Game of Privilege: An African American History of Golf (John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture)

This book offers history of how this country continues to believe the lie of white superiority. I love to play golf but I wanted to understand the issues and challenges black people needed to overcome just to play. To develop a course just because there were none available to your race is a n American story. To understand how multiracial questions try to force individuals to choose a side when others label you on your appearance limits our ability to see the full potential of a human. I also respect the women who play golf and continue to dispel the myth that only me can play.

This book has played a huge role in helping me to become acquainted with my Great Grandparents “Walter and Nettie George Speedy” the mother and father of Black golf in Chicago. Through this book I discovered that my Great Grandfather “Walter Speedy” was Chicago’s first Champion Black Golfer in 1915 and played in the first integrated tournament along side Robert Ball on August 17, 1918 at Jackson Park Golf Course. Lane Demas has done an extraordinary job of highlighting the earliest challenges and pleasures of Black golf in our society and its impact on so many communities.

I bought two copies fir the golfers in the family, my grandson fir Christmas and his father for his birthday. The feedback i rec'd from each of them was very positive. The book gave them a lot of unknown facts about black golfers. I believe it would make a great table book as well.

This is an excellent book of what took place for some and forgotten by many. I love the game of golf and I'm glad to discover people who loved it as much as me and risked their life to play. Lane Demas will insightfully walk the reader through the facts, storytelling, and knowledge of what people had to do to tee up a golf ball in the face of bigotry. I never knew the civil rights movement was so tied together with golf. This book is powerful.

I had no idea there had been a "Black PGA," but of course there was, and of course they were fighting segregation and exculsion, and of course their story would be a great one -- especially as told, and fully documented, in this fascinating and significant book by Lane Demas.