West Palm Beach golf course was key to drive for desegregation
The remade center there, called The Park - West Palm Beach, is set to open this month.
An ambitious project to reimagine West Palm Beach’s public golf course as a beacon of outreach for the game is being built on the commitment of many, but perhaps none more than the city’s determined Black golfers.
The Park - West Palm Beach is set to open this month at the site of the municipal course south of Forest Hill Boulevard and just east of I-95.
This is an opportunity for the city to overcome the lasting damage of a decades-long policy of discrimination in the last century that barred the Black community from the enjoyment and benefits of its community course.
The same property, the home of the former West Palm Beach Country Club, is a landmark in the battle for equality in our community.
For many years in the 20th century, Black Palm Beach County golfers in search of a place to play had to make their way to Miami Springs. One course was open to them there and only on Monday afternoons when maintenance workers tended the fairways.
In 1956, four Black West Palm Beach residents sued in federal court seeking the right to play golf here. Two years later, an appellate court ruled the city must open the course to all.
William M. Holland Sr., Isiah C. Smith and F. Malcolm Cunningham Sr. led the legal battle on behalf of plaintiffs Dr. Warren Hale Collie, one of the county’s first Black dentists; Dr. G.F. Gaines; Carney Green; and Arthur Davis.
They were part of a generation of educated Black Americans resolved to challenge racial barriers in the South. As a law student, Holland worked under the direction of Thurgood Marshall.
The civil rights leader, who would ascend to the U.S. Supreme Court, was the architect of the legal strategy that ended the country’s policy of segregation.
Holland later said integrating the golf course was a test for the battle to desegregate classrooms. He famously went on to successfully challenge the Palm Beach County School District in court after his 6-year-old son was turned away from the all-white Northboro School. Now, the Palm Beach County School District’s headquarters bear his name.
“We wanted to find out what would be the reaction to the change,” he told Palm Beach Post reporter Tim O’Meilia in 1986.
Sale planned so course could exclude Black players
The reaction was swift. City leaders put the course up for sale.
The headline stripped across The Palm Beach Post on March 1, 1958:
Court Upholds Golf Course Race Ban;
Sale to Holding Company Advocated
For sale: one premiere golf course that at the time was a stop on the PGA Tour and would later be selected by Golf Digest as one of the 25 best municipal golf courses in the nation.
“They wanted to sell it, specifically, to keep Black players from playing down there,” former City Commissioner Robbie Littles said.
Two hours before the planned sale, Holland obtained a court order to block it, the attorney told The Post’s O’Meilia.
“A big debt of gratitude should be paid to the few people who bet their whole existence on the effort to be plaintiffs,” Cunningham’s son, West Palm Beach attorney F. Malcolm Cunningham Jr., said in an interview last month, “and the lawyers who invested all that they had to represent them.”
Their drive opened the course to poor white people, middle-class white people and Black people, regardless of class, Cunningham said.
The battle for equal access was not over.
Black players were barred from the tees unless they could field a foursome or persuade white players to let them join their group.
“In the ‘50s, ‘60s and into the ‘70s, if you went down there, one or two of you, the standard answer was, ‘Well, we don’t let any singles or twosomes go out. So, I will have to pair you up,’” Littles said. “You would literally wait there two or three hours. I’ve known Black golfers who waited for four or five hours to play golf.”
A new club to ensure fair play
To combat the stall tactic, six Black players got together in 1965 to form the Fairview Golf Club. The club had no building or golf course, but it had a high purpose.
“Fairview was established to ensure that we could always get around that,” Littles said.
The founders, John W. Stevens, David Bennett, Pete Toomes, Howard Stevens, Wilson McDonald and Dan Calloway, organized the club at Stevens Funeral Home Chapel on Tamarind Avenue.
Over the years, competing venues and changing lifestyles started to challenge the course and its managers. The city spent millions to refresh the links in 2009, but the property was running at a deficit.
In 2013, Fairview Golf Club celebrated its 48th anniversary at the course where it all began. Two years later, the city demolished the clubhouse citing problems with mold and air quality.
Three years after that, in 2018, it closed the course to save money while it considered the best use for the property.
In late 2019, PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh contacted Mayor Keith James to pitch a public-private model for the course. The deal was forged with a handshake followed by city commission approval.
Waugh created the not-for-profit West Palm Golf Community Trust to raise $55 million, remake and operate the course.
At a 2020 neighborhood outreach meeting, Waugh predicted that residents might pay roughly $40 for a round of golf, while "a hedge fund guy from New York pays $150."
The mission is to transform the municipal golf course model into a community gathering place and outreach for the sport.
“This is going to have such a unique position in the history of the city,” an emotional James said at the groundbreaking for The Park’s clubhouse in November 2021. “There will be so many young people who will walk through or walk around this land who will be inspired to do bigger and better things.”
The course was redesigned by Gil Hanse, the man Golf Digest calls the golf world’s hottest architect, his creative partner Jim Wagner and Dirk Ziff, a billionaire publishing heir and co-founder of The Park.
In addition to the 18-hole course, there is a 9-hole course, lighted driving range, clubhouse with a restaurant, offices for the South Florida PGA and a walking trail around the course perimeter.
“We’re calling it the West Palm Beach Park for a reason,” Waugh said in May 2021. “We want the citizens to feel ownership. This is 190 acres of your property — not our property — and what’s the best use for that? Well, it’s golf, but it’s a lot of things, and the programming that we’re going to run here for youth and for people at risk, veterans. It will be extraordinary.”
Promises to keep
There are wounds that still must be healed.
Littles points out the generational loss of opportunity to Black players striving to achieve professional tour status who were denied access to the game over the decades.
In 1985, then-Mayor Carol Roberts nominated Littles to be the first Black member of the Golf Commission, which oversaw the course. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported at the time that of the course’s 1,050 members, six were Black.
Cunningham, who as a young person learned how to play golf at the West Palm Beach course, expresses disappointment in the involvement of the PGA in the new project, notably because of its history of barring Black players from the professional tour.
“We are putting the course in the same hands of the people that kept us out of golf.” he said.
Despite the racism Littles experienced and his past critique of the course’s management, he is optimistic. He said he has faith in the mayor. Faith in the city commission. And faith in the trust.
“I hope they will abide by their commitment, their promise to get Black kids involved, to get them engaged,” he said. “Equally as important, I hope the rates at least for West Palm Beach residents and, secondarily, for Palm Beach County residents, are good rates.”
“We shall see.”
In a press release last week, course managers said there will be three tiers of green fees: City of West Palm Beach residents, Florida residents, and all others. Fees will be calculated based on demand.
City residents’ rates will start at $60 when the course opens.
The Park’s managers also said outreach to public school students in the immediate vicinity of the center has begun and that more will follow.
Today, Fairview Golf Club is led by its president, Martha Clark, who reports the organization is active in the game, in outreach for golf and in community service.
Clark said she is looking forward to seeing the new course.
“I’m involved with several nonprofit organizations, and we look forward to the opportunity to speak with them about hosting or having a tournament there at a reasonable price,” Clark said. “I would love to have contact with them.
“This is a new start,” she said. “Let’s start with a fresh page.”
Researcher Sammy Alzofon contributed to this story.
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