Clearview Golf Club

Clearview Golf Club calls itself "America's Course," and the claim holds: it is the only golf course in the United States designed, built, owned, and operated by an African American. Shut out of the game he loved after returning from World War II, and refused a bank loan because of his race, William J. Powell financed 78 acres of East Canton farmland with help from two Black physicians and a loan from his own brother — then he and his wife, Marcella, cleared and shaped much of the land by hand. Clearview opened in 1948, integrated from its very first day, at a time when almost nowhere else in America was. Powell ran it for the rest of his life; his daughter, Renee Powell — the second Black woman to play the LPGA Tour — is the club's head professional and its keeper. Clearview was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001, and the Powell family's foundation carries on his mission of opening the game to everyone.