The Women Who Changed Black Golf Forever

Long before diversity initiatives became common in golf, pioneering Black women were competing, winning championships, building clubs, mentoring juniors, and opening doors for future generations. Their stories deserve to be preserved alongside the game’s biggest names.

They built their own institutions first. The Wake-Robin Golf Club of Washington, D.C. — founded in April 1937, the oldest Black women’s golf club in America — petitioned the federal government until Langston Golf Course was built, and kept pushing until D.C.’s public courses were opened to all. Months later, the Chicago Women’s Golf Club organized on the South Side; in 1956 it became the first Black organization admitted to the USGA, so that Ann Gregory could walk onto the first tee of the U.S. Women’s Amateur and become the first Black woman ever to play a USGA championship.

On the segregated circuit of the United Golfers Association, the champions were giants whose names too few fans know: Ethel Funches, whose seven national titles remain the most in UGA women’s history; Thelma Cowans, the Detroit-raised five-time national champion. Althea Gibson — already the woman who integrated tennis’s biggest stages — became the first Black member of the LPGA Tour in 1964, and Renee Powell followed her in 1967.

The through-line continues today: Mariah Stackhouse on the LPGA Tour, Sadena Parks — the first African American to earn an LPGA card through the Symetra Tour and a JOHN SHIPPEN champion — Ginger Howard, the youngest African American woman to turn professional, Cheyenne Woods carrying the game into the broadcast booth, and builders like LaJean Gould, whose Women in Golf Foundation has sustained women’s collegiate golf for three decades.

Start with 10 Black Women Every Golf Fan Should Know — and explore the living record at BLAC Golf.