The Full Story
Our History
THE ROYAL GOLF CLUB STORY
The Beginning
The Royal Golf Club
Prominent black Washingtonians founded the city's first African American golf club, the Riverside Golf Club, in 1924. In 1925, the all-Black Riverside Golf Club was organized to promote play on the municipally owned Lincoln Memorial Golf Course in Washington, DC, which opened on June 8, 1924. Some members split off from this club six months after its formation to organize the Citizens Golf Club, which later changed its name to the Capital City Golf Club in 1927.
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. As the country was establishing Jim Crow, white organizations were routinely excluding blacks from participation in various professional sports, including those in which blacks had been prominent. To counter this, African Americans established alternative institutions. In golf, it was the UGA, the United Golfers Association, in 1926.
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Blacks in Washington, DC were allowed to lay at a nine-hole layout in the area between the Lincoln Memorial and the Old Naval Hospital at 24th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW. The greens were round, about twenty feet in diameter and covered in sand. Even the average player could drive all but three of the holes with irons. This course had been built due to the efforts of a group, the Capitol City Golf Club. With the opening of the course for daily play more people became attracted to the game. Some of these were from the Caddy rank, and others took the game up for recreation. The Capitol City Golf Club tried to establish another golf course and country club in the area, but the project never got off the ground, so those plans seemed to fade.
From this group there were those who felt that widening the scope of play, improvement of the facilities and the proper sponsorship of tournaments were definite needs. So a meeting was called and interested golfers were invited to meet for the purpose of forming a club. After some informal discussion, it was decided to organize and a committee was established in the year of 1933 to draft a constitution and thus the Royal Golf was named. The club's membership at the beginning was very small and consisted of quite a number of professional people-doctors, lawyers and notable members of the Washington, DC area. Later however, this image changed very drastically when they became better organized and started promoting different golfing events. From this point on, the membership grew larger and more diversified until it became the club that represented golfers from every walk of life.
With a burgeoning number of African American golfers in the city, Capital City/Royal Golf Club began advocating for expanding facilities and requested that the federal government (which operated all five golf course in the city limits) construct a new 18-hole course for Blacks to play. In 1927, John Langford, a prominent black architect in the city, petitioned the federal government to build the course on the new Anacostia Park. Over the next several years, African American golfers in the city and surrounding areas held rallies, attended hearings, wrote letters, and lobbied Congress and executive branch officials to build the new course in Anacostia Park.
​​​​In 1934, government officials et with the Black golfing community, including members of the Royal Golf Club, and agreed to build the course in Anacostia Park. The first nine holes of Langston Golf Course were built in 1939. When it opened, the course was not in good shape and some of the greens lacked grass. The inadequate facilities at Langston led many black golfers to continue to lobby for expansion of the course. African Americans attempted to play golf at the all-white East Potomac Park Golf course, Rock Creek Park Golf Course, and other all-white courses, but were usually prevented from doing so. Black golfers continued to lobby, rally, and testify in favor of an additional nine holes at Langston, until the back 9 was constructed and opened in 1955.
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Whatever is past is by-gone, and very soon becomes history, and according to certain trends of modern thinking should bear little or no relationship to the present. Unlike our European neighbors, who, seem to go to great lengths to honor, protect and preserve many of their historical Shrines, Treasures and Artifacts, while a good number of Americans seek to destroy every vestige of our past, perhaps, for fear to remind them of a more primitive age. Be this as it many, there is still plenty of evidence to indicate that many of our institutions and establishments of today were largely built on the foundations that were created by those who precede us. It, therefore, affords us great pleasure to bring attention some of the past, as well as the present history of the Royal Golf Club.
GOLF & CIVIL RIGHTS in Washington, DC
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.
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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.
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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.
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