Pete Brown
*On this date in 1961, the Professional Golfers Tour (PGA) Tour lifted its whites-only clause.
However, the first Black golfer to play a PGA Tour event was Bill Spiller at the 1948 Los Angeles Open. The first black golfer to win a PGA Tour event, Pete Brown won the Waco Open in 1964. After the whites-only clause was lifted, Charlie Sifford was the first full-time black PGA Tour member. He became the first Black tour member to win at the Greater Hartford Open in 1967 and captured a second victory at the Los Angeles Open in 1969.
But in 1961, just months after the newly integrated PGA Tour season began, Sifford busted down one of the thickest racial walls. He broke the color barrier in the segregated South by competing in the 1961 Greater Greensboro Open.
African American Golfers Digest.com
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The First Tee Off,
Langston Golf Course
by Linwood E. Barnes
