WASHINGTON, D.C. — Unless you’re a fan of golf history or you’ve spent some time in our nation’s capital, chances are you’ve never heard of the Langston Golf Course.
For those unfamiliar, the public track in Northeast D.C. is named after John Mercer Langston, the first black man elected to Congress from Virginia and the first dean of the nearby Howard University School of Law, and opened its first nine holes back in 1939 (the back nine came later in 1955). Langston’s front nine were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991, has been a safe haven for minority golfers over the years and has played host to the likes of boxing legends Joe Louis (who played an amateur event there in the 1940s), Mike Tyson (who loved the chicken wings) and Muhammad Ali.
“His limousine pulls up, and . . . he said to me, ‘I’ve never picked up a golf club before,’ and he reached out and got my putter,” remembers David Ross, a longtime regular at the course who met Ali on the putting green. Interactions like those were par for the course.
