Historical Background

Meadowbrook Country Club was founded in 1959. At the time, while there were other private country clubs in Raleigh, blacks in the community were not allowed to join, despite the fact that there were many prominent black businessmen and college professionals living in Raleigh.  The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which would have made membership allowable under law, had not yet happened.  The founding of Meadowbrook Country Club was in response to the black community also needing a country club for their families within a segregated social framework of the time.  There were forty-five charter members of Meadowbrook Country Club.  Most were prominent community leaders in Raleigh in the late 1950s, including top administrative positions at both Shaw University and Saint Augustine’s College, principals and teachers at Raleigh schools, lawyers, dentists, physicians, business owners, bankers, developers, and contractors.   

James Joseph Sansom, Jr. (1916 – 1989), one of these charter members, is considered to be one of the organizers and founders of Meadowbrook, along with M. Grant Batey.  Sansom, a prominent Raleigh businessman and vice-president of Mechanics and Farmers Bank, Sansom was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and graduated from Laboratory High School in Atlanta. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Morehouse College and Atlanta University, and later earned a law degree from North Carolina Central University School of Law.  Sansom began his career in banking in 1939, as a teller in Durham at Mechanics and Farmers Bank.  He worked for Wachovia in the early 1950s, and moved to Raleigh in 1958 to begin his work as vice-president of Mechanics and Farmers Bank.  He worked up to the position of senior vice-president, and at the time of his death was president and chairman of the board.  In addition to his career, Sansom was a community leader, serving on the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina system and Saint Augustine’s College. Mr. Sansom was also active in many other community and business organizations, including the NAACP, the National Bankers Association, the Wake County Board of Elections, and the Raleigh Merchants Association. 

M. Grant Batey moved to Raleigh in 1949 from Ohio, initially to manage a ninety-seven acre farm in nearby Kinston, NC.  He later sold this farm and began investing in real estate in the Raleigh area. Mr. Batey the worked professionally as principal at several area schools, including Washington Special High School, Fuquay Varina High School, Jeffries, Garner, Mill, and Athens Drive High Schools.

 

The initial meeting for the founding of the club took place at the Roberts Community Center in Raleigh, on November 6, 1958.  At this time, the general goal was to “…build, develop and make available to the Negro citizenry of Raleigh and others, who show by their subscription a desire to participate, a country club to afford the members a place for wholesome recreation…  At this meeting, three temporary officers were elected, J. J. Sansom, Chairman, J. M. Johnson, Secretary, and D. P. Lane, Treasurer.  The group voted to call the venture “Roberts Country Club”, a name which stood until the later incorporation of Meadowbrook Country Club, Inc.  Initial dues of $100.00 each was collected and deposited in the Mechanics and Farmers Bank.  As would become a tradition at Meadowbrook, many of the participants present, especially those in the legal professions at the time of the chartering of the club, donated many pro bono hours to overseeing that the articles of incorporation, deeds, and transfer of property were done correctly.

 

A second meeting was held on November 13, 1958, also at the Roberts Community Center.  At this time, the purpose of the club was amended slightly, to read “…the purposed of the organization shall be to establish and develop a country club hoe facilities will provide social, recreational and cultural outlets for the  member thereof and their friends and guests.  The participants agree that a permanent charter would not be undertaken until $10,000.00 had been pledged into the treasury, with a deadline set under which all pledges would be refunded in full if the goal was not met. By the end of this meeting, $1,100.00 had been raised, with each person present pledging to bring a new member by the next meeting.

 

The initial goal was met, the name was changed to Meadowbrook, and Meadowbrook Country Club, Inc. was officially chartered in March of 1959.   The Articles of Incorporation note the object of the club was to “…encourage the game of golf and other sports and to buy, sell, mortgage, pledge, and deal generally in such real and personal estate as may be necessary and convenient to the furtherance of said object...”.   The Articles also noted the various membership levels, membership privileges, application process, termination of membership, annual and special meeting dates, officers and tenure of office, duties of officers, committees, guest privileges, and the creation of a capital fund.

 

After the incorporation, a search then began to find a suitable location.  It took a while to find available land for the club, but a tobacco farm outside of the Garner, North Carolina city limits was found, and the charter members moved quickly to obtain it for development of the club.  This land was owned by Don K. and Elizabeth T. Appleton, and was a working tobacco farm at the time.  On January 22, 1960, an Option to Purchase was recorded in the Wake County Register of Deeds office between the Appletons and James J. Sansom Jr., acting as agent for Meadowbrook Country Club.  In this agreement, and for a down payment of $1000.00, the total acreage of the farm of 136.50 acres, would be available to the club if they could commit the funds no later than May 1, 1960.   The total purchase price of the property, as noted in the option to purchase, was $27,000.00.  This option to purchase apparently went through, with the deed for the land transferred to Meadowbrook Country Club on May 3, 1960.  The property remained in the ownership of Meadowbrook Country Club until it was sold to Saint Augustine’s College on June 28, 2007.   The only change to the original acreage is the selling off of approximately sixteen acres north of the lake for Meadowbrook Park, a twenty-two-lot subdivision sold to members of the club in the 1970s to raise funds for the continued operation of the club.

 

For the first couple of years that Meadowbrook Country Club owned the property, it lease out the land for tobacco farming.  The earliest building on the property, the frame storage shed, was once part of the tobacco farm operations.  Most of the buildings and other landscape features at the club were built by members, who often donated their time and materials.  Some of these members included John Kay, who built the lake pier, A. E. Moore, who built the putt-putt course and assisted with the bathhouse and the pro shop and patio/solarium additions to the club house, John W. Winters, a Raleigh developer who built the club house, Arthur Bunch who helped build the bathhouse and the pro shop addition to the club house, George Exum, who helped with the pro shop addition, and Herbert Harris, who built the golf cart shed. 

 

The swimming pool and the pump house and the golf course designers were hired by Meadowbrook Country Club. Greensboro Company designed the pool and pump house, and prominent North Carolina golf course designer Gene Hamm designed the golf course.  According to an article in Triad Golf, Gene Hamm was underrated for all that he contributed throughout the state in golf course designs.  In the Raleigh area alone he designed six courses, including the one at Meadowbrook Country Club.  The other courses include Cheviot Hills Golf Club in Raleigh, Hilma Country Club in Tarboro, Lochmere Golf Club in Cary, Oak at North Ridge Country Club in Raleigh, and Wil-Mar Golf Club in Raleigh.  Hamm designed a total of forty-seven courses in North Carolina, including four courses in Pinehurst, North Carolina, a nationally known golfing community, with additional courses in southern Virginia and the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina areas.  With a career beginning in the late 1950s, Hamm designed courses through the 1980s before he retired in the Raleigh area.  Known for his “…knowledge of routing a golf course and of getting the most for your dollar…”, Hamm was not one to add a lot of expensive features to the courses he designed, and was always conscious of the monetary constraints of his clients.  Gene Hamm grew up in Raleigh, and learned the game of golf, as did so many players, by caddying at the Raleigh Golf Association golf course.  He was employed at several golf clubs in the 1940s and early 1950s, including New Bern Country Club, Pinehurst, and Mt. Airy.  In 1955, Hamm helped build the Duke University Golf Course for renowned golfer Robert Trent Jones. He moved from there to Delaware to continue work with Jones, and then in the late 1950s moved back to Raleigh where he began his own design career.  Meadowbrook was likely one of his first commissions.

 

Meadowbrook Country Club, from its founding, was a center of social life for the black community in Raleigh.  Many of the members had learned to play golf by working as caddies at the whites-only Carolina Country Club in Raleigh.  When Meadowbrook first opened and through most of the 1960s, its membership consisted mostly of families of the charter members, but beginning in the 1970s, members from within all of the black communities from Greensboro to Tarboro began to join the club. Clarence Lightner, the only black mayor of Raleigh, was also a member.  There were four membership tiers available, from Level D, which was for those who lived outside of the county and was for use of the golf course only, up to Level A, with a $1000.00 fee, which included full use of the entire facility.   There was something going on at Meadowbrook every weekend, including dances, card games, bingo, birthday parties, weddings, swimming, picnics, putt-putt, tennis, fishing, boating, and golfing.  Community organizations could rent the club house for special events, and students from Shaw University and Saint Augustine’s College often played golf there.  The club participated in the black golf circuit which extended from Georgia to Virginia, where notable black golfers would play at Meadowbrook and other clubs in the region.  Meadowbrook had its own golf pro in the 1960s, Tommy Horton, who taught the young men how to play. Notable among these was Daryl Batey, now the golf pro at Atlanta’s Eastgate Golf Club.  Every summer, Meadowbrook would offer golf lessons to the youth within the black and white communities, and would end the season with a Labor Day Tournament.  Tournaments were also held each year for the youth, women, and senior members.

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964, slowly black members were allowed to join other private country clubs in the Raleigh area, with Wil-Mar, also designed by Gene Hamm, being the first to participate.  This did not happen overnight as there was still a great deal of social resistance within the white community.  But, as members of Meadowbrook did join other clubs with more facilities and full 18-hole golf courses, Meadowbrook membership dropped considerably.  In the 1970s and 1980s, the club struggled financially, selling a portion of the acreage as noted above, and trying many different fundraising techniques, including the loaning of funds from members to the club to keep it solvent.  These fundraisers worked temporarily, but as the original members began to pass on, and the younger generation moved away from Raleigh, the club struggled.  It was decided by the members in the last few years to sell the club to Saint Augustine’s College so that its ethnic heritage would be preserved and other sources of revenue would be available for the long-term preservation of the club.