- Park
- Segregation
- 1951–1955
- City of Atlanta
- Location approximate
The Holmes golf case (1955)
Dr. Hamilton M. Holmes, his sons Alfred 'Tup' and Oliver Holmes, and family friend Charles Bell sued after being turned away from Bobby Jones Golf Course in 1951. On November 7, 1955 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned lower-court rulings that had let Atlanta keep its courses segregated on a 'separate but equal' basis.
The record
The four were refused at Bobby Jones on July 19, 1951, under a city law barring Black golfers from public courses. On July 8, 1954, federal Judge Boyd Sloan ruled that excluding them was unconstitutional but let the city draw up rules that would preserve segregation while giving 'substantially equal' access, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed in 1955. With Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP joining the appeal, the Supreme Court in Holmes v. City of Atlanta, 350 U.S. 879, sent the case back for a decree in the Holmeses' favor in line with its ruling against segregated public beaches in Baltimore. On December 24, 1955 Tup and Oliver Holmes and Charles Bell teed off at North Fulton Golf Course, and other Black golfers played Bobby Jones the same day. Tup Holmes's son, Hamilton E. Holmes, later helped desegregate the University of Georgia.
Today: Bobby Jones Golf Course, still a public course.
Where on the map: The case concerned all the city's municipal courses; the point marks one of them.