Langston Golf Course

Langston Golf Course opened on the banks of the Anacostia River on June 11, 1939 — built by the federal government as Washington, D.C.'s course for Black golfers in the era of segregation, when the capital's other public links were closed to them. It was named for John Mercer Langston: abolitionist, founder of Howard University's law school, and the first Black member of Congress from Virginia. The push came from Black Washington itself — the Wake-Robin Golf Club, founded in 1937 as the first Black women's golf club in the country, and the Royal Golf Club petitioned the Department of the Interior until Secretary Harold Ickes approved a nine-hole course, later expanded to eighteen in 1955. For decades Langston was the "mecca" of Black golf on the East Coast, home to those clubs and a fixture on the United Golfers Association circuit that produced the era's Black golf luminaries. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991 and remains a public course today.