Chicago’s Forgotten Legacy in Black Women’s Golf

Chicago became one of the most important cities in Black golf during the twentieth century. From pioneering clubs to national champions, the city helped produce many of the game’s most influential women golfers.

At the center of that history is the Chicago Women’s Golf Club, formed on November 16, 1937 by Anna Mae Black Robinson, Vivian Pitts, and Cleo Ball — the oldest African American women’s golf club in the Midwest. Its home course was Pipe-O-Peace on the South Side, later renamed Joe Louis Golf Course; its UGA-sanctioned Memorial Tournaments drew the top Black professionals in the country; and its Bob-O-Links junior program, launched in 1954, is still introducing Chicago kids to the game.

In 1956 the club made national history: it became the first Black organization admitted to the USGA — largely so that member Ann Gregory could compete in USGA championships. That September, Gregory teed off at the U.S. Women’s Amateur and became the first Black woman ever to play in a USGA national championship. She would enter 27 of them, alongside roughly 300 career victories.

Gregory was not alone. Thelma Cowans, a five-time UGA National Women’s Open champion raised in Detroit, was also a Chicago Women’s Golf Club member — proof of how the club functioned as a hub for the best Black women golfers in America.

Explore 10 Black Women Every Golf Fan Should Know, the organizations that carried the game, and BLAC Golf.