Club Regulars Pine State Club Uses Athletics To Break Down Racial Stereotypes That Exist In Spokane

As a black teenager growing up in Arkansas in the late 1960s, Tony Blake developed a curiosity about golf. That was all that a racist society would allow him to develop at the time.

Blake’s uncle worked at a course in Hot Springs that catered to an exclusively white membership.

“The only time I could go on the course was when (the members) wanted the golf balls picked out of the pond on the driving range,” Blake recalls. “Then my uncle would take me out on the boat with him.

“Otherwise, I couldn’t be caught even looking through the fence at a golf course.”

Today, Blake is in love with the game.

And after suffering the indignity of being banished from golf courses in the South, he can deal with the occasional wary stare that he and other members of the predominantly black Pine State Athletic Club get when they congregate on public courses in Spokane.

“Yeah, we still get the stares,” said Blake, who serves as Pine State’s tournament director. “But usually, it’s not much more than a stare.

“I think it’s because people around here aren’t used to seeing 18 or 19 black people in one place at the same time. For some reason they think we don’t play golf - kind of like they think we don’t swim, either.”

Fellow club member Larry Roseman offers another suggestion.

” Maybe they’re starin’ because they think we stole our clubs or something.” he said.

In any event, there is still a malady of stereotypes that Spokane’s African-American population must confront each day; those very stereotypes, in fact, that young men such as Tom Rutledge, Joe Trim and James Smith hoped to break down when they founded the Pine State Golf Club 21 years ago.

Rutledge, now retired, was an account executive for Pacific Northwest Bell back in 1976 when he and several other influential African-Americans organized the club with the idea of fostering better relations among various racial, religious and ethnic groups.

“It was like a black renaissance period in Spokane,” recalled Rutledge, who served as president of the club from 1979 through 1981. “We had several well-established and well-respected people like Mayor (James) Chase who were looking for a way to socialize as a group, play some golf and do some good for the community at the same time.”

The club started with about 20 charter members, according to Rutledge. Today, it has more than 30 - including five who are white. In 1980, the name of the organization was changed to the Pine State Athletic Club and its membership was expanded to include women and other sports-minded citizens who were not golfers.

“We’ve always been an inter-racial organization,” Rutledge said, pointing out that the club’s annual Juneteenth Open golf tournament has been a “totally inter-racial affair” since its inception.

As one of its earliest ventures, Pine State took over sponsorship of the Juneteenth tournament, which was established in 1975 to commemorate the mid-June date on which slaves first learned of President Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.

The annual tournament, which has grown from 25 to nearly 100 participants, has served as the clubs’ prime fund-raising event, with proceeds going to local charities and scholarships for minority and disadvantaged youth.

Dave Johnston, who is also retired, worked with several Pine State members at Continental Bakery and can vouch for the inter-racial character of the club and its events.

Johnston, who is white, is a former Pine State member and close friend of Trim, who now lives on the west side of the state. He has won the Juneteenth tournament six times, according to Blake.

Other white golfers have won the tournament as well, Johnston added, and all have been treated as deserving champions.

“It’s a predominantly black club, but there is certainly nothing stopping anybody from joining,” he explained. “They get good tee times, they always have a little skins game and it’s a fun group of guys.”

As part of their original charter, Pine State members included the goal of establishing their own business enterprise in an effort to offer employment opportunities to minorities and disadvantaged youths.

“But then the leadership changed and the emphasis changed, too - to just golf,” Rutledge said.

Today, however, there is new talk among members about creating such a business enterprise.

Throughout its history, however, the club has been about golf and the camaraderie that the sport offers.

For an annual fee of $50, members have access to weekend tee times at whatever local course the club is playing. A hotline phone number has been established, and once tee times are fixed on Wednesday, members can call and secure a spot.

In addition, the club maintains a Golf Handicap Index and hosts an annual club tournament. Members handicaps range from 26 to scratch.

Roseman also grew up in Arkansas. He said the racism he has encountered since moving to Spokane has not been as harsh as what he experienced in the South.

But he admitted the area’s lack of racial diversity has made him even more appreciative of what his Pine State membership offers.

“As a group, (African-Americans) are fragmented, because there aren’t many of us around here,” he explained. “One of the reasons I joined the group is that it’s one of the few opportunities young black men get to congregate with some of the pioneers like Tom.

“If you just go out to the supermarket, you’re going to be hard-pressed to see another black, so this is one of the real enjoyments for me.”

Roseman stressed, however, that the number of white members continues to grow.

“So if any of the critics out there want to know if this is just a black club, … well, we’re a lot more than that,” he added. , DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 3 Photos (2 Color)

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: GOLF PIONEER TO BE FEATURED AT JUNETEENTH TOURNEY AT CANYON Charlie Sifford, the first black golfer to compete on the PGA Tour, will be the featured celebrity in the Pine State Athletic Club’s 28th annual Juneteenth Open Golf Tournament June 14-15 at Indian Canyon Golf Course. Sifford, who will turn 75 on June 2, became a golf professional in 1948 but was not allowed to join the previously all-white PGA Tour until 1960. He became the first African-American to win a PGA title when he captured the 1967 Greater Hartford Open, and later added the 1969 Los Angeles Open to his list of PGA victories. Sifford won $341,344 on the regular Tour and picked up another $927,790 on the Senior PGA Tour. Proceeds from this year’s two-day event, which commemorates the mid-June date when slaves first learned of President Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, will go toward the establishment of a junior golf program aimed at exposing minority and disadvantaged youths to golf. Youngsters for the program will be identified through the Martin Luther King Youth and Family Outreach Center and the East Central Community Center. Indian Canyon head professional Gary Lindeblad will organize the program and Pine State members will help teach participants the fundamentals of golf before taking them onto the course to play.