Herbert Slatery speaks about his appointment as attorney general in the Tennessee Supreme Court chamber in Nashville on Sept. 15.NASHVILLE – Twenty-five years ago, the exclusionary reputation of a Knoxville country club led to a furor when the University of Tennessee feared that its first African-American basketball coach would be rejected based on race. Today, a membership in that club by the state’s new attorney general has been met with barely a shrug.
Herbert Slatery, who previously served as Republican Gov. Bill Haslam’s chief legal counsel, on his application to become the state’s top attorney listed his membership in Cherokee Country Club. But he responded “not applicable” to a question about whether he ever belonged to a club which limited membership based on race or gender.
The Cherokee Country Club admitted its first black member in what was then its 95-year history in in 2002. It came 13 years after its lack of black members became the subject of intense scrutiny when UT hired Wade Houston in 1989.
Then-UT President Lamar Alexander – a former Republican governor now seeking a third term in the U.S. Senate – asked then-football coach Johnny Majors and athletic director Doug Dickey to resign their university-paid memberships in the all-white club.
“The university cannot be a party to any membership of any organization that even raises the possibility that a white coach can be treated one way and a black coach another,” Alexander said at the time.