Tell the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board to retain the Hiawatha Golf Course's Eighteen-hole Configuration
The Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board (MPRB) recently unveiled for the city鈥檚 historic eighteen-hole Hiawatha Golf Course, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. On March 1, 2022, 亚洲精品无码一区 (亚洲精品无码一区) enrolled Hiawatha as a Landslide nationally significant cultural landscape that was threatened.
In 1922 the City of Minneapolis acquired land for what would become the 241-acre Lake Hiawatha Park, with 140 acres set aside for the Hiawatha Golf Club. A century later, the city is proposing to reduce the size of the eighteen-hole course, which for decades has been an important cultural resource and gathering place for the African American community in the Twin Cities. On September 7, 2022, the MPRB voted six-three to approve the controversial redesign.
The course is located near a historically African American south Minneapolis neighborhood. The honorary mayor of the adjacent Bronzeville neighborhood, Jimmy Slemmons, started the in 1939. The course clubhouse remained segregated until 1952 when celebrated Black golfer Solomon Hughes, Sr. gained admission after several years of perseverance. In 2021 the clubhouse was . In 1954, the tournament was renamed the , known colloquially as 鈥淭he Bronze,鈥 to reflect its unrestricted entry policy. First based at Armour (now Gross) and Wirth Park golf courses, the tournament moved to Hiawatha in 1968, drawing as many as 300 participants. The famed prize fighter Joe Louis won the tournament in 1957.
Notably, none of the three new design options call for retaining the eighteen-hole arrangement; they all call for reducing it to nine holes. There's only one week left to and contact the MPRB via the and urge them to reject the three new design proposals and, instead, call for the rehabilitation of the existing course that retains the eighteen-hole configuration.
