Augusta National Golf Club, the home of the Masters and perhaps the nation's most symbolic bastion of all-white membership, invited a blacktelevision executive, Ron Townsend, to join.

The Charlotte Observer has reported that at least 17 clubs that are sites for PGA Tour events have all-white memberships.

In 1966, a New Orleans craft union with a self-perpetuating, all-white membership was required to seek out minorities and invite them to use its hiring hall - the only way that blacks could crack the job market.

Those who fail to adjust are left behind - an Elmhurst Elks Lodge, an anachronism with an all-white membership that has failed to attract minorities, is dying.

A country club with an all-white membership is an indictment of racism.

The club, which previously had an all-white membership, agreed Tuesday to begin admitting blacks and named a black Alabama insurance executive as an honorary member.

Fifteen have all-white memberships, and three are virtually all-black.

The struggle to hold on is becoming more difficult for Lodge No. 878, which retains its traditional, if not official, all-white membership.

Groups such as the Friends of the Indians in the late nineteenth century and the Association on American Indian Affairs (est. 1922) had nearly all-white membership.

But he did not explain why he had played at the club for years despite its all-white membership.