TULSA, Okla. — The PGA Championship took over Tulsa on Monday as fans and golfers poured in to see the best golfers in the world, including Tiger Woods.
Decades before Woods became one of the most popular Black athletes in history, a man from Tulsa helped make it all possible.
Bill Spiller, born in 1913, became a prominent athlete at Booker T. Washington High School despite living in Tulsa during the violent times and tension from white Tulsans that culminated in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Spiller left Tulsa to attend Wiley College, an HBCU in east Texas just west of the Louisiana border.
MORE >>> Photos: Bill Spiller, the Tulsa native who helped break PGA's color barrier
Despite his effort to become a teacher after college, he had difficulty finding a job that paid enough in the area and shipped off to Southern California to take a job as a porter at Los Angeles's Union Station where a coworker encouraged him to try golf. Spiller didn't take up the game until he was in his 30s but quickly became one of the best golfers in the region.
He won several Black amateur tournaments in Southern California by the mid-1940s, and competed against the best Black players in the Joe Louis Invitational at Rackham Golf Club in Detroit. Spiller played in two PGA events open to Black players against the nation's best pros.
Spiller turned professional in 1947 and finished in the top 60 at the PGA-run Los Angeles Open the next year, qualifying him for the next PGA tournament at the Richmond Open near Oakland. Spiller and fellow Black golfer Ted Rhodes wereturned away by PGA officials who said that they couldn't compete if they weren't members.
The PGA of America's "Caucasian-only clause" was a part of the Association's by-laws and prevented non-whites from membership. Spiller joined Rhodes's efforts to overturn the clause, which finally fell in 1961 after lawsuits and continued setbacks for the movement.
Despite the clause going away, Spiller had turned 48 years old and couldn't keep up as a tournament player anymore. His best finish ever on the PGA Tour was 14th in the Labatt Open in Canada, but he never became a PGA member. Spiller's efforts instead helped the career of Charlie Sifford who became recognized as the "Jackie Robinson of golf."
Spiller died in 1988 at the age of 75. The PGA granted him membership in 2009 along with Rhodes and other Black golfing pioneers, and the Oklahoma Golf Hall of Fame inducted him in 2015.
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