The Langston Golf Course in Northeast D.C. was created in 1939 after Black golfers complained to the federal government that they were shut out of the city's other public courses. (Martin Austermuhle)
When John Jeter graduated from D.C.’s Spingarn High School in 1970, he never thought much of the Langston Golf Course located right across the street.
Then an accomplished athlete in basketball and baseball, Jeter says golf didn’t appeal to him – it didn’t seem like much of a sport and it hadn’t historically been accessible or affordable to Black people, despite Langston’s legacy as one of the first golf courses in D.C. and the country created for their use.
But during his college years in Ohio, Jeter, now 74, was constantly steered to golf. By the time he came back to the Washington region to start a career it was his sport of choice – and Langston became one of his home courses.
“We would dominate this course on a Sunday morning,” he recently told me as we sat inside the course’s modest clubhouse at the corner of Benning Road and 26th Street NE – itself a popular hangout for Black golfers and community members.
But now the question of who will dominate the course is suddenly up in the air. Not so much by way of other players, but rather the management.
In late December the Trump administration quietly terminated the 50-year lease held by the non-profit National Links Trust to manage and renovate Langston and two other public golf courses in D.C. – East Potomac Park and Rock Creek – all of which are located on federal land. Administration officials say NLT, only five years into its lease, had failed to keep its promises to fix up the ailing and aging courses.
But opponents argue that the move was a naked power grab by a president who loves golf as much as he does putting his name on everything. And there are hints that Trump wants to oversee the renovation of the golf courses – he recently told the Wall Street Journal as much, adding that “we’ll do it really beautifully.”
But how will Langston fit into that? Jeter says that what he knows about Trump worries him. “Trump is for Trump, and that’s the fear factor right there,” he says. “He couldn't care less whether or not this golf course is affordable for Black folks to be playing on.”
D.C.’s public golf courses
The three golf courses were built during the first three decades of the 1900s; East Potomac Park and Rock Creek came first, the former pitched as part of a “model public playground” alongside the city’s monuments and memorials and the latter as a forested getaway in the midst of the new federal park for which it was named.
Shut out of the two courses, Black golfers petitioned the federal government for their own course on the banks of the Anacostia River, and thus what came to be known as Langston – after John Mercer Langston, the first Black congressman from Virginia and first dean of Howard University’s law school – opened in 1939. (East Potomac and Rock Creek were desegregated two years later.)
But like much in Washington, a significant gap grew between what was envisioned for these golf courses and what came to pass. Though they have been popular and affordable destinations, the three courses – managed by contractors selected by the National Park Service – have struggled with maintenance and renovations over the years. (There have been similar struggles at federal parks and property across D.C., as we have reported in the past.)
There were hopes that would change in 2020 when NLT won the 50-year lease for the courses. Founded by Virginia native Mike McCartin (who wrote his graduate thesis on the history and potential of the East Potomac Park Golf Course), NLT said its goal was to refurbish the courses while keeping them affordable and accessible, a critical goal in the expensive world of golf.
The work has been slower-going and more controversial than expected; the project to renovate and expand the nine-hole Rock Creek Golf Course and its clubhouse was bogged down in years of federal reviews and complaints from local residents and environmentalists that too many trees would be cut down. Still, construction kicked off in earnest in November, and plans were similarly being hatched for East Potomac Park and Langston.
All the while, Trump reportedly mused about leading the renovation of East Potomac Park course himself, part of a broader campaign to remake Washington in his image that has so far included demolishing the East Wing of the White House for a massive new ballroom (ironically, the dirt from that demolition was trucked to the East Potomac Park course), naming the U.S. Institute for Peace building after himself, attaching his name to the Kennedy Center, and planning the construction of a triumphal arch on the west end of the Memorial Bridge.
By late October the U.S. Department of Interior warned NLT that it was in default of its lease agreements, without specifying what those defaults were or what could be done to fix them. And on Dec. 30, the hammer dropped: The department terminated the lease with NLT, claiming that it had failed to move forward on renovating the three golf courses.
“We are fundamentally in disagreement with the administration’s characterization of NLT as being in default under the lease,” said the group in a statement, which added that it had already spent $8.5 million on renovation and maintenance work at the three courses. “We have always had a productive and cooperative working relationship with the National Park Service and have worked hand in hand on all aspects of our golf course operations and development projects.”
NLT’s officials have declined to comment further. But the group was blindsided by the Trump administration’s decision, according to one source familiar with the situation who asked not to be named to avoid professional consequences. Any delays in renovating the courses, the source says, were largely attributable to required federal and environmental reviews.
The Department of Interior did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Over at Langston, though, Jeter says he did notice improvements under NLT’s management over the last five years. The course finally got new golf carts, for one. Craig Dean, the executive director of the Langston Golf Course Conservancy, which was created in 2020 to assist efforts to renovate the course, similarly says NLT was actively working to better the course.
“NLT has made progress. One of the first things they did do was remove invasive species so now you can see the Anacostia River more clearly,” he says. “It’s not like they have been twiddling their thumbs these last five years.”
(Martin Austermuhle)
‘He’s not about helping us’
For now, the biggest victim of the lease termination will be the Rock Creek Golf Course, where construction on the planned and approved renovations – including a brand new clubhouse – has been stopped.
“It’s very concerning because NLT shared that they were going to replant some trees and [remediate] a meadow. We don’t know if that will happen now,” says Kim Patterson, a former ANC commissioner in Ward 4 who initially fought NLT’s plans because of plans to cut down a large number of trees, but negotiated some concessions from the group. “We are also concerned that if the golf course is taken over by the administration, is it going to become 18 holes and we lose more trees?”
At East Potomac and Langston, things will mostly continue as before – for now. Despite the lease termination, the group says it will keep operating the two courses to ensure that people have access to them. “This will allow uninterrupted access to golf in the District and our hundreds of dedicated employees to stay in place,” it said in its statement.
There will be some impacts at Langston, though. NLT will not be running the summer workforce program for young caddies that it launched in 2021; Jeter says such training has been critical to bring more Black caddies into the sport. Additionally, Dean says the group’s annual charity golf tournament may not happen, and they may have to pull back on youth golf programs.
It remains unclear if and when NPS will again seek to lease out the course to another contractor; doing so usually involves a public bidding process. D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson worries that a slow-moving process to replace NLT (or a drawn-out legal battle between NLT and the administration) “means another decade of poor conditions” at the golf courses.
But if NPS does seek to go with another contractor, it seems highly likely that Trump would be involved in what becomes of the golf courses. The Washington Post reported that Trump has recently been in touch with course architects about redoing East Potomac Park. A Trump environmental consultant reportedly told Front Office Sports that Tiger Woods would be involved in a redesign of Langston.
“If there is any kind of way he can put some of that money in his pocket, like a lot of these other things he’s done with these Bibles, these watches, and his Bitcoin, he’s going to do it,” Jeter says of Trump. “He’s not about helping us.”
Jeter is even more suspicious of Trump's motives because Langston is located across the street from what will eventually be the new Commanders stadium development, a project that Trump has also shown interest in.
Dean worries that any Trump-led development of the public golf courses could mean that prices go up significantly — the president isn’t exactly known for running affordable operations accessible to the public. “I don’t think anyone wants to see it run as a private club or $200 green fees,” Dean says. (Playing 18 holes on the weekend at Langston now costs $43.) “That’s the big fear, that it becomes an unaffordable course on federal land.”
Ultimately, Jeter says it’s impossible not to feel nervous about the fate of a golf course that has been so central to many Black players in and around D.C., including two historic golfing groups: Nairobi and the Capital Chippers. And it’s not just for golf, but also for socializing. The clubhouse and its small restaurant are a popular gathering spot for Black Washingtonians on the weekend, he says.
“Trump has been trying to erase our whole Black history all across the United States, period. Taking it out of schools and everything else. They might change the name, from the historical Langston Golf Course to Washington, D.C. Trump Golf Course. That’s the real worry with me, that our Black heritage may be removed from this,” he says. “We don’t want to be forced out of Langston. We really don’t.”
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