LOOK BACK KAPPA HISTORY
rebuke of the disingenuous acceptance of the seven Black contestants to the tournament and rejected them due to a “Whites Only” Jim Crow restriction. An excerpt of McDougal’s column reads, “While we are at war with an enemy who overlooks nothing that will reduce the morale of our men and their loved ones, is it patriotic and Ameri- can-like to give that enemy additional material for his fiendish work?” In response to McDougal’s public outcry, they were welcomed to partic- ipate in the Tam O’Shanter $15,000 Open. McDougal’s fight for equal rights for Black players helped loosen the restrictions he experienced throughout his life. Another victory was obtained when Dr. Hamilton M. Holmes (Pi 1921) won a landmark Supreme Court desegregation case (Holmes v. Atlanta) in 1955, where the city of Atlanta was forced to allow access to the city’s public golf courses, particularly the Bobby Jones Municipal Golf Course. Off the course, McDougal was a contributing sportswriter and golf cor- respondent for the Chicago Defender newspaper and served on the UGA’s amateur championship committee. McDougal served as a girls’ basketball tournament referee, was a playground director, and manager of a Pee Wee golf course. Following his military service, McDougal commanded a southside John H. Patton Post (No. 6) of the Disabled American Veterans. Professionally, McDougal was a 25-year veteran of the city of Chicago’s Bureau of Water and Pumping Station’s Operating Division, as principal clerk. He entered the Chapter Invisible at 61, on October 8, 1957.
Clockwise: The 1924 Northwestern University Syllabus Yearbook. Excerpt from The Kappa Alpha Psi Journal , January-February 1922. The 1925 Northwestern Golf Team group photo, Northwestern University Syllabus Yearbook.
March 1, 1921. While studying com- merce at Northwestern, McDougal demonstrated his athletic prowess by participating in various school sports teams. He joined Northwestern University’s golf team, becoming the first Black college student to integrate college golf (1922). McDougal competed in the first Negro National Open at Mapledale Golf Course in Stow, Massachusetts, helping inaugurate the United Golfers Association (1925) to provide Black golfers an opportunity to compete on organized golf tours. In September 1929, McDougal began advertising in local newspapers, offering his assis- tance as a professional golf instructor at Casa Loma Country Club. Casa Loma (formerly Aquilla) was a country club bordering Powers Lake, in southern Wisconsin. It was acquired by Chicago Black entrepreneurs, including sports
phenom Sol Butler (Chicago (IL) Alumni 1921). Casa Loma offered dis- enfranchised golfers a place to play and a location for Black families to vacation without racial restrictions. That same year, Casa Loma was the site of the Midwestern Golf Open Championship under McDougal’s management. He also played in the tournament against high winds and came in second. In 1942, the United States Golf Asso- ciation (UGA) accepted McDougal’s and several other Black players’ entry into the qualifying round of the Hale America National Open Golf Tourna- ment, the wartime substitute for the U.S. Open. This vindication of recog- nition was short-lived. Olympia Fields Country Club rejected the invitation, thereby barring the Black players from the competition. In a June 6, 1942, Chi- cago Defender , op-ed column entitled “Fascism in Golf,” McDougal wrote a
72 THE JOURNAL ♦ FALL 2025
Made with FlippingBook Ebook Creator