Latimer Williams

By Latimer Williams

Originally posted on 8/13/07

Well he did again, Tiger Woods won the PGA Championship to make it his 13th PGA major’s title. Tiger is only 5 wins away from catching the record of 18 PGA major wins held by golfing great Jack Nicklaus. Even now it’s just hard to imaging how dominating Tiger Woods has been since he turned pro. Keep this in mind it took Jack Nicklaus 53 tournaments to get to 13 major titles, it has taken Tiger Woods only 44 tournaments. His father certainly taught him well and he is the new gold standard by which all other professional golfers are judged…black or white. That is certainly from even 20 years ago where you hardly ever saw an black face on TV when it came to Golf, it doesn’t mean they were not there in the ranks , you just didn’t see them on TV. Let’s name a few black pioneers of golf that you may have never heard of before now:

• 
  Dr. George F. Grant - Dr. Grant has 2 great accomplishments, he is the first black man to graduate for Harvard College to become a dentist. The reason he is on this list is because Dr Grant invented the Golf tee and was smart enough to get a patent for it in 1899.
• 
  Charlie Sifford - The first black man to play on the PGA tour and the first black man to win a PGA event, the Greater Hartford Open in 1967.He also won the 1969 Los Angeles Open, the Long Beach
  Open, the Puerto Rico Open and the Sea Pines Open. In 1975 he won the PGA Senior Championship. He was inducted in to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1980.
• 
  Lee Elder - Lee Elder joined the PGA tour in 1967 and become the first african-american to qualify for the Masters in the Augusta,GA.He also won the Houston Open, Greater
  Milwaukee Open and the American Express Westchester Classic.
• 
  Calvin Peete - Calvin Peete was the original african-american face of golf before Tiger Woods. He
  turned pro in 1971, leading the PGA Tour in accuracy for 10 consecutive
  years. He played on the Ryder Cup teams in 1983 and 1985 and earned
  $2,302,363 on the tour.
• 
  Renee Powell - Powell competed as a
  collegiate at Ohio State University. She is also one of the few African
  American women to compete on the LPGA Tour. In 1979, she
  became the first woman to serve as head professional in the United
  Kingdom.

These are just a handful of many black people who have had a hand in the evolution of the Tiger Woods franchise. As great as Tiger Woods presence is in golf today, he is the only black person on the PGA tour. We have to encourage our kids to seek out all channels to be successful. Visit the The African-American Golf Digest and pass it along to everyone especially our kids so they can see it’s not just Tiger Woods playing golf, maybe they will become inspired!

John W. Thompson is chairman of the board of directors and chief executive officer of Symantec Corporation. Under Thompson’s leadership, Symantec has grown from a small consumer software publisher to the market leader for security and availability solutions to help customers manage their rapidly growing digital assets.Recognizing the growing importance of information and the need to protect it, Thompson and his team have made a number of strategic acquisitions to expand the company’s ability to help consumers and businesses secure and manage their growing dependence on online, real-time information. With global operations in more than 40 countries, the company is viewed as a strategic partner to its customers, providing a broad range of security, storage, availability, and performance management solutions to help them proactively manage their IT infrastructure.

In September 2002, President George W. Bush appointed Thompson to the National Infrastructure Advisory Committee (NIAC), to make recommendations regarding the security of the critical infrastructure of the United States. In addition, Thompson has served as the chair of the Silicon Valley Blue Ribbon Task Force on Aviation Security and Technology to identify and evaluate technology-driven solutions to improve the security and efficiency of national and local aviation.

Prior to joining Symantec, Thompson had a distinguished career with the IBM Corporation where he held senior executive positions in sales, marketing and software development. In his last assignment, he was general manager of IBM Americas and a member of the company’s Worldwide Management Council.

Thompson is a member of the board of directors of UPS and Seagate. He completed his undergraduate studies at Florida A&M University and holds a master’s degree in management science from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Al Zollar became general manager, Tivoli software, in July 2004. He is responsible for the strategic direction and ongoing operations for the Tivoli software brand, which enables on demand computing environments by providing customers the ability to manage resources and risks, optimize human capital and manage service levels and business processes. Tivoli offers solutions in six key service areas: Availability, Security, Storage and Optimization, Orchestration, Business Service Management and Provisioning. Previously, Al was general manager, eServer iSeries, where he was responsible for the executive leadership of the iSeries server product line and for leading the strategy and plans for IBM servers and storage in the Global Small and Medium Business marketplace.

Since joining IBM in 1977 as a systems engineer trainee in San Francisco, Al has held several high-level positions within the company, including senior management positions in every IBM Software Group division. Before joining eServer iSeries, Al served as general manager of Lotus, responsible for leading its innovative development of messaging, collaboration and knowledge management software. Prior to that, he served as general manager of IBM’s Network Computing Software Division, responsible for key internet infrastructure technologies, including networking, directory, security and Java technologies. He’s also served as general manager of IBM networking software, vice president of development for IBM Tivoli, and has held numerous key management positions in IBM software development laboratories, including lab director for Software Group in Raleigh, NC, and DB2 Product Manager, Santa Teresa, CA.

Al is a board member of the Chubb Corporation. Additionally, Al is an advocate and supporter of business and community-based organizations aimed at expanding opportunities for minorities. He is a board member of the Executive Leadership Council and a co-chair of the IBM Black Family Technology Awareness project. He was named one of the 100 most influential Blacks in America by Savoy magazine in 2003 and one of the 50 most important African-Americans in technology by US Black Engineer & Information Technology magazine in 2004.

Al holds a master’s degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of California at San Diego. He spends his free time with his family, reading, playing golf and listening to jazz.

After his doctorate, Dr. Monroe became appointed (1974) Associate Professor of Computer Science at the United States Air Force Academy. From 1978-1987, James Monroe held various positions at the United States Air Force Academy, Dean of the Faculty, Chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Chair of the Computer Science Department. From 1987 to 1991, he held administrative positions at Fayetteville State University and in The University of North Carolina General Administration. Since 1991, Dr. Monroe has held the McNair Endowed Chair and Professor at NCAT.

Clarence “Skip” Ellis was born in 1943 and grew up in a very poor neighborhood of the south side of Chicago. His mother struggled to raise five children by herself. Gangs and violence were common in school. Skip wasn’t one of the “cool” kids - he mostly kept to himself. At the time, he was sad because he felt excluded from so many things. Surprisingly, this helped him because he was able to avoid the gangs, violence and problems some kids in his class got into.

At 15, Skip took a job at a local company to help support his family. He was assigned the “graveyard shift,” which meant he had to work all night long. His job was to prevent break-ins and, most importantly, not to touch the company’s brand new computer! It was 1958 and computers were very expensive and not very common. Since he had lots of free time, he read the computer manuals that came with the machines. He became a self-taught computer expert. One day, there was a crisis at the company. They had an urgent project but had run out of new punch cards. Early computers used punch cards to enter data and without new cards, the project came to a halt. Skip was the only one who knew how to reuse old cards. He changed some settings on the computer and the old cards worked perfectly. He was a hero for a day! This was his first real experience with a computer and it changed his life.

Over the next couple of years, teachers recommended that Skip attend summer programs at local universities. For the first time, Skip met students outside of his neighborhood and became aware of university life. Skip’s family couldn’t afford to send him to college. But, as he was about to graduate from high school, the pastor in his family’s church learned about a scholarship at Beloit College. Beloit is located in Wisconsin, about 100 miles northwest of Chicago. Skip won the scholarship and, in the fall of 1960, arrived on campus. He discovered that he was the only African-American attending the school! Life in south Chicago was hard, but this was much worse. He felt very alone. He soon learned that his classes were much more difficult than any of those at his high school. Everyone seemed smarter, more aware and better educated.

At Beloit, a teacher gave Ellis extra lessons in the subjects that Skip was finding the most difficult, such as English. He studied constantly and had no time to do many of the fun things that other students seemed to enjoy. He even stayed on campus to study during winter and summer breaks. Skip was so sad and lonely that he thought about quitting many, many times. But he knew how proud his mother was of his accomplishments. She had constantly encouraged him, saying, “be your own person and follow your talents.” He vowed to stay.

At the beginning of his junior year, a computer was donated to the college. Skip and his chemistry professor were given the task of setting it up. This was the start of the college’s computer lab, and it was a big event in Skip’s life - he finally felt like he belonged. He worked so long on the new computer that he sometimes slept overnight in the lab.

During this period of time, the civil rights movement was gathering momentum across the country. Skip was especially moved by the non-violent protests of Dr. Martin Luther King. In August of 1963, Skip was one of 250,000 people who went to Washington, D.C., to hear Dr. King give his famous “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. From then on, Skip’s passions were computer science and civil rights.