Louis J. Willie Jr., 84; helped ease dispute over golf and race

Louis J. Willie Jr., a black businessman who helped defuse a racial dispute surrounding the 1990 PGA Championship by becoming an honorary member of the all-white Shoal Creek Country Club in Birmingham, Ala., has died. He was 84.

His death Sunday night was confirmed by Booker T. Washington Insurance, the company for which Willie worked as an executive. He had Alzheimer’s disease.

The country club was the site of the 1990 PGA Championship. Protests mounted after club founder Hall Thompson said Shoal Creek would not be pressured into accepting black members. Willie, who was not an avid golfer, helped quiet the situation by accepting an offer of honorary membership in the private club.

Afterward, the Professional Golf Assn. of America and other golf groups said they would no longer hold tournaments at clubs that lacked minorities or women as members. An advertising executive became Shoal Creek’s first dues-paying black member in 1996.

Before joining Shoal Creek, Willie had also become the first black member of two exclusive Birmingham business organizations and the local Kiwanis Club.

“I never heard anyone call Jackie Robinson a token,” Willie told the Associated Press in 1991. “I’ve opened many doors in this community . . . not only for myself, but for others to come behind me. . . .

“I’m aware that great social changes like this sometimes move very, very slowly. I’m not impatient.”

Willie was a close advisor to the late A.G. Gaston, a black businessman in Birmingham who became a self-made millionaire during the Jim Crow era despite laws mandating segregation.

A native of Fort Worth, Willie studied economics at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, and received a master’s in business administration from the University of Michigan.

After moving to Birmingham, he helped Gaston build a business empire that included Booker T. Washington Insurance, Citizens Federal Savings Bank, now called Citizens Trust Bank, and two radio stations.

Willie is survived by his wife, Yvonne; son, Louis Willie III; three brothers; a sister; and a grandson.