It means too much to us to let it go. ​

Lions Municipal Golf Course is a part of our history. It has stories that need to be told. ​

As the first public course in the South to racially desegregate, Muny is listed in the National Register of Historic Places for its significance as a Civil Rights landmark. In late 1950 – the same year the Supreme Court’s decision in Sweatt v. Painter was rendered but well before Brown v. Board of Education – two young black youths, one a caddie just 9-years-old, walked on to the course and began to play.

Still in the throes of the Jim Crow era, there were no integrated public golf courses in the South. The Muny staff working that day called City Hall to seek advice on how to handle the trespassing youth. After a quick discussion with council members, Mayor Taylor Glass said, “Let them play”.

​This simple act is how Muny earned the title of the first peacefully desegregated course. From that day onward, Lions Municipal Golf Course was open to all who came to play. Blacks from all over the state and beyond would come to Muny to meet and play the only public course to allow minorities to play in the South.