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Shady Rest Golf and Country Club

1921-present · Contribution: 1921

First African American-owned and -operated golf and country club in the United States; a nine-hole course and cultural hub purchased and reorganized in 1921 by the Progressive Realty Company, a group of Black investors

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Impact on the world

Widely recognized as the first Black-owned country club in the U.S.; a Jim Crow-era social and cultural center (listed in the Negro Motorist Green Book) that hosted W.E.B. Du Bois and performers including Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, and Cab Calloway, and where Althea Gibson honed her tennis. Hosted the first National Colored Golf Championship (1925), spurring the founding of the United Golfers Association (1926). Added to the National Register of Historic Places (2022).

Life & background

Located in Scotch Plains, NJ. On Sept 21, 1921, the Progressive Realty Company, Inc. (Black investors led by Henry Willis Sr.; B.C. Gordon served as president) bought the former Westfield Golf Club and renamed it Shady Rest. John Shippen served as its long-time golf professional. After tax foreclosure the township acquired it in 1938; it became public and was renamed Scotch Hills Country Club in 1964. The Shady Rest name was restored in 2021.

Sources

  1. BlackPast.org; NPR; Township of Scotch Plains; National Register of Historic Places (2022)

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