COMMENTARY
History made on golf course History can rise in surcity-owned golf course was prising places. Important open only to whites. The city events don’t all occur on farowned no golf courses then away fields or in exotic lowhere blacks were allowed cales. Sometimes, important to play. Black golfers played events, the ones that make on private courses segregated us who we are, took place for use only by black players. right around the corner, in Charles Bell Sr. rememplaces still in plain sight. bers the match that wasn’t Like, say, a golf course. played in 1951. He was One recent Saturday there, part of the foursome AROUND morning, a crowd of golf Holmes brought to the BobTOWN and history buffs gathered by Jones course that day. in the clubhouse of the Bob“We came to the clubhouse,” JOE EARLE by Jones Golf Course to resaid Bell, who’s now 97 years member a round of golf that old and lives in Warner Robhad been played there on Christmas ins, Ga. “We prepared to pay our fees. Day six decades ago. We were just informed that because of Or, to put it more precisely, they reour color, we were not allowed to play,” called a round of golf that had not been he said. played and then, years later, on ChristThey had expected to be rejected, mas Day 1955, went forward under an he said. They intended to challenge the order issued by the United States Sucity’s segregationist laws in court. “We preme Court. That game of golf helped planned it. We knew we would be dechange many things, and opened Atnied the right to play,” he said. “We lanta recreation facilities to all of the decided to come to the Bobby Jones city’s residents. course... and the rest is history.” In 1951, an Atlanta golfer named They did make history. The group’s Alfred “Tup” Holmes and a group of effort to play golf on the whites-only his friends went to the Bobby Jones course came years before the U.S. SuGolf Course in Buckhead and asked to preme Court would strike down legal play a round. Holmes and his friends segregation in public schools and faciliwere turned away. They were black. The ties. It came years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger, spurring the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott. “We were still deep in the thrall of Jim Crow [laws],” said Anne Emanuel, a professor emerita at Georgia State Law School. Demanding the right to play golf on a city course in 1951 was a brave act, Emanuel said. “It was hard,” she said. “It was dangerous to get in front of that train. .... The courage factor. Probably Atlanta was the only place in Georgia you would survive if you did this. The times were very different and very danJOE EARLE gerous.” Michael Holmes stands with Holmes and members of his famia photo of his father, golfer ly fi led suit against the city. Their case Alfred “Tup” Holmes, that is worked its way to the Supreme Court, included in a new exhibit at where it was among the first group of the Bobby Jones Golf Course.
desegregation decisions announced after the landmark Brown v. the Board of Education case desegregated public schools. The Holmes family case was among a group of cases that extended the rules applied in the Brown case to other public recreation facilities, such as the Bobby Jones Golf Course, Emanuel said. Michael Holmes, Tup Holmes’ son, said the decision has been referenced 51 times in other cases. “It was a big deal,” Emanuel said. Bell and Emanuel were part of a group of about 75 people that gathered at the Bobby Jones clubhouse to mark
the 60th anniversary of the decision, released Nov. 7, 1955, with the formal opening of a new exhibit about the case called “Holmes v. Atlanta: Changing the Game.” The exhibit, sponsored by the Friends of the Bobby Jones Golf Course and put together by Georgia Tech professor Mary McDonald and her graduate students, includes information about Holmes, his family and the lawsuit. “We felt like it was a story that needed to be preserved,” McDonald said. “I think it’s got all sorts of really important issues connected to it. And it’s an CONTINUED ON PAGE 10
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