The Nation's First Black-Owned Golf Clubhouse Is Now A Historic Landmark (2024)

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The Nation's First Black-Owned Golf Clubhouse Is Now A Historic Landmark? ›

The National Park Service has added Shady Rest Golf and Country Club a listing on the National Register of Historic Places, according to Patch.com. The very first Black country club in the whole country will now be considered a historical landmark, as should every historically Black site.

Shady Rest Golf Club opened in 1920 as the first African American Golf and Country Club in the United States.

Bill Powell was the first African American to design, construct, and own a professional golf course in the United States. In 1946, Bill and his wife Marcella did most of the landscaping by hand when they transformed a 78-acre dairy farm to a nine-hole golf course located near East Canton, Ohio.

In 1921, the Shady Rest Golf and Country Club opened its doors in New Jersey. The club was the first Black-owned golf course in the country and it quickly became a center of African American life in the area. The club was home to John Shippen, the first African American professional golfer.

The Shady Rest Golf & Country Club in Scotch Plains, New Jersey is the oldest African American golf club in the United States. It was the mecca of black middle-class society in New Jersey from the 1920s to the 1960s with members traveling from as far as the Carolinas to enjoy its amenities.

The Shady Rest Golf and Country Club is located at 820 Jerusalem Road in the Township of Scotch Plains in Union County, New Jersey. Established in 1921, it was one of the first, if not the first, African American country clubs in the United States.

George Grant invented and patented the first golf tee in 1899. Before Grant's invention, golfers carried buckets of sand from hole to hole and built up sand mounds from which to hit the balls. Grant was born in Oswego in 1847 to former slaves.

In 1899, Boston dentist Dr. George Grant, frustrated with this tedious and messy process, invented a wooden golf tee. Dr. Grant was born to escaped slaves in 1846, eventually finding work as an assistant at a dentist's office.

Two years later, in 1948, he opened the integrated Clearview Golf Club. In 1978, he expanded the course to 18 holes and earned a national-historic-site designation in 2001. As of the 2000s (decade), Clearview was the only course in the United States designed, constructed, owned and operated by an African American.

Charley Pride, widely considered the genre's first Black superstar, was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000. He was the first Black country singer to receive the honor and is still one of only three along with DeFord Bailey and Ray Charles.

Who was the first Black person to make country music? ›

Charley Pride, the first Black artist to have a number one country record, achieved immense success in the genre during the 1960s and 1970s, despite facing prejudice and racial discrimination.

Seeing the cover of his gold-selling first album, Country Charley Pride, was the first time many fans discovered that he was Black.

This is the case with Jersey Club, a style of club music pioneered by Black Baltimore-based artists in the late 90s. The unique production methods used by Jersey Club artists have carved out an aggressive, yet melodic style of dance music which has taken social media by storm.

Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek letter fraternity established for African American men, was founded at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, by seven college men who recognized the need for a strong bond of brotherhood among African descendants in this country.

Operating since 1881, the moving company started out with only two horses and a wagon. In 2003, the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Congressional Black Caucus recognized E.E. Ward Moving & Storage as the oldest African-American-owned business in America.

The roots of black social clubs are traced to the black burial societies, such as the Elks, the Masons and the Knights of Pythias, that were established shortly after the Civil War. The societies helped families raise money for burial plots, but they soon became social as well.