[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 177 (Thursday, November 9, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2155]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           HAMILTON VERSUS HOLMES USED GOLF TO TRAMPLE RACISM

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                          HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, November 9, 1995

  Mr. TOWNS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to provide my colleagues with a 
profile of courage and conviction used 40 years ago to overcome racial 
segregation on a golf course in Atlanta, GA. In a legal case that was 
heard before the Supreme Court, Holmes versus Atlanta, a blow was 
struck to desegregate public golf courses. This particular case was a 
precursor to another desegregation case heard by the Supreme Court, 
Brown versus Board of Education.
  I encourage my colleagues to read the accompanying article about an 
epic and courageous battle waged by Alfred Tup Holmes:

                           (By Ken Liebeskind)

       The philosophies of Alfred (Tup) Holmes and Georgia 
     governor Marvin Griffin collided in the mid-1950's when 
     Holmes and his family challenged segregation in Atlanta: not 
     in the schools or work places, but on the golf course.
       In 1951, Tup, his brother Oliver and their father, Dr. 
     Hamilton M. Holmes, were turned away from the Bobby Jones 
     course, one of seven public golf courses in Atlanta at the 
     time, because they were black. Then, they launched what their 
     lawyer, Roscoe E. Thomas, recently recalled was ``the first 
     desegregation suit in Atlanta.''
       The suit began in United States District court in 1953 and 
     reached the Supreme Court two years later. Tuesday marks the 
     40th anniversary of the Court's decision in Holmes v. 
     Atlanta, the case that desegregated public golf. 
     (Discrimination still exists at many private country clubs, 
     which continue to practice exclusionary membership policies 
     based on race and religion.)
       When most people think of desegregation, they think of 
     Brown v. Board of Education. Brown was rendered a full year 
     earlier, but the case filed by the Holmeses, all now 
     deceased, had a more immediate, effect. ``The first scene of 
     court-ordered desegregation in Georgia was a golf course 
     rather than a school house,'' wrote the Atlanta historians 
     Norman Shavin and Bruce Galpin in ``Atlanta: Triumph of a 
     People.''
       Holmes v. Atlanta began in the aftermath of the incident at 
     the Jones course when Tup Holmes and a community committee 
     decided to bring suit against the city. They won a hollow 
     victory in 1954 when District Court Judge Boyd Sloan ruled 
     that blacks had a constitutional right to play golf, but only 
     in accordance with the city's ``separate but equal'' 
     doctrine. He ordered the city to devise a system to 
     accommodate blacks while ``preserving segregation.''
       The city offered to let blacks use the public courses 
     Mondays and Tuesdays which was agreeable to some. ``They said 
     this was enough, we don't need to go further because it could 
     jeopardize our jobs,'' Gary Holmes, one of Tup Holmes's sons, 
     recalled last week.
       But Tup Holmes ``didn't have that fear,'' Gary Holmes said 
     of his father, who died in 1967. ``He was a mover and shaker, 
     bold enough to do that kind of stuff.'' An amateur golf 
     champion and a black union steward at his job at Lockheed 
     Aircraft, Holmes was determined to fight on to win full use 
     of city courses.
       The case moved to an Appeals Court in New Orleans, where 
     Thurgood Marshall and the N.A.A.C.P. intervened. But when the 
     Court ruled the original decision had given the plaintiffs 
     ``all the relief they asked for,'' the Holmeses were forced 
     to take their fight further, all the way to the Supreme 
     Court.
       The Court accepted the case in the 1955 fall term, a year 
     after Brown, when it was ``knocking down all kinds of 
     things,'' according to Jack Greenberg, a Columbia University 
     Law School professor who was the long-time director of the 
     N.A.A.C.P's Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Greenberg 
     worked with Thurgood Marshall on the Holmes case. ``The Court 
     was saying, `Haven't you got the message?' '' In fact, the 
     Court quickly overturned the previous rulings in Holmes, 
     sending it back to District court for a decree in favor of 
     the plaintiffs.
       The decision was applauded in an editorial in The New York 
     Times of Nov. 9, 1955: ``The court's perfectly logical 
     position is that desegregation means desegregation, not 
     segregation on an equal basis.'' But the Atlanta Constitution 
     wrote, ``A majority of Southerners will be shocked and 
     angered by this decision.''
       Griffin and other segregationist politicians condemned the 
     decision and vowed to fight it. The Mayor urged the city to 
     sell its course to private individuals who presumably could 
     have kept them segregated. The town of Leland, Miss., sold 
     its course to the Lions Club for $1 to avoid the challenge of 
     integration.
       But when Judge Sloan got the case again, he ordered the 
     city to desegregate its courses ``immediately.'' The Holmeses 
     took their game public the very next day.
       Dec. 24, 1955, was ``a happy day in town for black folks,'' 
     said Gary Holmes, who was 12 at the time. But the joy in the 
     community was tempered by a fear of white retaliation.

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