IBM Drops TV Ads for PGA Tourney to Protest Club’s Exclusion of Blacks

IBM will not run television ads during the PGA Championship next month because of racial exclusion in the membership of the all-white Shoal Creek Country Club, site of the golf tournament, an IBM official said.

IBM spokeswoman Gina Chew-Holman said that when the corporation learned of the racial issue, “we decided it would not be an appropriate vehicle for our advertising, supporting (the club) even indirectly.”

Officials with the club, in Shelby County near Birmingham, said that it does not have any policy barring blacks from membership and that blacks have been guests. But the racial practices of the country club became the subject of widespread news reports when the club’s founder, Hall Thompson, told the Birmingham Post-Herald that the club would not be pressured into accepting blacks.

Thompson later said he was quoted out of context and apologized to those he offended.