PGA Grand Slam Week is coming up when the big and not so big or great in the world of golf will all be focusing on events at Port Royal Golf Club.Among the celebrities who will be coming to Bermuda to be personally involved is a noted professor of history at New York University, Dr Jeffrey F. Sammons. Dr. Sammons has a special interest in Bermuda, and one Bermudian in particular, Louis Rafael Corbin, better known as ‘Kid’ Corbin.Dr Sammons is spearheading a project on the unsung pioneers, institutions, and events in the history of blacks and golf. His work on baseball’s Jackie Robinson, golf’s Jimmie Devoe, the New Lincoln Country Club, the great heavyweight boxing champion of the world, Joe Louis, and Louis Rafael Corbin are important chapters in that story.The historian will be coming to Bermuda for the Grand Slam as a guest and friend of the CEO of the PGA. Among other things, Dr Sammons is a member of the USGA Museum and Library Committee, a member of the African-American Golf History Working Group, a joint project of the USGA and PGA; a senator-at-large of the Phi Beta Kappa Society; and a member of the Clearview Legacy Foundation Board.Most significantly, Professor Sammons will take time out from his busy schedule at Port Royal to be a special guest of Ocean View Golf Club, where he will give a free public lecture titled ‘Bermuda’s Little Poison, Louis Rafael Corbin: Black Golf’s Most Colorful, Controversial And Courageous Character’. Corbin gained the national spotlight in the United States in the late 1930s as Joe Louis’s first golf instructor and is credited with reducing Louis’ scores from the high 90s to the mid-70s in a month’s time. One sports writer credits Louis with popularising golf among blacks; and that writer cites Corbin as instrumental in Louis’ golf addiction and ability.Dr Sammons is the author of ‘Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in American Society’.He explained: “I came across Corbin because of my work on Jimmie Devoe. The two men were rivals as authorities, teachers, and promoters of golf.“They could not have been more different as personalities in that Devoe was a go-along and get-along kind of guy whereas Corbin was extremely brash and confrontational on matters of race and his golf competitors. Devoe tried to work through the system and Corbin challenged it. They actually clashed over the USGA’s exclusion of black golfers from the Open. Corbin publicly railed against the organisation’s racism and Devoe cited a lack of skilled black golfers as the reason for exclusion. Not once did I ever hear of Devoe challenging other golfers, black or white, to high-stakes matches. Corbin made a habit of it. Yet, it was Corbin who broke through racial barriers in the Michigan and Canadian Opens. Unfortunately, these breakthroughs and his public attacks on the USGA might have led to his deportation from the US.”There is no question that he was deported upon returning from the Canadian Open in 1939. Devoe, who owned and operated the first black golf learning centre would go on to become the first black member of the PGA of America after the rescinding of the Caucasian clause in 1961.Dr Sammons is a native of Bridgeton, New Jersey. He earned his BA at Rutgers College, an MA at Tufts, and the PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Also he taught at the University of Houston, Rutgers Camden, Princeton University, and Hollins College. He has a wife Mariam and a son Adam.