Before Minneapolis decides the future of the Hiawatha golf course, Darwin Dean wants the city to understand its history.
This public golf course, dredged out of a lost lake almost a century ago, was a refuge.
In a city that redlined Black families out of entire neighborhoods and ran highways through Black business districts, Hiawatha was a green space where Black golfers of the 1930s and onward could play through in peace — so long as they abided by the whites-only rule at the clubhouse.
"This is one of the most diverse golf courses that you will find within the Twin Cities area," said Dean, president of the Upper Midwest Bronze Amateur Memorial Golf Tournament, who has spent years trying to talk the Minneapolis Park Board out of its plans for Hiawatha.
He wants to save this golf course — all 18 holes of it — for the generations that love playing there now, and the generations to come. The students from neighborhood high schools; the children who come to compete in the annual tournament he hosts at Hiawatha. Golf, he said, teaches you practical skills like geometry and the mathematics of scorekeeping, and intangible skills, like fair play, persistence and networking.
"It's a game of honor," Dean said. "It enables you, for four hours, to move along, compete with someone and get to know them. I'm trying to save the golf course for the youth of tomorrow."
Then there are the history lessons you only learn when you walk the greens where Solomon Hughes once played.
Hughes, a blazingly talented golfer, spent his career competing in segregated tournaments. In 1948, he and some of the best players in the Twin Cities sent in their entry fee to compete in the St. Paul Open, which was being played on a public golf course. The entry fees were returned.