On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board ruled the "separate but equal" doctrine, set in place by the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court case in 1896, to be unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment’s "Equal Protection Clause." This moment marked the first federal initiative to end Jim Crow segregation by integrating public schools. The integration of public spaces, however, did not begin with public schools or the Brown v. Board case. As this thesis explores, public recreational facilities such as the Asheville Municipal Golf Club (the Muni) in Asheville, North Carolina, began abandoning Jim Crow practices such as racial segregation earlier that year. The city of Asheville was the first to integrate its public golf course(s) in North Carolina and arguably throughout the South. In order to understand how the city of Asheville became home to a social anomaly in 1954, this thesis examines the city’s progressive culture that began developing at the end of the nineteenth century. By examining the city’s environmental, economic, and political structure from 1880 to 1970, the thesis argues that Asheville experienced three consecutive progressive periods: business progressivism, progressive experimentation, and progressive culture, which ultimately led to a pre-Brown integration of the Muni.
