He and his brother started the first high school golf team in Minerva. “Always a good athlete, Dad excelled at golf. Dad found a course that was being built in 1926 that was four-and-a-half miles from their home, so that’s where he worked and played. They were the only Black family in Minerva, Ohio, so everybody knew the Powells. His older brother, my uncle, only went to high school for two years and graduated as valedictorian. “My dad, Bill Powell, started caddying and playing the game when he was nine,” Powell said. And in so doing, she provides inspiration to the story of our nation. Renee Powell, one of the most decorated Black women in the history of the game, brings depth to her family’s story. That modern-day Powell – the one who can be found giving lessons to a regular cadre of women the one who is always encouraging young kids to enjoy the game the one who still, despite worldwide accolades and a level of fame her ancestors would never have dreamt possible, continues to check the reels on the mowers and kick the tires on the carts – provides context and texture to the words on the sign. That is the nuts and bolts of Clearview, which still has an active base of players 73 years after it was built.

A triumph of perseverance over discrimination, Clearview represents the historic postwar era when athletes first broke the ‘color line’ in American sports.” The acclaimed course harmonizes with the landscape and bears many design elements of traditional British courses.

Hand-built in two years and opened in 1948, Clearview Golf Club is the first golf course in the United States designed, built, and owned by an African American. Powell, excluded from playing on many American golf courses because of his race, overcame the indignity of discrimination by creating his own course.

Beneath the Ohio Historical Marker heading, the inscription reads: “Golfer and World War II veteran William J. Under a clear Canton sky, the marker, sturdy and alone, cinnamon brown with gold trim and crowned with the leaves of a buckeye, says it all.

Clearview golf course