Born in 1959 to a single mother of eight in Jim Crow-era Texas, Jimmie James emerged from humble beginnings, growing up in a shack without electricity or plumbing. He was the first in his family not only to graduate from high school but also to pursue and earn a college degree. He graduated from Prairie View A&M University at the top of his engineering class. In his 33-year career with Exxon, James rose from an entry-level engineer to a globe-trotting executive, overseeing businesses across the world. Now retired, he splits his time between Atlanta, Philadelphia and Kiawah Island, and enjoys golfing, travel, photography and chess. He and his wife, Erika, have two young adult children, Jordan and Alexandra.

Books by Jimmie James

Playing from the Rough: A Personal Journey through America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses

by Jimmie James - Memoir, Nonfiction, Sports

Jimmie James spent his entire life defying the odds. He was born invisible. His birth certificate, long since filed away in some clerk’s office in East Texas, recorded facts about him that were deemed most relevant in the late 1950s: “colored” and “illegitimate.” His great-great-grandmother was enslaved, and his early life was confined by the privation and segregation of the late Jim Crow-era South. Four decades later, he embarked on his journey to play the 100 greatest golf courses in the United States. In a single year. From the first tee at Augusta National, the distance between the world he grew up in and the world of extreme privilege to which he’d now managed to gain access was impossible to ignore.