Charlie Takes His Shot

How Charlie Sifford Broke
the Color Barrier in Golf

Albert Whitman & Company

(pub. 1.1.2018)
 32 pages

A True Tale with
A Cherry On Top   

A uthor:  Nancy Churnin
    and illustrator: John Joven

C haracter: Charlie Sifford

O verview from the jacket flap: 

     "As a kid, Charlie Sifford fell in love with golf. It wasn't long before he could strike the ball farther and truer than anyone on the course near his home. He won the Negro National Open so many times they told him to keep the trophy! But he couldn't play in a PGA tournament. The Professional Gofers' Association of America had a rule in their constitution: their members had to be white.
     But Charlie was determined to play in the PGA and win. It would be tough, but that didn't matter. The rule was wrong. Charlie would have to change things.
     Charlie would take his shot."

T antalizing taste: 
      

     "Another time when he went to putt his ball, someone kicked it far away.

     Charlie kept going. He practiced his swing. He studied courses to figure out the right club and angle for each shot.

     And he tried to close his ears to the jeers of people who didn't want him there."

 

and something more: In the Author's Note, Nancy Churnin explains that "in 2011 the Revolution Golf Course in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he had so much trouble finding a place to play golf growing up, was renamed the Dr. Charles L. Sifford Golf Course at Revolution Park. In 2014 President Barack Obama awarded Sifford the Presidential Medal of Freedom." Sifford died the next year at the age of ninety-two. I liked Nancy's acknowledgement: "Thank you, most of all, to Charlie Sifford, who fought a long, difficult fight with grace so that he could leave a better and fairer world to all children, including my own beloved [four] boys."