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Social protests often make their way into sporting arena
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In June 1990, when the president of Shoal Creek golf club in
Birmingham, Ala., was asked by a newspaper reporter why his elite
club did not have an African-American member, Hall Thompson was not
apologetic.
“The country club is our home, and we pick and choose who
we want,” Hall told the Birmingham Post-Herald. “We
have the right to associate or not associate with whomever we
choose.”
Exclusionary practices at a country club would not have been a
major story 13 years ago, except for the fact that Shoal Creek was
set to host the PGA Championship, one of professional golf’s
four “major” tournaments.
In the weeks that followed, sponsors canceled their television
advertising. Controversy raged in the national media. The Southern
Christian Leadership Conference planned to stage a large-scale
demonstration outside the club’s gates.
But days before the tournament, Shoal Creek accepted a black
member. The PGA Championship went on without incident.
Demonstrators never showed up.
Such a diffusion isn’t likely to happen this week, when
The Masters tournament, the first major championship of the year,
begins at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Ga.
For the past nine months, Augusta National has been embroiled in
a bitter controversy about its ultra-elite membership, which
includes seven African-Americans among its approximately 300
members but no women.
Though Augusta has hosted The Masters since the club was founded
in 1931, its lack of female membership came to national
consciousness in July, when Augusta president Hootie Johnson
publicly expressed anger about a letter written to him by Martha
Burk, chair for the National Council of Women’s
Organizations.
In the letter, Burk demanded that a female be admitted as a
member at Augusta before this year’s Masters, which begins
today.
It has not happened yet, and unless Johnson’s club does a
180-degree turn from its original position, Burk’s
organization will conduct a demonstration Saturday in Augusta.
Though social protests have often crossed with the world of
sports, Burk’s demonstration could be the biggest, most
organized, most anticipated and most visible picket staged at a
sporting event.
In that sense, it will be unique. In another sense, it will
merely be a continuation of a tradition of sporting venues as
soapboxes.
“Sport at a very basic level involves some of the most
basic values of society – competitiveness, discipline,
individual effort, opportunity, freedom, physical fitness,
religiosity, patriotism,” said University of California
professor Dr. Harry Edwards, one of the foremost sports activists
in U.S. history. “The basic American values we have invested
in sports makes these things essentially political venues along
with being sporting venues.”
“The discussion still goes on about the cause involved and
about whether or not that was a legitimate venue,” Edwards
said.
A number of other protests by athletes have taken similar forms,
even recently, when a women’s basketball player at Division
III Manhattanville College turned sideways from the American flag
during the national anthem to protest inequality in the U.S. system
and the war with Iraq.
Dan Wolken, The Gazette