Former Augusta National chairman Hootie Johnson dies at 86
Hootie Johnson, the South Carolina banker and Augusta National Golf Club chairman who stood his ground amid pressure for the club to invite female members, died Friday morning. He was 86.
Augusta National announced his death — neither his cause of death nor where he died was given — and celebrated the sweeping changes to the Masters during his eight years as chairman.
But it was his battle with Martha Burk and her National Council of Women’s Organizations that defined his legacy at the Masters.
Burk wrote to Mr. Johnson in 2002 and urged Augusta National to invite female members so that it wouldn’t become an issue at the Masters.
In a blistering, three-page statement, Mr. Johnson said women might one day be invited, but it would be on the club’s timetable and “not at the point of a bayonet.” That became a symbol of his resolve as Johnson and Augusta National dug in deep against media pressure.
He went so far as to drop the Masters’ television sponsors — IBM, Coca-Cola and Citigroup — to keep them out of the fray. That led to the first commercial-free broadcast of a sporting event on network television.
Mr. Johnson stepped down as chairman in 2006 and was succeeded by Billy Payne. Augusta National, which opened in 1931 and did not have its first black member until 1990, invited two women to join in 2012. One was former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The other was South Carolina financier Darla Moore, whom Mr. Johnson nominated.
Mr. Johnson’s public image clashed with his legacy in business, where he was among the most progressive bankers in the South. He was a key figure in integrating higher education in South Carolina in 1968, getting the state to pay for an undergraduate business program at South Carolina State, which then was attended only by blacks.
He later invited South Carolina State president M. Maceo Nance to serve on the board at Bankers Trust, the first black man appointed to a bank board in the state.