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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."