Conceived in the days of segregation, the District of Columbia's hidden treasure has survived several challenges.

As the Washington Redskins trounced the Dallas Cowboys late last December in the farewell game at D.C.'s RFK Memorial Stadium, golfers in the sentimental crowd felt added poignancy. It wasn't just the pleasure of seeing many of the team's former stars trot out at halftime for a ceremonial goodbye. It would be the last time patrons of nearby Langston Golf Course would enjoy the Sunday afternoon pleasures of golf and their beloved Redskins.

Imagine a gloriously sunny autumn afternoon, the calming reflections of crimson and auburn on the Anacostia River. The solitude of the course is heavenly, and now and then the target you pick out in the distance is RFK itself. You don't need to sit in front of a television or carry a radio to know the Skins are doing well. The cheering that shakes the stadium and reverberates over the landscape says it all. Jurgensen's back to pass . . . He throws it deep, and Taylor is wide open . . . He's got it! . . . 20 . . . 10 . . . 5 . . . Touchdown, Redskins! The strains of Hail to the Redskins may again be heard over the fairways of Langston, but only through headphones and pocket televisions. It won't be the same.

In true Washington style, politics first magnified, then resolved, an issue of real concern -- the future of Langston, a treasured public course. A long time ago, when Jack Kent Cooke first proposed plans for his team's new home, he suggested a stadium next to the old RFK, which would have required the expansion of parking lots onto some of Langston's holes. The debate, as you might expect, was lively.

Visible results of powerful political forces are certainly consistent with Langston's history. The course's very existence was a byproduct of the "separate but equal" policy that had limited the opportunities for blacks, golfing and otherwise. Early on, the segregated city had restricted golfers to a tiny nine-hole sand-greens course located near the Lincoln Memorial. It hardly proved adequate for the growing interest in the game.

Langston was opened in 1939 with nine holes, clearly separate and allegedly equal, by the Department of Interior in response to long and spirited lobbying efforts. The course sits off Benning Road, a major city street, on federally held property that is part of the natural flood plain of the Anacostia, which flows to join the Potomac at the District's southern tip. Named in honor of John Mercer Langston, a black 19th century U.S. Congressman from Virginia, the course was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Work Projects Administration. It also abuts the National Arboretum.

Langston soon began a proud tradition of competitive play by hosting tournaments sponsored by several black social golf clubs, including the Royal Golf Club for men and the Wake Robin Golf Club for women. Extended to 18 holes in 1955, a year after the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education, Langston today is a very public, very busy course. It still hosts a number of annual events, the largest of which, the Capital City Open, boasts an excellent field of some 300 players, including pros from up and down the East Coast and many of the region's top amateurs.

The event is loaded with fascinating people and great moments in D.C. golf. George (Potato Pie) Wallace, a teaching pro from the Atlanta area, caddied in his youth for one Robert T. Jones Jr. Tim Thomas, a vibrant 80-year-old tournament director, ran events for the United Golfers Association, which began in the '20s and offered black golfers competitive opportunities not otherwise available. This month, for the 37th consecutive year, Thomas will be introducing the Capital City Open contestants from the first tee.

He is a virtual walking encyclopedia of the early years of black tournament golf. He has vivid memories of the Langston victories which Ted Rhoades, Charlie Sifford and Lee Elder counted as important career steps.

Elder, perhaps more than anyone, is identified with Langston. In 1968, a 33-year-old newcomer to the PGA Tour, Elder decided to enter the rich Westchester Golf Classic rather than defend his United Golfers Association title at Langston. After 72 holes he was tied for the lead with Jack Nicklaus, and the two mesmerized television viewers with a series of gripping playoff holes, each pouring in lengthy putts to extend the drama again and again. The old-timers still insist you could hear the bursts of cheers from the Langston clubhouse all the way to RFK that afternoon. Nicklaus finally won, but Elder had established himself as a daring and accomplished player of national stature.

Thereafter, the Elder Invitational was held for several years at Langston, attracting celebrity contestants like Bob Hope, Lee Trevino, Isao Aoki and basketball icon Bill Russell. The Elders assumed direct course management responsibilities for several years, and Rose Harper Elder recalls exciting and demanding days at Langston that honed her business skills. She is proud of the career starts given by those Langston years to a number of young men she hired from some pretty rough neighborhoods. "The business aspects of the game of golf were a very important focus," she says, "for those who have gone on to solid business careers of their own."

Langston's two nines are clearly different, both in natural resources and design. The front's side-by-side fairways form an elbow around the football field of Spingarn High School, where Elgin Baylor, Dave Bing and Sherman Douglas played their prep basketball.

The most famous monument is at the 492-yard third, where the "Joe Louis tree" guards the left side of the fairway much as the "Eisenhower tree" does at the 17th at Augusta National. Legend has it that Louis, an avid golfer who played at Langston often in the '40s and '50s, could not play the hole without a run-in with the tree. It gained a reputation for hitting back, like Louis himself, by flipping aside shots even only slightly errant.

The exuberant sounds of high school football lend charm to Langston in the fall, especially at the eighth and ninth, from which players have a clear view of the Spingarn football field and the school, which sits high on the edge of the Anacostia's natural river basin.

The back nine offers a more pastoral setting, but it also presents players with the rigors of picturesque tee shots over and around the tidal freshwaters of Kingman Lake, an offshoot of the Anacostia River providing both marsh and mud-flat sanctuaries to an impressive array of bird life. The area is monitored by the National Park Service, the Anacostia Watershed Society, the Sierra Club, Army Corps of Engineers and other community groups. Each has expressed its interest to purify the Anacostia from past industrial pollution. Players are confronted with difficult decisions at several spots along the second nine: concentrate on the game and keep moving, or stand in awe of the colorful fall scenery and avian life in the nearby sanctuary.

Such beauty is to be shared with the young, and summer programs for kids are increasingly popular at Langston. One such program provides etiquette, basic instruction and a three-hole tournament, enough to inspire but not exhaust. A new Foster Kids program opening this summer provides parentless children with an all-day camp combining the three R's with soccer and golf. It will be staffed with community service volunteers from neighboring colleges.

Then there are the efforts of Felton Mason, a retired pro who tracks down donations of balls and equipment for Mason's Army, a group of adolescent enthusiasts who spend much of their summer at Langston and not on the city's streets.

Given the course's history, the beauty of its surroundings and the increasing demand for starting times, controversy over the proposed stadium parking lot sprouted quickly. Rose Elder, for one, supported those plans as a way to refurbish Langston at Cooke's expense. According to one proposal, Cooke would get the land he needed for parking, but additional land nearby would be Langston's, with the whole course to be redesigned by Arnold Palmer and Gary Player. Others had different ideas.

"As much as we all love the Redskins, those plans to extend the parking facilities really had us worried," Langston manager Jim Garvin said. "We could have lost play for a long time." Signatures in opposition to the plan were collected, and tensions ran high at neighborhood meetings.

Interestingly, politics came to the rescue and the issue evaporated. The city had replaced Marion Barry -- temporarily, as it turned out -- with Sharon Pratt Kelly as mayor. She seemed hesitant to agree with Cooke's plan. Cooke eventually turned his attention to alternate sites in Virginia and Maryland. Langston breathed easier, but it wasn't until construction began on the new stadium in Prince George's County in Maryland that the all-clear sounded.

This fall, only silence will rise from the stadium down the way and waft over Langston's pastoral riverside acreage. And that, as anyone who's been there will tell you, isn't all bad.