Born in 1917 in Atlanta, Georgia to Dr. Hamilton M. Holmes and Patricia Reaves Holmes, Alfred F. “Tup” Holmes was a successful amateur golfer and civil rights pioneer. After graduating from Booker T. Washington High in 1933, Tup left Atlanta to attend Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and continued to develop the golf skills he had learned from his father and the Candler Park Golf Course caddies. Tup won several collegiate and amateur championships while at Tuskegee and continued to play and win segregated tournaments in Michigan, Ohio, and Georgia following graduation.
Returning to Atlanta in 1948, Tup joined the black-only Lincoln Country Club but wanted access to Atlanta’s white- only, and better maintained, public courses. After being denied the right to play on Bobby Jones Golf Course in 1951, Tup helped lead the fight to play on tax supported golf facilities explaining, “If you give me one good satisfactory reason why I can’t play on the city owned golf courses, I’ll accept it. If not, we play.” The efforts of Tup, his father Hamilton M. Holmes, and brother Oliver W. Holmes were rewarded 4 years later with access to all of Atlanta’s courses following the US Supreme Court’s Holmes v. Atlanta decision which ordered the city’s public golf courses to desegregate.
Amateur Accomplishments
Tup’s success as an amateur golfer can be measured by his skill on the course and his prolific golf record. As Gary M. Holmes remembers, “He could drive the ball 300 yards, straight as an arrow”. And one reporter declared Tup “without a doubt the most outstanding amateur in the entire south” after winning 4 amateur championships – two SIAC and 2 Southern – in 1938 and 1939. Additional accomplishments include:
- 3-time Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Champion
- 3-time Southern Amateur Champion
- 4-time National Amateur Champion
- State of Michigan Amateur Champion, 1939
- State of Ohio Amateur Champion, 1939
- National Black Golf Hall of Fame Inductee, 2006
- Georgia Golf Hall of Fame Inductee, 2012
Tup at Tuskegee
Coached by Mr. William O’Shields, Tup was a successful varsity golfer for Tuskegee Institute earning titles at the inaugural Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association tournament hosted at Tuskegee in 1938, and again in 1939 and 1940. Despite the successes which qualified him to compete in the NCAA golf championship in 1939 he was denied the opportunity to participate – a taste of racism that would be sure to influence his future pursuit for equality on Atlanta’s courses.
Tup also played on the school’s varsity tennis team and was a member of the “T” Club, and the Polka Dot Club. He graduated in 1939 and had his Bachelors of Science in Physical Education degree conferred on August 16, 1940.
Tup in Atlanta
After spending time in Detroit, securing Michigan and Ohio amateur championships, and becoming a golfing partner of boxing great Joe Louis, Tup settled back into Atlanta and the Lincoln Country Club in 1948. Though Tup is perhaps remembered most often as an Atlanta businessman, he initially joined the city’s workforce at Lockheed Aircraft where he was a black union steward. While work at Lockheed restricted him to golfing in the evenings, his later business ventures coupled with the abolishment of “Jim Crow” segregation laws governing Atlanta’s golf courses following the 1955 Holmes v. Atlanta decision, allowed him to pursue his love of golf on courses that matched the quality of his play.
