal access to public facilities in the early years of the Civil Rights Movement. From community building to lobbying to direct action in 1941, their activism influenced integration in the nation's capital city and parks.

By the turn of the 20th century, the District of Columbia had the largest and most prosperous African American population in the country. Yet schools, parks, playgrounds, and other public facilities were segregated. 

After World War I, when thousands of black veterans returned from the front, they found that inequality was worsening at home. As tensions rose in the summer of 1919, more than 20 race riots erupted across American cities, including Southwest Washington. In DC, rioting continued for three nights, and 2,000 federal troops intervened to stop it. These riots showed there could be a "strong, organized, and armed black resistance, foreshadowing the civil rights struggles later in the century," according to a Washington Post retrospective. This period of injustice and unrest is the prologue of the story of how golf became a civil rights issue.

Faced with such inferior facilities, African Americans wrote letters, signed petitions, met with officials, and formed a committee to push for a better course. Author, activist, and professor Dwight Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote to an official that “any sort of segregation on the basis of color [was] extremely unjust and undemocratic":

“Every time a colored citizen looks upon the beautiful, well-kept golf links at East Potomac Park, for example, whether he be a citizen of Washington or elsewhere, he naturally has a keen sense of the injustice of his exclusion, a feeling which is growing more pronounced and more widespread every day. I will not be surprised, therefore, to find a movement of protest very rapidly crystallizing in the very near future, unless you and other officials in charge of affairs make adequate provisions of equal facilities….”

Similarly, African American golfer M.C. Clifford wrote that “Such treatment as this engenders hatred which in the end will militate against the fundamental principles of democracy.” 

From the opening of the Lincoln Memorial course until today, African American golf clubs grew and flourished in Washington, DC. They were the organizing force behind both protests against segregation and home-grown golf champions and tournaments. Prominent black Washingtonians founded the city's first African American golf club, the Riverside Golf Club, in 1924. An offshoot of this club became the Royal Golf Club, which still exists today.

The first African American women's golf club in the U.S. also started in Washington. In August 1936 Helen Webb Harris invited twelve women to her house to discuss starting a women’s golf club. The founding members of the club, known as the Wake Robin Golf Club, were predominately the wives of the Royal Golf Club who were tired of staying home on the weekends while their husbands played golf.

For them, golf was more than a game. The club's goals were to help women and youth learn about golf, play in tournaments, and become champions. They also aimed to to fight for the integration of golf courses and programs. They have produced more champions than any other women's golf club.

As one commenter noted at the club's 50th anniversary, "Under a system of racism, in an atmosphere of sexism, black women playing golf was not a light matter. It was a political act.” 

African American civil rights activism in Washington, DC, expanded in the 1930s with the "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" campaign. In the 1940s, members of the Royal and Wake Robin golf clubs brought the fight for equal access to the public golf courses. Their actions were among the earliest to sparked a large and growing movement against Jim Crow segregation in the 1940s and 1950s.

Filing a lawsuit and waiting for the courts to force integration was the expected strategy at the time. Washington, DC's, black golf clubs decided on a different course of action. 

On June 30, 1941, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes issued an order to open the golf course to all players. He also insisted that African Americans could buy tickets to any of Washington, DC's, traditionally white public golf courses, writing: 

"I can see no reason why Negroes should not be permitted to play on the golf course. They are taxpayers, they are citizens, and they have a right to play golf on public courses on the same basis as whites."

After the official desegregation of public golf courses, African Americans still faced intimidation when they tried to play. A couple of weeks later, a fight broke out at the East Potomac Park Golf Course when African American golfers sought shelter from a torrential rainstorm in the field house.

In September, the Afro-American wrote that "White hoodlums, resenting the appearance of colored players on the hitherto lily-white courses, have been making things uncomfortable for adventuresome golfers; effecting malicious little triflings [sic], like filling carburetors with sand, deflating tires, removing spark plugs and other such things while the owners were out on the course."

A year later, in July 1942 at the Anacostia Golf Course, women from the Wake Robin Golf Club were harassed by a white crowd, who reportedly picked up the golfers’ balls to prevent them from playing and drove them from the course with sticks, stones, and abusive language.

One way African American golfers hoped to show their right to play was to hold the 1942 United Golfers Association (UGA) tournament, known as the "Negro National Open," on one of Washington, DC's, public courses. Dr. Edgar Brown wanted to "fashion a decree from the Department of the Interior...providing one of the swank courses, now used by white people, for the event."

Under pressure from white organizations, the UGA canceled the tournament. The Wake Robin and Royal Golf Clubs were undeterred. 

With the support of Secretary Ickes, they held an "All Out for Victory" tournament at the predominantly white Anacostia Golf Course. This showed the tenacity of Washington's black golfers and reinforced the official policy that the national parks were open to all, regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin. 

This fight was bigger than golf. African American activism on the golf course had local and national impacts.

As the U.S. entered World War II, the golfers' efforts helped expand the fight against Jim Crow in national parks. National parks in southern and border states often followed local and state customs of segregation. In 1942, Secretary Ickes and other high-ranking federal officials were urged to take steps to improve African American morale to help the war effort. Ickes wrote, "For several years I have been working with leaders of the Negro race in Washington to open up national park and monument areas in the Southern States to Negroes." In 1945, he issued new rules calling for full integration of all facilities across the National Park Service.

In Washington, DC, the integration of parks managed by the National Park Service came into conflict with the continued segregation of city-run recreation areas and other federal facilities. Pressure to end segregation came from both local citizens and national leaders. A 1948 report by President Truman's Committee on Civil Rights criticized the segregated city, noting that "Few Americans appreciate what a shock Washington can be to visitors from abroad. It is to them, even more than to most of us, the symbol of America." 

In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled on Bolling vs. Sharpe, ending segregation of Washington, D.C.'s schools on the same day as the ruling on Brown vs. Board of Education. This forced the DC Recreation Board to integrate its parks, playgrounds, and other facilities. Public golf courses across the country opened to African Americans after this and other court decisions.

The East Potomac Golf Course protest of 1941 led to a major victory in the struggle for equal access to public parks. Yet even after the public golf courses were opened to all, Langston remained the home course for many black golfers and golf clubs. In 1954-55, its 9 holes were expanded to a full 18. Many tournaments were held there, and many golf celebrities came to play. In the late 1970s, Lee Elder, the first African American PGA champion, took over operations and restored the course with his wife Rose. 

Local clubs and golfers continue to play the course, gather for yearly heritage events, and train the next generation in the game of golf to this day.

Using direct-action tactics and then appealing to the courts or higher authorities first occurred when Asa Williams, George Williams, and Cecil R. Shamwell refused to leave the East Potomac Park Golf Course in 1941. Their pioneering efforts became the model for other golf course discrimination fights in other cities across the country. They made civil rights history for Washington, DC, and the National Park Service.

Their achievements make the East Potomac and Langston Golf Courses eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. That means the National Park Service has a mission to preserve the course and tell its story for present and future generations. As stewards of the golf courses, the National Park Service's mission is to preserve the golf courses and tell their story for present and future generations. Washington, DC’s only public golf courses continue to provide affordable golf for men, women, and children of all ages and skills.