Breaking par against racism: Holmes vs. Atlanta.

Before Shoal Creek in 1990. Before Lee Elder integrated the Masters in 1975. Before Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of a Birmingham bus in 1955, an affluent black family in Georgia, one hopelessly addicted to righting wrongs, risked life and limb to win a Supreme Court ruling that forever desegregated public golf courses in Atlanta.

Dr. Hamilton M. Holmes Sr., his sons Alfred (Tup) and Oliver Wendell, all deceased, and family friend Charles T. Bell Jr., took on the white establishment and won one of the first instances of integration in the south. Ironically, six years after the 1955 Supreme Court decision, one of Tup's four sons, Hamilton M. Holmes Jr., integrated the University of Georgia. It's no wonder, then, that a golf course in Atlanta is named in honor of Tup and that a major thoroughfare in Atlanta was recently dedicated in memory of his son, Dr. Hamilton E. Holmes, who died last October.

"It goes way back to what our parents always taught us, that we didn't have to take back seats to anybody," says Alice Holmes Washington, Tup's only sister. "My mother, in 1905, was founder of the Professional Graduate Nurses Association for Negroes. As daddy learned to play golf, he was interested in having decent facilities.

"This is the way we were brought up. My father's first patient when he came to Atlanta was a white woman, which was again in violation of Jim Crow laws. We, as children, knew there were things that needed to be done and we went out and did them."

Tup went out and made Holmes et al vs. Atlanta his personal crusade in 1951 after his foursome was denied entrance to the Bobby Jones public golf course because they were black. The suit, which was bankrolled by Dr. Holmes Sr., was filed in U.S. District Court in 1953 by attorney Roscoe E. Thomas and created quite a firestorm in Atlanta, even among blacks.

"I took calls from a lot of black people who thought this was folly," says Alice Holmes Washington. "They kept saying, `Why are ya'll doing this? Don't rock the boat. Try to talk Tup out of this; he's the hothead.' "

Even Tup's wife, Isabella, tried to dissuade him. "My reaction as wife and mother was don't do it," she says. "We did go through those days with a lot of harassment. Telephone calls, things so ugly that I wouldn't dare repeat it. It was a pitiful thing for the family. It was something I lived with, but something that was very hurtful."

The incident could have been resolved in 1954 had the group accepted a district court ruling by Judge Boyd Sloan. He agreed that blacks had a Constitutional right to play golf on public courses but only in accordance with Atlanta's "separate but equal" doctrine. He ordered the city to devise a plan to accommodate blacks while "preserving segregation." The city, in turn, decided that blacks could play on public courses every Monday and Tuesday.

"We would not sacrifice our talent and time and well being to accept one day or two days or three days," says Bell, now 77-years-old and the only surviving plaintiff of Holmes et al vs. Atlanta. "We wanted to play everyday." So the group appealed the decision, but an appellate court in New Orleans upheld the lower court ruling. That left Tup and company with no other choice but to take their case to the Supreme Court. Their persistence paid off when, on Nov. 7, 1955, the high court ruled against the city of Atlanta.

Thirty-eight days later, on Christmas Eve, 1955, Tup, Wendell and Bell teed off at the North Fulton County course, becoming the first blacks to legally play golf on a public facility in Atlanta. Blacks in Atlanta were so elated with the ruling, in fact, that they were on the links again the next day, even though it was Christmas.

"Naturally there was a lot of tension that first day," says Bell. "We registered and there was no opposition. We teed off just like anybody else. The fun came on the fourth or fifth hole. That's when the news media came running at us and we thought those cameras were machine guns or something, but we didn't panic. There were catcalls and the `N word' spread around the course, but it died down after a little bit. By the third or fourth week, everyone was grabbing a set of clubs and going to play.

"We loved golf. That's what Tup lived for, to play golf," adds Bell. "We went almost every weekend to some facility out of the city--Nashville, Columbus, Birmingham. There were a number of cow pasture courses that blacks maintained. We had this camaraderie. They'd come visit us; we'd go visit them. We'd leave Sunday morning, drive 200 miles, play golf and then drive back that night."

Tup was one of the best amateur golfers in the area. He played at Tuskegee College and later won three National Negro Amateur Championships before dying of cancer in 1967. "He played with Joe Louis, Charlie Sifford, Lee Elder, Zeke Hartsfield, Teddy Rhodes, Howard Wheeler. He was equally as good as all of those players," says Bell. "He could drive the ball 300 yards, straight as an arrow," adds Gary M. Holmes, who used to caddie for his father.

"The reason Tup never turned pro is because he didn't have the desire. His father bankrolled him," explains Bell. "The Holmes family was the family in Atlanta in those days."

"They knew no strangers," says Isabella. "Everybody in Atlanta, from top to bottom, knew my husband."

According to most accounts, when Tup wasn't working at Lockheed, where he was a union rep, or when he wasn't selling life insurance, he was playing golf. He taught his father how to play and the two of them would travel all over the country or play at Atlanta's Lincoln Country Club.

Even though Dr. Holmes enjoyed golf as much as Tup, he chose not to play with Tup on that momentous Christmas Eve in `55 because he thought himself "too old to take what might come," says Isabella. There was talk that day of people packing guns inside their golf bags in the event of protests, but nothing ever came of it.

Like his son, Dr. Holmes won a National Negro Seniors title and could drive the ball in the low 200s. "I remember he always used to say, `Some folks are getting old and no good, I'm getting old and good.' He died when he was 81," says Gary Holmes. "He had gone out and played 18 holes that day, shot his age, came home, sat on the john and died."

Tup died two years later after doctors decided that his cancer had spread too far to be completely removed. Before he departed, though, he left Atlantans with a lot of fond memories. Tup's brother-in-law, James C. Washington says one of the more memorable outings was in Atlanta when Tup waged a bet with some of the local thugs. What his opponents didn't know is that Tup's playing partner was Teddy Rhodes, known better in those days as Joe Louis' playing pro.

Tup and Rhodes easily won $1,000 on the front nine but somebody let the cat out of the bag on the backside. "Rhodes hit this beautiful shot out of the rough, to within inches of the pin," says Washington, "and somebody yelled out, `Nice shot, Teddy.' "

Of course, the name of the game back then was money. Caddies were the most notorious because it was a foregone conclusion that they gambled on the course and played cards and rolled dice off it. Before the public courses were integrated, the place to play golf in Atlanta was the Lincoln Country Club. The nine-hole course was situated on cemetery land that wasn't yet needed. Today it is all but overrun by the cemetery, where Tup, his father and some of the other black movers and shakers happen to be buried. "Those guys were fighters," says Gary Holmes. "They had to be to file a lawsuit in Georgia--back in those days--to hit a golf ball around."

E. Lauren Holmes, the youngest of Isabella's and Tup's five children, was six years old when the case went to the Supreme Court, so she didn't play much attention to the court case. She knew her father was an avid golfer though. "How could you not know?" she says incredulously. "There were golf bags, golf clubs and big umbrellas all around the house."

It wasn't until she was taking a constitutional law course at Columbia University in 1976, that she realized exactly how big a role he had played in the civil rights movement. Right there in her book, in bold letters, were the words Holmes et al vs. Atlanta. "I remember thinking to myself, "I wonder if ...."

She wonders no more. As former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young put it so eloquently when he renamed the golf course at Adams park the Alfred (Tup) Holmes Memorial golf course: "[Tup Holmes] played a significant role in the birth of the civil rights movement, and in doing so contributed to the growth, vitality and spirit of this city."