Lions Municipal Golf Course
Lions Municipal Golf Course is associated with distinguished golfers and is a respectable piece of golf course architecture. But, most importantly, the course impacted national history with respect to race relations in public recreational spaces as the first municipal golf course in the South to desegregate in late 1950.
The USGA has formally recognized the desegregation at Lions Municipal Golf Course as a milestone for the game of golf, along with leading scholars and prominent individuals who include:
1. Ben Crenshaw, two-time Masters Champion and member of the World Golf Hall of Fame;
2. Marvin Dawkins, Professor of Sociology, University of Miami, co-author of African American
Golfers during the Jim Crow Era (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000);
3. Lane Demas, Associate Professor of History, Central Michigan, The Game of Privilege: An African American History of Golf (under contract, UNC Press, John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture);
4. Glenda Gilmore, the C. Vann Woodward Chair in History at Yale University;
5. Renea Hicks, prominent constitutional and civil rights lawyer and former Solicitor, Office of the Attorney General, State of Texas;
6. Jacqueline Jones, Chair of the History Department and Walter Prescott Webb Chair in History at the University of Texas;
7. Sanford Levinson, W. St. John Garwood Chair at the University of Texas Law School and prominent constitutional scholar;
8. Robert J. Robertson, author of Fair Ways: How Six Black Golfers Won Civil Rights in Beaumont, Texas (Texas A&M Press 2005);
9. Paul Stekler, Chair of the Radio/Television/Film Department at the University of Texas at Austin.
10. Congressman Lloyd Doggett, 35th District, Texas
11. Congressman G.K. Butterfield, 1st District, North Carolina
12. Congressman Eddie Bernice Johnson, 30th District, Texas
13. Congressman James E. Clyburn, 6th District, South Carolina
In 2016, Lions Municipal was added to the National Register of Historic Places and to the National Trust for Historic Preservation's list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.
Location: Austin, Texas
Year Built: 1924