The Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision did not end segregation in public schools. After Brown, southern states spent years chasing a policy called “freedom of choice.” The idea was to keep operating separate school systems for white kids and Black kids, but to put just enough money into the latter that African-American parents would choose to send their children there. The idea was that African Americans would preserve “separate but equal” voluntarily if offered something actually equal — or close to equal, anyway.
This effort at baiting the victims of segregation into sustaining it wasn’t limited to public schools. Throughout the South, cities tried to thwart integration of all-white municipal golf courses by opening courses for Black golfers (I wrote about the legacy of segregated municipal golf in Jackson, Miss., in “Separate But Equal”). As with public schools, the hope was that Black golfers would self-segregate if given somewhere to go.
Ocala, Florida — a familiar I-75 rest stop between Gainesville and Orlando — dabbled in this experiment too. That experiment will end fully and unceremoniously in April, when Pine Oaks Golf Course closes. The area around Pine Oaks will be developed into housing, and the golf course converted into a mixed-use space.
The closure has nothing to do with racial reconciliation and everything to do with a folly inherent to segregation: money. Throughout the South, most of the places that maintained segregated schools could barely afford to pay for one system of public schools — supporting two was always mathematically impossible. The same was true for municipal golf; if many golf resorts can’t afford more than one course, then why would a city be able?
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The Orlando Sentinel (March 3, 1961).
Nevertheless, Ocala tried. It came late to the experiment of separate but equal golf courses; Pine Oaks (known originally as Crompton Memorial Golf Course) opened in 1961, years after courts had begun ordering cities to open their all-white golf courses to everyone (the Supreme Court had ordered Atlanta to integrate its municipal courses in 1955). Ocala chose a city-owned tract of about 80 acres but went to little trouble to gussy it up into a proper course; a March 1961 edition of the Orlando Sentinel reported that “work [wa]s progressing rapidly” at the site, but a photograph in the same edition showed the land with no sign of development — “Construction starting soon,” read an optimistic caption.
Ocala did gussy up the segregation itself, though. The city appears not to have had an explicit policy of whites-only play at its other track, Ocala Municipal Golf Course. Still, as with so much of segregation, expectations were clear; no city would have built a second, explicitly all-Black golf course without obvious expectations at the first course. Remember too the time at which Ocala was getting into the segregated-golf game: by 1961, southern politicians understood that the only chance of preserving segregation was to compel African Americans to choose segregation.
The Tampa Tribune (Jan. 20, 1968).
Ocala maintained Crompton with the same level of care that it applied to the course’s construction — which is to say, not much. “If I had a Jeep, I’d go play that new Negro golf course the city built, to keep us from using the other city course,” a local NAACP official told the St. Petersburg Times in 1964. “The ruts are too deep out there for these low-slung modern cars.” By 1967, the course was so poorly managed and run-down that Ocala already was weighing whether to close the course altogether. But outcry from African-American golfers ultimately stayed the city’s hand (not unlike with Grove Park Golf Course in Mississippi many years later).
The city eventually brought Crompton into maturity with a cash infusion that expanded the course from nine to 18 holes, but not until late 1986 — by then under the name Pine Oaks.
More recently, though, the course has turned from a social problem into a math problem. In 2018, the course’s lessor wanted to walk away because the course was bleeding cash. A few months later, the Ocala Star Banner reported that Pine Oaks’ irrigation system needed $3 million in repairs — and around the same time, a real estate developer offered $2 million for the land. Do the math. Ocala did; the city says Pine Oaks will close by April 30.
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How should we feel about the death of a neglected golf course whose original purpose was to strong-arm the victims of white supremacy into buoying it? Pine Oaks is a literal relic of segregation. Why should we mourn its passage any more than other symbols of white supremacy?
I won’t presume to tell anyone how to feel, but as for myself, the dominant reaction is sadness — not because of the loss of a golf course, but because of the failure of hope. Pine Oaks was born of white supremacy, but it survived long enough to emerge from that era because African Americans fought for it. The golf course came to symbolize not relegation, but possibility. Over the decades, though, Ocala allowed the course to wither until the decision to shut it down was simple mathematics.
Pine Oaks’ final legacy might be as a warning to other cities with historically significant municipal courses in difficult financial straits. The temptation to move a financially distressed golf course off the city’s books is often only a postponement of a difficult decision, not a solution. Pine Oaks needed a commitment from Ocala. In its earliest days, it didn’t get that commitment — or in its final days, either. Neither Ocala nor any other city can kick the can down the road forever. Do the math.