"When two black youths were left undisturbed as they walked the public golf course..."

Kevin Robbins reports that there might be another layer to the Lions Muni battle. Not only was it a key proving ground for Kite and Crenshaw, it also may have been home to desegregation in golf.

City records suggest that Lions allowed African Americans to play without limits as early as 1951, when two black youths were left undisturbed as they walked the public golf course — long before Oliver Brown petitioned the Topeka Board of Education and Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat on a bus in Alabama.

Until the new information about Lions was found, the earliest documented full desegregation of a Southern municipal course occurred in winter 1955 after a lawsuit brought by black golfers in Atlanta reached the U.S. Supreme Court and forever integrated golf courses in that city.

Other Southern courses permitted African Americans to play for abbreviated periods or on certain days; black caddies, for instance, were allowed to play on days that some country clubs were closed.

This occurred just 57 years ago. Hard to fathom.