Jim Crow in Savannah's Parks in the 20th Century presented by Jeffrey M. Ofgang: Bacon Park Golf Course

Bacon Park Golf Course in Savannah in 1930. (Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia Collection, image ctm169)

The only city-owned golf course, Bacon Park, opened in 1926. In the age of Jim Crow, the course was open to Black golfers only on "Caddies Day" each Monday. In June 1959, Black residents demanded unsuccessfully that the course be opened to them for two full days each week. A few days later, eleven African Americans tried to play at Bacon Park on a Sunday and were turned away. The group threatened a federal lawsuit. Mayor W. Lee Mingledorff said, "we will not have an incident about the golf course even if we have to close it altogether."

In July 1960, seven African Americans headed by dentist and NAACP activist John W. Jamerson, Jr. petitioned the Bacon Park Commission to open the city's only municipal golf course to everyone. The commission desegregated the course in March 1961 after ignoring numerous federal court decisions in the 1950s barring whites-only municipal recreation facilities unless "separate but equal" facilities were provided for Black people.

However, the golf course continued to host segregated golf tournaments run by the private Savannah Golf Association. In 1968, six Black men sued the City of Savannah after they were barred from competing. A federal judge ruled in their favor in 1969, citing the 1964 Civil Rights Act.