Augusta National's first black member

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Ron Townsend was 49 years old when plucked from the executive ranks of Gannett as the solution to Augusta National’s membership problem in September 1990. As the most elite of all golf clubs, Augusta National could choose anyone, and its chairman, Hord Hardin, insisted that he’d been considering the move for several months. Born in Jacksonville, Townsend spent his early years growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood in New Haven, Conn. He moved to New York City to live with his mother in his teenage years, graduated from Baruch College with an associates degree in business, got a job in the mail room at CBS, rose to become the business manager of children’s programming at CBS and eventually the president of Gannett Television Group.

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