Book reveals hidden history

S.C. State alumna explores black female golfers

By BOB GILLESPIE - bgillespie@thestate.com

M. Mikell Johnson didn’t set out to write a book about black female golfers. She just wanted to play golf. Blame, or credit, her daughter for what happened, she said.

The 1955 South Carolina State graduate was working as a research chemist for a pharmaceutical company in Summit, N.J., in the 1970s when she took up golf, playing in a company league with hand-me-down clubs. One day, Jamie Johnson asked her mother, “Are there any other black women playing golf?”

Mikell (pronounced Mi-KELL) Johnson didn’t have an answer.

“The only one I knew was Althea Gibson, who lived in the New Jersey area,” she said. “We went to the library to look it up — and we didn’t find anything.”

Jamie took that as a sign.

“She went into track and field,” Johnson said while laughing.

But, as a researcher, Johnson wanted to know more.

The result, three decades later, is “The African America Women Golfer: Her Legacy,” which is being published by a company that produces college texts. Retired and living in Florence, the 70-something Johnson is a lonely chronicler of a largely unexplored chapter of the game.

“My curiosity got the best of me,” she said. “I started doing in-depth research. I knew there had to be somebody (besides Gibson).”

In fact, only three black women have played on the LPGA Tour: Gibson, a native of Silver whose fame came primarily in tennis, in 1963; Renee Powell (1967); and LaRee Pearly (1998).

But Johnson learned about the United Golf Association, an organization formed during segregation that produced top black male and female players for 40-plus years.

She learned about the Wake Robin Golf Club in Washington, D.C., and the Chicago Women’s Golf Club, which nurtured black women during the 1970s. She discovered the “Fabulous Five”: Marie Thompson, Ethel Funches (from Owens), Thelma Cowan, Ann Gregory and Lucy Williams — each of whom won multiple national UGA titles dating to the 1930s.

Mostly, Johnson found that if records on black male golfers are limited, information on black women is even scarcer.

“You can find lots of books on Tiger Woods,” she said. “He’s been gracious to mention several of the early golfers (among them Charlie Sifford, Lee Elder, Bill Spiller and Teddy Rhodes), but there’s little biographical information on them. And mine is the only (book) on women.”

Dara Broadus, a 2001 Furman graduate who played on four Southern Conference title-winning teams, is one of five women Johnson found who played on the developmental Futures Tour. Head of golf academies in Atlanta and Jacksonville, Fla., Broadus teaches inner-city youngsters and black “corporate ladies” the game she learned as part of a golfing family.

“Business is very good. I’m teaching more kids than ever,” Broadus, 28, said. Playing in college and professionally also “opened doors for me in business I would not have considered otherwise.”

The number of black women who play, let alone earn a living in golf, remains small. Johnson, a regular golfer since she and her husband, James, moved to Florence — “I could play every day” — is cautiously hopeful about the future.

“We forget there are no golf courses in and around the inner cities,” she said. “You can have a First Tee program, but you have to feed the desire every week, not every three months.”

In January, Johnson attended the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, Fla., where industry people encouraged her to continue writing. Her next book, she said, is about black female executives and managers in golf, among them Anne Pegues Dunovant, a Chesterfield native whose husband, Harold, founded Charlotte’s National Black Golf Hall of Fame in 1986.

Her daughter, who lives in Florida, still encourages her mother’s quest.

“She said, ‘Mama, maybe more young girls would pursue (golf) as a career if they knew the history,’” Johnson said.

That lack of history is how it started with her.