Game Of Privilege: An African American History Of Golf (The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture)
Author: Demas, Lane
Brand: University of North Carolina Press
Edition: 1
Binding: Hardcover
Number Of Pages: 384
Release Date: 01-09-2017
Details: Product Description
This groundbreaking history of African Americans and golf explores the role of race, class, and public space in golf course development, the stories of individual black golfers during the age of segregation, the legal battle to integrate public golf courses, and the little-known history of the United Golfers Association (UGA)--a black golf tour that operated from 1925 to 1975. Lane Demas charts how African Americans nationwide organized social campaigns, filed lawsuits, and went to jail in order to desegregate courses; he also provides dramatic stories of golfers who boldly confronted wider segregation more broadly in their local communities. As national civil rights organizations debated golf's symbolism and whether or not to pursue the game's integration, black players and caddies took matters into their own hands and helped shape its subculture, while UGA participants forged one of the most durable black sporting organizations in American history as they fought to join the white Professional Golfers' Association (PGA).
From George F. Grant's invention of the golf tee in 1899 to the dominance of superstar Tiger Woods in the 1990s, this revelatory and comprehensive work challenges stereotypes and indeed the fundamental story of race and golf in American culture.
Review
There are a number of lessons to be learned from this book. . . . An unsettling but solid perspective on America.--
Library Journal
Demas's research, use of images, extensive footnotes, and historical tables make his book invaluable for researching leisure, African American and southern history, and, of course, golf itself.--
The Journal of Southern History
Provides the most complete account of the African-American experience in golf.--
Journal of African American History
This book is layered, fascinating, and tells an important history.--
Choice
Demas has done admirable research in a subject largely ignored by historians.--
American Historical Review
The story [Demas] has to tell is enthralling. . . . Reminds us that golf can be serious business—and that it's much more than a game.--
Wilmington Star News
An accessible, detailed history of African Americans and the history of golf. Demas challenges the accepted ideas of who has traditionally played golf and the popularity of the sport among various classes, races, and genders . . . [to demonstrate] the importance of sport in understanding the history of society as well as the important and pioneering connections between sports and civil rights.--
Florida Historical Quarterly
A terrific book that will hold the interest of anyone who wants to gain a fuller understanding of [golf's] development and the role that African Americans played in it.--
Michigan Historical Review
Review
With the exception of Bill Spiller's well-documented protests of American golf's apartheid system, black golfers have not garnered a place in the rich radical milieu of the black athlete. But Lane Demas's exploration
Game of Privilege is a rearrangement of that understanding. It constructs an important new narrative about black golfers against the backdrop of racial supremacy that illuminates how and why progeny of enslaved Africans--men and women, golfers and not--waged a struggle, sometimes bloody and deadly, against the game in the Western hemisphere.--Kevin Blackistone, Washington Post sports columnist, ESPN panelist, and visiting professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland
About the Author
Lane Demas is professor of history at Central Michigan University.
Package Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.6 x 1.1 inches
Languages: English
