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http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/02/23/2083922/he-broke-the-color-barrier-on.html
He broke the color barrier on the greens
Mecklenburg to name golf course in honor of native son who joined the
PGA.
By David Perlmutt
[email protected]
Posted: Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2011
Charlie Sifford, a Charlotte native, joined the PGA Tour in 1960. 1997
OBSERVER FILE PHOTO - T. ORTEGA GAINES
They were a table of firsts, or near-firsts - barrier breakers.
One was Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Rodney Monroe, the first
black police chief of two departments.
Two were among Charlotte's early black morticians. Others were retired
businessmen and politicians.
But perhaps the biggest first was Charlie Sifford, freshly returned to
his native Charlotte, who was raised poor in western Mecklenburg and
would become golf's version of Jackie Robinson. Sifford refused to
accept the PGA's whites-only rule and in 1960 he became the first
African-American golfer to receive full PGA Tour status. Nearly 40 years
later, he was the first black inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.
In March, the Mecklenburg County commissioners will vote to rename the
overhauled nine-hole golf course at Revolution Park in Sifford's honor.
The discussion by six firsts was part of the Tuesday Morning Breakfast
Forum, which for more than 30 years has organized weekly discussions on
issues concerning Charlotte's black community.
Tuesday's forum was designed to spotlight Black History Month and those
who bravely broke racial barriers.
Two were retired funeral directors: Lem Long and Louie Davis. Long told
the forum he'd learned to embalm at a white-owned funeral home, when the
embalmer let him prepare white corpses behind a locked door.
"I wouldn't be here today if I'd been caught," Long said. "Those years
were worked under adverse circumstances."
Retired police officer Bill Covington patrolled part of the Brooklyn
neighborhood, the largely black area uptown that was bulldozed in the
1960s for urban renewal. His beat was at First and McDowell streets,
which in the 1950s The New York Times labeled "Murder Corner."
Covington was hired 15 years after the barrier had been broken - but in
the department's history he's among the first black officers.
Introducing Sifford, former school board member James Ross called him "a
freedom fighter."
"Charlie represents more than just being a golfer," Ross said. "He
opened things up for a lot of people - Tiger Woods included."
In December, Sifford, 89, moved back to Charlotte from Cleveland. He
grew up in the community with the unlikely name of Dixie, beyond the
Charlotte airport. As a boy, he caddied at the private Carolina Country
Club in west Charlotte and at 13, he was the best golfer there (the
course was closed Mondays and caddies could play then).
To pursue his pro golf dream, he left the South for Philadelphia in
1940.
There he met other athletes and entertainers who broke through race
barriers: boxer Joe Louis, baseball great Jackie Robinson and
singer-bandleader Billy Eckstine. He taught Eckstine to play golf.
In 1957, Sifford won the Long Beach Open, beating several prominent
white PGA players, but the event wasn't a sanctioned PGA tournament.
Three years later, he got full PGA status and in 1961, he became the
first black golfer to play in a Southern PGA tournament, in Greensboro.
The night before, death threats were phoned in. As he played, spectators
hurled slurs and kicked his balls into the woods, or buried them by
stepping on them.
"It was scary, but it was important to be there," Sifford said Tuesday.
"Somebody had to break the barrier. It was the first time a pro black
golfer had played with whites in the South."