Golf Round Lands Clinton in Rough : Bias: He says he will not tee off again at racially exclusive country club until blacks are admitted as members.

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton promised Thursday not to play golf again at a racially exclusive Little Rock country club until it has admitted black members, a move aimed at dampening angry charges of racial insensitivity leveled at the Democratic presidential front-runner by civil rights leaders and the nation’s only black governor.

The furor arose after Clinton played golf at the Little Rock Country Club on Wednesday, a day after the candidate’s key victories in the Michigan and Illinois primaries were fueled in part by strong support from black voters.

Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, in a statement he released after learning of Clinton’s golf round, said: “It is inconceivable to me that a sitting governor would either accept membership or recreate in a club that openly discriminates against blacks and other minorities. Gov. Clinton, a man besieged with stories about his personal life in the past few months, has taken to lecturing Americans about personal responsibility. All I can say to Gov. Clinton is: Doctor, heal thyself.”

When told of Wilder’s comments by a reporter, the Clinton campaign office in Little Rock issued a statement quoting the candidate saying Wilder “makes a good point.”

The Clinton statement also said: “I am not a member of the Little Rock Country Club nor have I ever applied for membership. As governor, I get playing privileges at all three Little Rock country clubs.”

The statement added that Clinton was aware of a move by members of the Little Rock Country Club to enlist black members. Clinton promised that he would not play at the club “until it has been integrated.”

Dale Charles, president of the Little Rock chapter of the NAACP, was quoted in Thursday’s editions of the Washington Times as saying that Clinton, in playing golf at the club, showed that he was “all style and no substance” on civil rights issues.

The newspaper quoted similar critical comments from other black leaders in Little Rock, including one who expressed outrage that Clinton would play at a club “we all know excludes blacks.”

Wilder is the nation’s first elected black governor and a former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. His campaign ended before the primaries began and after Clinton locked up the early support of many black elected officials and civil rights leaders.

Wilder’s statement on Thursday said: “It is my view that civil rights leaders and others in the black community who have supported Gov. Clinton are doing a grave disservice to those who have fought to improve the opportunities for minorities, and who want the Democratic Party to be seen as the party that takes the interests of minorities seriously.”