The best there is, the best there was, the best there will ever be

27 posts have come in Black Tennis Month; 27 have gone. I've tried to cover as wide a spectrum as I possibly could, from both the development of black involvement in tennis on up to the present day. When I started this project (which, for the record, is blowing my mind that I actually stuck with it and somehow pulled this crazy idea off), I had a lot of different ideas for how I wanted it to go, a lot of different possibilities. And in fact, let me be very clear on something before we get to today's subject: black tennis does not end with the handful of players I've profiled. Black tennis is endless. There are SO many people that didn't make the cut for one reason or another that are every bit worth celebrating - Rodney Harmon, John Lucas, Mashona Washington, Heather Watson, to name but a few - and I maintain that all of these brave people are worth celebrating. My only regret about doing this project is that I couldn't find a way to incorporate even more people, but I did the best I could.

But I got off on a bit of a tangent there. When I started this project, the ideas evolved, reformed, reshaped themselves oh so many times, but there was no doubt in my mind about two things: how I wanted to start it - Arthur Ashe - and how I wanted to end it. How could I possibly end it with anyone else, really? The greatest black tennis player of them all - hell, one of the greatest black athletes to ever walk the face of the earth, period - one who simply towers above the rest, to the point that people who don't know the first thing about tennis know how great this woman is.

Serena Motherfucking Williams.

Honestly, I could just end the post right there. And yes, that is almost invariably my choice for an epithet regarding Serena these days, expletive included. Oh, she has a middle name - Jameka - but as far as I'm concerned, this woman's full legal name should be Serena Motherfucking Williams.

The prospect of writing about Serena struck me as equal parts exciting and daunting, of which the latter emotion is honestly another reason why I had to save Serena til the end of this project. There is absolutely NO WAY I could have come out cold and be able to accurately summarize how I feel about this woman if I'd done it at the very beginning. And hell, after writing blogs for twenty-seven straight days, I still feel like I'm only halfway prepared. I've sat here for days racking my brain on what I could possibly come up with that would do her justice, both for neophytes and the experienced fan alike. I don't know if I can truly summarize everything that is Serena (Jameka) Motherfucking Williams, but soldier on I must, for she deserves every superlative that I'm about to place upon her, and then some.

As I've gradually begun to coalesce my feelings and figure out what it is I want to say about Serena, I keep drifting back to one primary thought, which may be one that you've never heard before, aside from Serena herself, since she said it in December:

Serena Williams, 23-time Grand Slam champion in singles, 14-time Grand Slam doubles winner with her sister, and four-time Olympic gold medalist, is underrated.

Yeah, I said it. Seriously. Look at the list of accomplishments I just listed off. 23 majors. 14 in doubles. Four golds. Yet the amount of people who still criticize her, still find something to nitpick about - her race and her appearance (I watched an old highlights video a few days ago and saw her being referred to as a "ghetto chimp." But racism died in 1965, homie), her physique, her photos in Sports Illustrated, her off-court business ventures - is staggering. Particularly when it comes to some of her on-court outbursts - yes, she's had a handful of dumbass incidents. Shit happens. But in Serena's case, they're magnified beyond belief; I will never forget the day after one of her most famous incidents, the 2009 U.S. Open, when Roger Federer, most observers' pick for the best male player ever, was picked up on camera angrily swearing at the chair umpire. (This is, incidentally enough, *easily* my favorite Roger Federer moment of all time.) But beyond a fine, that incident received nary a peep of attention in comparison to what Serena got, of course. Hell, speaking of Federer, he was very recently quoted (I think not even two days ago, in fact) as saying that Serena was "on the way to becoming the greatest of all time." Da fuck you mean, "on the way"? READ THOSE NUMBERS AGAIN. WHAT MORE DOES SHE HAVE TO DO? She has five more majors than you do, Mr. Federer, and a whopping 14 more majors in doubles than you, if we're being catty. (Which we're not. Of course.) But she's "on the way." Pfft.

If you've noticed the way I've phrased things throughout this blog so far, I've tried to parse my phrasing very carefully. I don't say that a player is "one of the greatest women's tennis players ever"; I say that they are "one of the greatest tennis players ever." Why? Because I don't view men's tennis and women's tennis as separate entities, aside from the mere formality that they don't compete against one another; in fact, that is one of the single most beautiful things about the sport to me, the fact that the women are given equal shine on the biggest stages of the the game. Seriously, imagine the WNBA holding their finals while interspersed with the NBA finals - it would never happen, right? A women's softball league playing games and intermingling with the World Series? No chance. But tennis? When you watch Wimbledon and the other major events, yes, you get Roger, you get Rafa, you get Novak, Andy, Stan, etc. But you also get Serena and Venus. You get Angelique Kerber. You get Azarenka and (convicted drug cheat) Sharapova and the like. So I don't view Serena as somehow playing a lesser sport because she's a woman - she has to go out there and win seven matches to take home a major, same as the men do. And she may very well be the single most talented person to ever play tennis.

I mean, seriously. I just feel like shaking people when they don't give Serena her due, don't mention her in the same breath and with the same zeal that's reserved for the stars of the other sports. We should be celebrating this woman the exact same way Tom Brady is celebrated, or LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kris Bryant, Lionel Messi - whoever you want to name. Serena is easily right up there among all of them, perhaps even greater when you look at what she's accomplished.

Have you any idea what makes her so great? Do you realize?? I wish I could embed that Flaming Lips song to play on cue right now, so just imagine that you can hear that big "doooooo youuuuu reeeeaaaaliiiize?!" part right now at the beginning of each of these bullet points.

DO YOU REALIZE:

• ...that Serena won her first major in 1999? When she was a few weeks shy of 18 years old? And that she just won #23 last month, in 2017, at age 35? How many athletes from 1999 do you know that are still at the top of their profession? Here's a list of the ten highest-paid athletes in the world in 1999 from Forbes Magazine, in descending order: Michael Schumacher, Tiger Woods, Oscar De La Hoya, Michael Jordan, Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson, Shaquille O'Neal, Lennox Lewis, Dale Earnhardt, and Grant Hill. Barring death in the case of Dale Earnhardt, do you know how many of these athletes are still active? One - Tiger Woods, who plays a much less physically demanding sport, and whose career honestly seems like it's on life support these days. Serena has not only outlasted her peers (and note that there are no women among that list), she's still the number one ranked player. At age 35. Yes, there have been bumps along the road, injuries both life-threatening and weird (the broken glass thing at the restaurant was an odd one), but at the end of the day and when the chips are down, no one has been better than winning than Serena Williams when it counts the most. And she's still doing it.

• ...that her record-tying streak of 186 consecutive weeks at #1 (recently snapped by Angelique Kerber before Serena regained the top spot after this year's Australian Open) was set while she became the oldest #1 player in history, at age 31 in 2013, and lasted all the way up to a few weeks before she turned 35? That's right, she not only set a record for age, but managed to tie the record in longevity, too.

• ...that she has won more Grand Slams in singles than every other player I've profiled combined? Althea Gibson, Arthur Ashe, Yannick Noah, and Venus are the other major winners of black descent; their combined total is 16, of which the women account for 12 of them. 16 ain't 23, though. You put four high-quality players together and you still can't touch what Serena has accomplished.

• ...that she has won three majors while saving a match point along the way (the 2003 and 2005 Australian Opens, 2009 Wimbledon) - the most of any player, regardless of gender, in tennis history?

• ...that she has won six Grand Slams without dropping a set along the way, the most in the Open Era, gender be damned once again?

• ...that she has won 10 majors since her 30th birthday, easily the most that anyone - yup, you guessed it, on either professional tour - has won after hitting that milestone birthday?

• ...that she has recovered from a set down to win on 37 occasions in Grand Slams?

• ...that she has her own personal version of Michael Jordan's celebrated "flu game," stretched out over the course of an entire tournament? During the 2015 Roland Garros tournament, Serena battled a severe case of the flu and struggled physically, having to come back from a set down on four separate occasions during the tournament. She even threw up into a towel during a changeover in the middle of her semifinal match against Timea Bacsinszky. She was down a set and a break at that point; after being physically ill, she came back to sweep the next 10 games of the match and won 4-6, 6-3, 6-0. In the final, still struggling physically, she couldn't hold onto a two-break lead in the second set against Lucie Safarova, nor serving for the title at 6-5, and lost a tough tiebreaker to lose the set. Eventually, she found herself down a break, 2-0 in the third and final set; she recovered to sweep the next six games and take the title, 6-2.

I mean, what more do you want? And I haven't even mentioned the "Serena Slam," winning four majors in a row, which she's done not once but twice, in 2002-03 and 2014-15. Never mind the fact that she failed to complete the calendar-year Grand Slam in 2015 (which is Drake's fault), she still won four in a row. Record-setting achievements, incredible comebacks, both on and off the court (she had a pulmonary embolism in 2011, don't forget that), dramatics, theatrics, controversies...every single hallmark of what we associate with great athletes and then some can be found within Serena Williams' oeuvre. And yet, as I alluded to earlier, people still give this woman shit. Seriously. They drudge up her outbursts, call her racist names on internet forums and comment boxes, insist that she's dominating an era of weak competition...the latter really grinds my gears. Especially after she tied and eventually broke Steffi Graf's Open Era record of majors, which was 22, people go back and drag up noted homophobe Margaret Court (that's not libelous at all, either - she's on the record, go look it up) and her 24 majors that are spread out over both the pre-Open Era and afterward, inflated as they are by 11 Australian Opens that she dominated in an era where no one bothered to play the damn tournament. Well, let me tell you something, which I'll state for the record once more: Serena's span of winning major titles has lasted from 1999 to 2017 - almost two decades. Chris Evert? 1974-86. Martina Navratilova? 1978-90. Steffi Graf? 1987-99. Even Court, who was undeniably talented despite all criticisms I might levy against her world views, has a span that only lasts from 1960 to 1973. In terms of longevity and continued excellence, there is no tennis player, living or dead, regardless of gender, that has done the damn thing as long as Serena Williams has, and stayed at the top of the sport the way she has. Not a single one. Even Federer's run of 18 majors on the men's side would have been stalled at 2003-12 had he not pulled this recent Australian Open victory out of his ass. (Somewhere, Rafael Nadal weeps.) And the "her competition is weak" argument fails because she's outlasted them all. Justine Henin? Kim Clijsters? Lindsay Davenport? Jennifer Capriati? They're all long gone now. In fact, the only one of her biggest rivals still around IS her sister, a credit to how underrated Venus' continued longevity has been, as well. It's not Serena's fault that she's still going and the others couldn't keep up.

(Yes, Serena...yes you are.)

But she's a black woman, of course. So as she rightfully noted a few short months ago, she's underrated because she's not a man. We don't want to put her on the same pedestal as Brady or Montana or Jordan or whoever you want to name. Well, enough of that bullshit. If you take one thing away from this post, I want it to be this: Serena Motherfucking Williams is easily one of the greatest athletes - REGARDLESS OF GENDER - that has ever lived. And the scary part is, she's not done, from the looks and sounds of it. We can only imagine how many more records she will set before she finally calls it quits. There could hardly be a more appropriate way to end this project - two women, but ESPECIALLY this one, who more than anything have taught and continue to teach me that anything is possible, regardless of what you look like or where you come from.

Thus concludes Black Tennis Month. I would like to convey my sincerest gratitude to everyone who read these posts, shared them on Facebook or Twitter, kept up with it all month, and got something, anything from it, whether it was a reiteration of facts you already knew, or a chance to learn about a subject you never knew about before. If you enjoyed it, please Stay tuned to the blog - I will begin posting non-Black Tennis Month topics here shortly. But for now, I think I'm going to take, in what I hope is not too arrogant in saying, a well-deserved break for at least a few days. This was a lot of work. But I got it done, and as I've stated numerous times on numerous platforms, I can only hope that it was as enjoyable to read as it was to create. Thank you. :)

P.S. Do me a solid and go follow @malwashington on Twitter. ;p

Queen Vee

Where were you when you first heard the name Venus Williams?

I can recall it like it was yesterday - a Reebok commercial that was run incessantly during the 1997 Wimbledon tournament. Now, this was well before I gained access to the internet at home, and the attention I gave to the tennis tours wasn't yet a full-time hobby of mine, as it is now.  At that point, I had no idea about the hype that was starting to build around Venus and her sister as being potential future champions. All I know is that this commercial ran over and over again during the tournament - 'she's 16, she's 6'2"' - and at the tender age of just 10 years old, I was already hip enough to the history of tennis to know that hey, here's something you don't see every day: a heavily-promoted black teenager who chose to play tennis over any other sport. Little did I know that this wunderkind had already lost in the first round of Wimbledon that year; this was merely the beginning of her story.

Flash forward a few months later, at the 1997 U.S. Open. Who should I see but this same lanky black girl - now 17 - flying around the court, a gangly blur of knees, elbows, and beads, powering her way through the draw and making it all the way to the finals, ranked #66 in the world. Unfortunately, the clock struck midnight for the "ghetto Cinderella," as her father deemed her, in the final; she managed only four games in a 6-0, 6-4 defeat against the then-world #1 Martina Hingis. But it didn't matter - clearly, a star had been born.

I had my reasons for jumping through great hoops to avoid mentioning the Williams sisters by name until yesterday, and it wasn't out of a desire to be cutesy or coy. Well, okay, it kinda was. But in my mind, it served a purpose: first of all, as I mentioned on my personal Facebook page, was that I want people to celebrate all of these players with the same enthusiasm that is usually reserved for the sisters. Let's go ahead and be really real: when you're black, especially in America, the deck is already stacked against you for oh so many reasons, too many to even begin to list here. To make it in a sport as difficult, idiosyncratic, individualistic, and frankly, prejudiced as tennis has been, is a worthy cause of celebration for all of these black players, whether they've won zero titles on tour or their last name is Williams. And yes, I have zero issues in calling tennis prejudiced; if, like every other major sports league in the United States, you think that somehow the USTA wasn't being discriminatory when it excluded blacks from its ranks until the late 40s and early 50s, you probably think that Donald Trump is an effective world leader. (And in case you think the ridiculousness ended once the barrier was broken, check out this transcript of how the media treated Venus after her breakthrough run to the U.S. Open final.)

Do you know the main reason why I did so, though, and why I saved them for the end? Honestly, there's a part of me that feels like it should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: it's because these two remarkable women are so great, so worthy of praise, so deserving of every single accolade and all of the admiration that they have received and continue to receive, that they are in a separate class from everyone else I have profiled so far - and that is with ALL due respect to the great trailblazers of yesteryear, particularly Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe. But the Williams sisters are something else entirely; the sine qua non of black tennis players, the pinnacle of the long journey. To tell their story is to tell the story of black tennis in both America and the world as a whole, from the formation of the ATA, to Dr. Reginald Weir and Oscar Johnson taking the first steps to legitimize black participation in the sport, to Althea Gibson kicking in the fucking door, to Arthur Ashe inspiring a generation of black people to take up tennis when he won Wimbledon, to Yannick Noah fueling an entire nation to play tennis, right on down to the public courts of Compton, CA, where Richard Williams and Oracene Price raised their two girls to believe that they could be tennis champions of the world one day. And boy, did they ever.

With the success of her younger sister, who has gone on to do even mightier things in the sport, I feel like Venus tends to get a bit of a short shrift, especially nowadays. Well, let me put an end to that malarkey; she may not have had quite as brilliant a career as Serena's, but Venus has done some amazing things in her own right. In fact, the reason why I framed this post the way that I did at the outset is because I think that people have kinda forgotten that Venus was initially the higher-touted prospect of the two sisters, and it was her run to the U.S. Open final in 1997 that announced that the Williams sisters had arrived on the scene. It was Venus whose game matured first; in fact, she once held the upper hand in the sisters' rivalry, leading her sister by four Grand Slams to one at one point. It was Venus who was the first of the two sisters to reach the world #1 ranking, doing so in February of 2002, the first black woman in the Open Era to achieve that status and doing so before (perhaps fittingly) Serena took it from her after Wimbledon later that year. In fact, Serena has been nothing but extraordinarily complimentary towards her sister for all these years. After her recent Australian Open victory, in which she defeated Venus in the final to win her 23rd Grand Slam, Serena said, and I quote, "there's no way I would be at 23 without her; there's no way I would be at one without her. There's no way I would have anything without her. She's my inspiration; she's the only reason why I'm standing here today, and the only reason why the Williams sisters exist." Straight from little sister's own mouth, folks.

Even without juxtaposing her career against Serena's, however, Venus' accomplishments easily stand on their own. She has won 49 career titles, including five Wimbledons, two U.S. Opens, four Olympic gold medals (three in doubles with her sister, one in singles), and a 35-match win streak in the year 2000, the longest such streak since the turn of the millennium and included her first Wimbledon and U.S. Open titles, plus Olympic gold. Do you know how many women in the Open Era (since 1968) have won at least five Wimbledon titles? Four. Steffi Graf, Martina Navratilova, Serena, and Venus. Since the return of tennis as an Olympic sport in 1988, do you know how many tennis players have won four gold medals? Two - Venus and Serena. And honestly, her career statistics might have been even better had her sister not been around - the two played four consecutive major finals over the course of 2002-03, the first and only time in women's tennis history that this has happened. Serena swept all four and completed her first "Serena Slam"; who knows what might have happened had Venus been afforded the chance to play anyone else. Regardless, Venus Williams is easily one of the greatest tennis players who has ever played the game - there is no doubt about that.

What is perhaps the most remarkable thing about Venus' late-career renaissance is that, since 2011, she has played with an incurable autoimmune disease - Sjögren's syndrome (pronounced "show-grens"). She began to notice a lack of energy in the closing stretches of her matches as she got older, and during the 2011 U.S. Open, she received an official diagnosis of Sjögren's; it's a disease that affects the glands of the body that produce moisture, and can often lead to dry mouth, eyes, and a lack of energy, particularly when performing a strenuous activity (like, I don't know, say...tennis). Her ranking suffered while she adjusted to the symptoms and treatment, with her ranking bottoming out at #103 at the conclusion of the 2011 season. Naturally, this caused many people to call for her to retire and claim that she was "embarrassing" herself; meanwhile, Venus kept right on doing her thing, and at the tender age of 35 in 2015, she was back in the world's top 10, reaching two Grand Slam quarterfinals and finishing the year at the world's seventh-ranked player. Not bad for an "old lady," huh? I can't stress it enough - people really need to shut the fuck up when it comes to calling for an athlete to retire. They have earned the right to quit on their terms, and not according to what any observer in the peanut gallery has to say about it. I think her recent run to the Australian Open finals proves it once and for all: at any given moment, this woman will be a threat to win big until the day she decides to retire.

And yet despite everything this woman has accomplished...somehow, she's only the second-best tennis player in her own family. Isn't that something?

Put me in coach, I'm ready to play

We're coming up near the end of this project, and yes, at long last, I will finally be covering the two players that you all no doubt know and love...BUT NOT QUITE YET. Before we get to them, there is one crucial element that has yet to be covered and should not be overlooked - the people who coached these players to the upper reaches of the sport. Now, there's no way I can possibly cover every single individual who's helped to coach the players I've already covered in their rise to the top of the sport - we would be here all day if I did - but I want to take a look at a least a few of the most notable coaches. These are going to be considerably shorter than the main profiles, mainly because again, we would be here all day if I went over every detail of all these folks' lives, but these are all still People You Should Know.

Dr. Robert Walter Johnson is up first, a physician from Virginia who also did the occasional dabbling in tennis instruction (that was understatement, in case it wasn't clear). In fact, he is known as the "Godfather of Black Tennis"; he helped sire the careers of Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson, among many, many others. He also maintained a medical practice in Lynchburg, VA, alongside his coaching career - much like Dr. Reginald Weir, Dr. Johnson never stopped practicing medicine while he continued his involvement in tennis. He ran a junior training program for the ATA on personal courts that he owned in his Lynchburg home - it is there that Ashe, Gibson, and the other numerous students honed their craft. Dr. Johnson is an inductee of both the Black Tennis Hall of Fame and the International Tennis Hall of Fame, proving that his contributions did not go unnoticed in both the black community and the tennis community at large. He passed away in 1971, but not before inspiring thousands of black people to pick up their rackets and try their hands at the beautiful game.

John Wilkerson is up next. I mentioned this in Lori McNeil's writeup, but if doing this project has taught me anything, it's shown me that his coaching efforts are tremendously underrated - he took two black girls from the public courts of Houston, TX to the world's top 10, which is a remarkable feat. Why is he not celebrated more?! Wilkerson became involved in tennis at age 16, when he decided to play tennis for the first time and immediately became a natural at the game; with no formal tennis training, he won state titles in singles and doubles in high school, and seemed poised to become a great tennis player; however, after some soul searching, he eventually joined the Army. After his enlisting in the service, he finished college and became the head coach at the MacGregor Park tennis program; it is there that he helped to coach Garrison and McNeil to the top ranks of the world. None of his other proteges achieved nearly the same success, but Wilkerson has continued his involvement in tennis; in fact, he is currently one of the directors at Zina Garrison's tennis academy in Houston. I think that this man's efforts have been tremendously overlooked, as I stated before, and I hope that one day he truly gets his due.

Robert Screen is the next person on our list; he is the most successful black tennis coach among the many that have served. He was the head coach at Hampton University from 1970 until 2011, this after serving as an assistant coach at Hampton since 1953. As Hampton's head coach, he compiled more than a thousand wins as head coach, including two national Division II titles, in 1976 and 1979. He also served as a professor at the university, in which he helped to establish the school's first ever speech pathology program. Overall, Screen's legacy as a collegiate coach ranks him among the most successful black coaches to ever teach the game; his dedication to succeeding at the college level ranks among the best collegiate tennis coaches of all time.

I've already spotlighted a few terribly successful coaches, but Richard and Oracene are the reason you're REALLY here, right? They've actually been divorced since 2002; Oracene is now known by her maiden name of Oracene Price. But they are the parents and first coaches of the two most successful black tennis players of all time - Venus and Serena Williams. THERE. That is the FIRST time I've mentioned them by name in 26 posts - happy?!?! I'll get into the reasons why I've been so cagey about mentioning them tomorrow, but their first and primary coaches were their parents (with a special shoutout to Rick Macci). Richard Williams is usually cited as the dominant influence; indeed, he was the first of the two parents to fall in love with tennis. He learned the game from a man named "Old Whiskey," whom he traded lessons from in exchange of pints of booze (true story!). He decided that his future children should be tennis players, and after marrying Oracene (both parents were on their second marriage at this point), he trained the two children they had together in the sport of tennis. He believed so much that they would be champions, in fact, that he pulled them out of the junior tennis scene and had them both turn professional at very early ages; this is obviously one of the rare times in which such a decision proved to be mightily prescient. Oracene usually gets overlooked when it comes to the coaching aspects; it was Richard who decided the girls should play tennis, but it has been Oracene who is credited for keeping them focused on the game; in fact, in a 2008 article I found from tennis.com, Serena actually refers to Oracene as the "bad cop" in the proverbial "good cop, bad cop" role; she says that Oracene is the likelier of the two parents to criticize the girls and give them an accurate criticism when they are playing bad. Regardless of the exact circumstances of how they picked up the game, however, the tennis record books would be terribly different had these two not decided that their girls could both be the greatest tennis champions of the world. That they have done, and so much more.

And on that note, considering that I could not end with a more perfect segue, I will finally spill my thoughts on the two greatest black champions that ever lived, starting tomorrow!

Where it all began

Through the first 24 days of Black Tennis Month, a variety of players have been covered, from various different backgrounds and sets of circumstances. But I had the nagging feeling that something was missing, so rather than present another profile of an individual, I'm going to shake things up a bit for today's post. If you've been following me thus far, especially in the last few days, you are aware of the fact that I've mentioned that many of these players established themselves on the black-owned and operated American Tennis Association circuit due to the rampant segregation of the time. I felt as if it would be most appropriate to make a post dedicated to the establishing of the ATA itself. So without further ado, here we go!

I've mentioned it in a couple of these entries already, but the ATA is the oldest black-run sports organization in America. Way back in Althea Gibson's post, I kind of made a sardonic aside about how I'm sure that fact would surprise people, considering that the stereotypes about black folks and basketball, but it's true - the oldest black sports organization in this country is dedicated to a sport that I still feel like is not typically associated with minorities, despite all of the successes in the field (which you no doubt know about now, if you've been following me thus far). It was founded on Thanksgiving Day in 1916 by a large group of black middle class investors from various professions (businessmen, doctors, teachers, etc) that was dedicated to promoting the sport in inner city communities, with the goal of having tournaments on a national scale. This past December, one of my favorite tennis writers, Steve Tignor, wrote an excellent article about the formation and development of the ATA, which is well worth a read and probably better than anything I can come up with on my own; I bring it up because he quotes Robert Davis, the executive director of the Black Tennis Hall of Fame (and from my understanding, probably the person I owe the most to in terms of how much of this info I've been able to dig up), as saying how remarkable an achievement it was that a group of black people could do this a mere 50 years or so after the end of the Civil War. I agree wholeheartedly; it is one of numerous things from that time period that shows just how far black folks had come in a short time.

While the ATA was founded with black people in mind, anyone who was interested was and still is allowed to join; it's always been an all-inclusive organization from day one. For me, this fact can't help but remind me of all the hypocrisy regarding the strawman arguments people love to use when it comes to black or otherwise minority-related organizations, i.e., BET - "you'd never see WHITE Entertainment Television, would you?" So it's not enough that segregation was a thing - you ALSO have the unmitigated gall to denounce the affected groups of people when they start their own endeavors - uh huh. Anyway, I'm getting off on a political tangent here, but suffice it to say that the ATA is still kicking after a century's existence - the 100 year anniversary of its first national championship will be held this year in Baltimore, where it all began. According to Tignor's article and several other sources I've read, the culmination of the ATA's creation was no surprise; by the time the ATA was formed, there were 58 black tennis clubs in existence, mostly in the northeast part of the country. So clearly black interest in the sport had been budding for a while - who knows how different the history books would look if black competitors had been allowed to compete on the main USTA circuit from day one.

Tally Holmes, one of the ATA's founding members, was also the first men's champion (alongside Lucy Diggs Slowe, whom we already looked at, in the women's division) in 1917; he would go on to win the event four times. Other notable ATA players that were not profiled in full for various reasons, be it lack of biographical info or pictures, include Dr. Sylvester Smith, ATA singles champion in 1919 and a doubles partner of Tally Holmes; Bob Ryland, who was one of the first black NCAA players and one of the earliest paid professional black players, and George Stewart, who won multiple ATA championships in the 50s and, along with the already-profiled Dr. Reginald Weir, was one of the first two black men to play in the U.S. Open, in 1952. I don't believe I mentioned in his entry, but Arthur Ashe, probably the most successful black male player to date, also got his start with the organization - he won two ATA singles championships in the early 60s. In fact, many of the players I've profiled that had success on the ATP and WTA tours in the modern era also received training under the auspices of the ATA before starting their professional careers; according to the ATA's website, Zina Garrison, Lori McNeil, Katrina Adams, Chanda Rubin, and MaliVai Washington are among the many notable pros who were reared by the ATA before they hit the main tours.

Tignor's article mentions the lack of visibility afforded to the prior black champions in the sport of tennis; relative to a sport like baseball, where the Negro Leagues have become a cherished institution and players like Jackie Robinson, Satchel Paige, and Josh Gibson, among many others, are a celebrated part of baseball's past - all of them Hall of Famers, in fact - tennis' past black champions do not have nearly the same profile. This is something that will hopefully be rectified in the future. Of all the players I've profiled so far, the only one who seems to have been elected into the main tennis Hall of Fame is Oscar Johnson; despite the immense qualifications of players like Dr. Weir, Ora Washington, the Peters sisters, et al, none of them have been afforded the same honor that their baseball counterparts eventually received. The ATA is taking steps to rectify this - a new ATA facility, complete with a Black Tennis Hall of Fame museum, is scheduled to be completed sometime next year in Florida. The facility is designed to become both a central hub of the ATA's training and coaching, and serve as a permanent home to honor the great black players of yesteryear.

(The proposed design for the ATA's new facilities)

The ATA continues to this day to serve its original purpose in promoting the sport of tennis among black people in America (WHILE REMAINING ALL-INCLUSIVE, THANKS VERY MUCH). It has done a great deal to organize and shepherd the development of many of the most successful black tennis players, especially during the period of segregated estrangement from the USTA. For that, they deserve a hearty round of applause. Cheers to everyone involved in the ATA, and may the Force be with you, both in terms of future projects and continuing the ongoing commitment towards raising the profiles of all of the great past black champions in the sport!

Sisters are doin' it for themselves

"Finally!" you're saying to yourself. "It's February 24th and you're finally covering the famous sisters. I can't believe it's taken you this long to write about Margaret and Roumania Peters! Wait...who?" Yup, that's right, the sisters you might be thinking of were very decidedly not the first pair of black sisters to make an impact in the sport of tennis - the Peters sisters came along many decades before they did. In fact, before I discovered their existence, I was worried that I wouldn't have enough vintage black women players to write about; imagine my surprise when I found out about them. So today you're getting a two-for-one deal! They are the focus of today's Black Tennis Month post.

Margaret was born in 1915; Roumania (born as Matilda Roumania, but later known as simply Roumania) in 1917. They became known as "Pete and Repeat," named after a 1931 movie. As has been the case with a lot of these vintage players, there's not a ton of biographical info on their childhood years or how exactly they picked up the sport; from what I've been able to gather, they grew up in Washington, D.C. and they learned the game on the public clay courts at Rose Park in the city. They were already skilled enough that by the time Margaret was 21 and Roumania was 19, they were invited to play in the ATA's national championship. Roumania would reach the final, losing to Lulu Ballard, but observers were impressed by the play of both sisters; Cleveland Abbott, who was the athletic director at Tuskegee University, offered Margaret a scholarship to attend the school and play tennis there, but she wanted to wait until Roumania graduated high school, as the two sisters were very close. Beginning in 1937, they attended the university, enduring the usual Jim Crow bullshit and racism that every black person had to deal with, but they thrived, with both sisters earning physical education degrees in 1941.

The sisters thrived in college athletics, playing both basketball and tennis; Roumania won the singles title in a championship comprised of southern HBCUs, and the pair won doubles titles together. However, the sisters also continued to play tennis in the ATA leagues during this time, as well; in fact, the duo was so good that they won the ATA's national doubles title a whopping fourteen times together - from 1938-1941, and again from 1944 through 1953. Talk about a monopoly! Roumania also appears to have been the better player of the two in singles play - she won national ATA titles in 1944 and 1946, the latter title coming at the expense of none other than Althea Gibson in the final, just before she began her own streak of 10 straight ATA singles titles. As a matter of fact, Roumania's victory over Althea in the 1944 final is the only known loss that Althea ever suffered against a fellow black woman, at least as far as surviving historical records show. Unlike some of the other black players profiled so far that played around this area, the sisters gained a little bit of fame for their exploits on the tennis court; the legendary actor Gene Kelly, who was living in Washington, D.C. around the time of their success, was a huge fan of theirs and practiced with them on occasion, and they also played matches in the Caribbean in front of British royalty. But like so many others in the amateur era, they were never able to reap the financial benefits that are afforded to today's players, despite their incredible successes.

Both sisters eventually retired from competitive competition in the late 1950s and settled back into their chosen career fields; they both received masters degrees in physical education from New York University, and moved back to Washington, D.C. Roumania married, started a family, and taught at Howard University for a spell before joining the high school ranks as a teacher, basketball coach, and a tennis instructor for underprivileged children. Margaret never married; she dedicated her life to being a special education teacher. According to surviving family members, the sisters were never bitter about the lack of opportunities afforded to them in their prime; they simply loved the sport of tennis and continued to follow it closely for the remainder of their lives. In fact, in an article I found, one of Roumania's children said upon the success of the [name redacted] sisters that "it should have been you all"; Margaret simply responded, "No, it's their turn now," a remarkably understanding response.

Both sisters lived very long lives, passing away this millennium: Roumania died in 2003 of pneumonia at age 85; Margaret passed away the following year at age 88 due to complications from Alzheimers. It was only at the end of their long lives that they finally got their due for their contributions to tennis, getting inducted into the USTA'sd Mid-Atlantic Section Hall of Fame in 2003, and receiving an achivement award before a U.S. Fed Cup match the same year. In 2015, the D.C. courts on which they learned to play were dedicated to and renamed in their honor (shown in the plaque above). It's incredibly belated recognition for "Pete and Repeat," but one that is well deserved - they were truly among the greatest pioneers in black tennis history, and deserve every single accolade they've received and then some.

Doctor, doctor

Oscar Johnson was the first black man to win a tournament on the then-USLTA tour (again, the same as the modern-day USTA, sans the "L" for "lawn"), but he was not the first person to play in an event on tour - that honor falls to a different man. For today's Black Tennis Month post, we take a look at a great player who achieved the feat just a few short months before Oscar had his breakthrough, and who had been trying to gain access to events on tour as early as 1929.

Dr. Reginald Weir (definitely keep his title in mind - this becomes crucial in regards to his tennis career later on) was born on September 30th, 1911, in Washington, D.C. I couldn't find a ton of biographical info about his formative years, but it appears that he must've grown up in New York City, as he attended DeWitt Clinton High School in NYC, where he was the captain of the tennis team there. His father, Felix Weir, was a notable classically-trained violinist. After high school, Dr. Weir went on to attend the City Colleges of New York (CCNY), where he was the captain of the school's tennis team. He graduated in 1931, and went on to earn his doctorate from New York University's medical school in 1935. He practiced family medicine for nearly the rest of his life, never turning his back on his day job even as he kept trying to advance his professional tennis career.

As I mentioned in the beginning of the post, Dr. Weir attempted to enter a USLTA event as early as 1929; he and a fellow player from NYC, Gerald Norman, both applied to play at the USLTA's national junior indoor tournament at the Seventh Regiment Armory, also in NYC. They showed up to play, but were denied entry because they were both black. Norman's father lobbied the NAACP to step in, and they did so, filing a formal complaint on behalf of the two players. According to an article I found online, Arthur Ashe wrote about this incident in his 1988 book, A Hard Road to Glory (a three-volume set about the history of black athletes in America...sounds like another thing I need to read at some point), and quotes the USLTA's response to the complaint as saying that "the policy of the USLTA has been to decline the entry of colored players in our championships...In pursuing this policy we make no reflection upon race but we believe that as a practical matter, the present method of separate associations (USLTA and American Tennis Association)...should be continued." Yeah. Okay. Racist fucks. Anyway, this didn't dampen Dr. Weir's enthusiasm for tennis at all - he simply joined the ATA's ranks and began a long stretch of dominance there, winning three consecutive national championships from 1931-33, and again in 1937 and 1942, all the while continuing his medical studies and practice. In fact, so good was Dr. Weir at tennis that he became known as the "Black Bill Tilden," for his versatile game and his resemblance to the great champion of the 1920s.

Dr. Weir never gave up on his dream of playing on the main USLTA tour, however, and in February 1948 (roughly five months before Oscar Johnson's breakthrough victory), at the age of 36, he submitted an entry form to the National Men's Indoor Championships, which were coincidentally also being held at the very same Seventh Regiment Armory he was denied entry to in 1929. This time, he was successful. According to a couple of sources I found online, part of why he was granted entry this time around is because he used his full name and title - Dr. Reginald Weir - on his entry form; apparently, the event organizers didn't consider the possibility that a black man would have the title of doctor, so they unknowingly let him in. Boy, did they surely have egg on their faces when he showed up to play! Serves them right, too. (This is why I have invariably referred to him as "Dr. Weir" throughout this post.) Anyhow, rather than create a fuss this time around, the event organizers let him play. The event was played on a hardwood floor, which is interesting to me - that's not a surface that's used for any pro events nowadays, and I'm guessing that the courts probably played super duper fast. Anyway, Dr. Weir won his first match but lost to the eventual champion, Bill Talbert. The score was 6-1, 6-1, but Talbert came away with very positive things to say about Dr. Weir; he was quoted after the match as saying that Dr. Weir was a class act, and that it was a shame he never got to play on the main tour in his prime, noting that he was also "very quick and a very good volleyer." With this result, Dr. Weir thus became the first black person of any gender to play in a USLTA-sanctioned event, the first tentative step towards black acceptance in the sport, and a full two years before Althea Gibson broke down the doors once and for all.

Dr. Weir continued his professional career through the 1950s, even when he was well into his fourth decade, and in fact, in 1952, he and another black player, George Stewart, became the first two black men to be allowed to enter into the U.S. National Championships (the modern-day U.S. Open). Though he fell in the second round, Dr. Weir earned a lot of praise for both his playing and his perseverance in waiting as long as he did to finally get his shot. I can't find any info on whether or not he won any titles on the main USLTA circuit, but as a player on the senior circuit later in the decade, he had a lot of success, winning three national seniors' titles in singles (1956-57, 1959) and two in doubles (1961 and 1962). And let me stress this yet again - what I find to be perhaps the most remarkable thing about all of this is the fact that he never stopped his medical practice at any point. He worked as a doctor regularly from his graduation in 1935 until, according to his daughter, a bad heart attack near the end of his life finally forced him to give up both of his lifelong pursuits.

(Look at the puppy! D'awww!)

Dr. Weir died on August 22nd, 1987, about a month before his 76th birthday. He seemed like a remarkably dedicated man on many, many levels, both on the tennis court and off of it. We salute you, Dr. Weir!

Alpha Kappa Alpha, with a side of tennis

Today's subject is a woman who was a trailblazer in many fields, most notably in terms of education and sororities, but in addition to the other groundbreaking work she did elsewhere, she was also a champion tennis player, as well. Since she is the oldest player I've profiled so far, there aren't any pictures of her in action readily available, sadly, but no matter - she is WELL worth getting to know, if you weren't already familiar with her via her other pursuits.

Lucy Diggs Slowe was born on July 4th, 1885 in Berryville, VA. She lost both of her parents at an early age, and moved to Lexington, VA, to live with an aunt. When she was 13 years old, she and her aunt moved to Baltimore, where she enrolled as a student in the Baltimore Colored School (this of course still being deep in the segregation era). She was the first student from her school, and first woman, to attend the legendary HBCU Howard University. At Howard, she was an incredibly active student in many diverse interests, singing in the university's choir and, in what she may be best remembered for these days, being one of the founding members of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, the first Greek-lettered sorority founded by black women in America; she was one of the people who helped to draft the group's constitution. Lucy graduated as the valedictorian of her class in 1908 and immediately started teaching at a high school in Baltimore; starting in 1911 during her summer breaks, she continued to further her own education. earning a Masters of Arts degree from New York's Columbia University in 1915.

Lucy continued teaching after getting her masters; she remained in Baltimore for several more years, then moved to Washington, D.C. in 1918. She started off as a teacher at Armstrong Manual Training School, one of three black high schools that existed in D.C. at the time, and eventually was tasked by the city's Board of Education to put together the first black junior high school in the area, which became Shaw Junior High; Lucy served as the school's first principal. In 1922, she returned to Howard University, serving as the Dean of Women, a first in the school's history. She used this time to establish better settings for the women on campus; she stressed the need for women to have their own separate learning and living spaces, and under her leadership, the first women's dormitories were built on Howard's campus. She was one of the founding members and first president of the National Association for College Women, a group that was founded to raise the standards for black women in colleges across America, and in 1931, she was the first black woman invited to speak at the National Association of Women's Deans.

So far, everything I've mentioned is remarkable in and of itself, and would be worth celebrating on its own. But the primary reason we are here is the tennis, yes? On top of everything else I've mentioned so far, Lucy was a champion tennis player, as well! According to a book written about her life, Faithful to the Task at Hand, it isn't really known exactly how she picked up the sport of tennis, other than the fact that she showed interest in sports, tennis included, at an early age in her life, which happened to coincide with the beginnings of the introduction of the sport of tennis in the United States. What we DO know is that she was already incredibly skilled at tennis by the time she entered Howard University, to the point that she was elected the president of the women's tennis club on campus. She was so good, in fact, that by the time she got her masters and had firmly settled into her teaching career, she found time to play in the American Tennis Association's first ever championship tournament, held in Baltimore in 1917 -- and won the whole damn thing! I've seen references online to Lucy having won 17 titles over the course of her playing career; the exact details of what she won and when she won it are not noted, and it couldn't have been the ATA's main championship consecutively, as this would have cut into Ora Washington's reign. Regardless of the exact breakdown of what she won, though, she clearly was just as skilled on the tennis court as she was in the other areas of her life - no mean feat.

Lucy died in October of 1937 of kidney failure, at age 52; in her incredibly accomplished life, she was able to further the advancement of women and minority students all across the country, worked tirelessly as an educator of the young, and still found the time to become an early tennis champion, well worth celebrating here for Black Tennis Month. What a remarkable woman.

The first

Today's post outlines some of the difficulties that I outlined when I mentioned the idea of covering some of these older players - despite many searches, I could find but a mere two pictures of this man online, and most of the info I was able to dig up is almost exclusively confined to two L.A. Times articles. So this is probably going to end up being a short, simple reiteration of the info that I found there, BUT, in the grand scheme of black tennis players, this man is very important - he was the first ever player to win a tournament on the United States Lawn Tennis Association tour (the modern-day USTA - they dropped the "lawn" part after grass courts largely began to be phased out), and for that, he's definitely earned a spot on this list.

Oscar Johnson is the man in question. As I said before, there isn't a ton of info about his background out there, but according to the articles I found, he started playing tennis in his Los Angeles sometime after World War II, after initially thinking it was, in his own words, a "sissy sport." He learned how to play very quickly, though, by watching other players play and imitating them in front of a mirror in his home. Eventually, he was good enough to become the champion of a local league tournament and, after graduating, applied to enter the biggest USLTA event in his area: the Long Beach Junior Open. Not only was he accepted, he wound up winning the whole thing, winning the final on July 4th, 1948. It's a pretty remarkable occurrence in tennis history, considering that there are very few tennis players who have won a tournament in their debut on tour. About a month later, Oscar entered another event, this time at the National Junior Public Parks Tournament. He won this event too, making him two for two in tournament appearances and wins - no mean feat at all.

These victories convinced tour promoters to allow Oscar to compete on the tour full-time, and he did, though with a much lower profile than Jackie Robinson, who was breaking baseball's color barrier around the same time as Oscar joined the tennis tour. He suffered a lot of the same indignities, though, often having to deal with nasty racial slurs being shouted at him during some of the tour stops. He soldiered on, though, and, as he said in the 1995 L.A. Times article that I found, he just tried to block it all out as best as he could and simply focus on playing tennis.

His career was halted by the Korean War, which he was drafted into in the early 50s and took him off tour for two years while he served in the Army. After he got out, he continued his playing career, and in 1954, the famous tennis player and promoter Jack Kramer, who ran many of the professional pro tours at the time, was prepared to offer Oscar a contract to turn professional and get paid for his efforts. Unfortunately for Oscar, he snapped a tendon him his elbow right as this was set to happen, and missed a year's worth of time. By the time his injury had healed, he'd attempted an unsuccessful comeback, had gotten married, had a day job at a tire company, and believed he'd missed his opportunity. So he put his racket down for almost 20 years, only beginning to play again when he realized just how much he truly missed the sport. He had success on some senior circuits in California, winning the Pacific Coast Championships in both 1976 and 1978, and started both a youth foundation and an annual tournament in his name to raise funding for inner-city youth tennis players.

In 1987, his contributions were recognized on the grandest scale of all, when he was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. I was unable to find any info on his birth or death dates; I would assume that Oscar has passed away by now, sad to say, but as the first black man to win a national tennis tournament, it should go without saying that he is more than worthy of being profiled. Even if this post isn't as chock full of info and pictures as the others have been so far, Oscar Johnson is still one of the great pioneers in black tennis history!

The Queen of Tennis

I had no idea who this woman was before this month, for which I am ashamed - these posts have been just as educational for me as I hope they have been for you, dear readers. By all accounts, she was divine, as great a champion as the sport of tennis has ever seen, and skilled in many different athletic pursuits, as well. Just who is this woman? READ ON TO FIND OUT MORE!

Ora Washington was born on January 23rd, 1898 in Caroline County, VA. (Unlike Jimmie McDaniel, we have information on her birth and death dates). She lived in Virginia for a spell, but upon her mother's passing when she was 10 and her father's financial struggles afterward (they had nine children), she was sent to the Germantown section of Philadelphia to live with her aunt. The name "Germantown" rang a bell with me, so I looked it up; indeed, it's the same place where the late, ostracized great Bill Tilden was born just a few years earlier. Fancy that, especially considering that their dominance in the sport is kind of analogous to each other. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyhow, Ora didn't seriously begin to pursue sports until she was in her mid-20s. According to an article I found online, she took up tennis after a sister with whom she was very close passed away; a tennis instructor at a local Germantown YWCA suggested that she might be able to ease her grief by channeling it into a physical activity. She took to the sport very quickly, and by 1925, she had already won the first of 12 straight(!) doubles titles at the ATA's national championships.

Eventually, this success carried over to singles as well - starting in 1929, Ora won the ATA singles title and held it every single year until losing in the finals in 1936 to Lulu Ballard, a woman with whom she occasionally played doubles. She went on to regain the title in 1937 and then quit singles play afterward, while still continuing to play doubles well into her 40s. But her run of dominance in the ATA ranks was unparalleled - seven straight major singles titles and eight in nine years is a stretch that is on par with many of tennis's other far more celebrated greats. In fact, though records weren't kept as dutifully as they are now, it's been suggested that there were several years during her dominant years where Ora didn't lose a match at all - not unlike Bill Tilden, who went undefeated in at least one year that tennis observers know of (1924). Ora remained almost virtually unknown outside of the black community, though - thanks to segregation, Ora was never afforded the chance to have a shot in the mainstream tournaments at the time, and the leading white player at the time, Helen Wills Moody, steadfastly refused to play a match against her. (See why I give Don Budge so much credit?) Apparently, though, FDR's administration did notice Ora's success, and in fact, her dominance and the inspiration it provided for many poor blacks to take up tennis is the reason why tennis courts even exist in many of America's inner cities at all - it was part of the administration's plan to recover from the Great Depression and provide activities for people in inner cities. So in a way, Ora is kind of the Founding Mother of black tennis - even though she's almost virtually unknown these days, it's debatable whether or not black folks would have had the chance to play tennis in their own communities at all, had it not been for her.

The crazy part about her success on the tennis courts is that she proved to be equally adept in a different sport - basketball. In the 1930s, she and Lulu Ballard were convinced to join a local Philadelphia team, the Philadelphia Tribune Girls (named after a local newspaper, who sponsored the team). From the records that still exist, she was just as good at basketball as she was on the tennis court; there weren't many black women's basketball teams for the Tribune Girls to compete against, so they mostly faced off against college teams. In particular, Bennett College for Women, an HBCU in North Carolina, was the dominant team at the time, losing just one game in a four-year stretch from 1933-37, and a three-game series was planned in 1934 that pitted the Tribune Girls against Bennett. With Ora being the team's best player and leading the way, the Tribunes swept the series easily, and continued their dominant run through the end of the decade, touring all over the country and winning the vast majority of their contests. The only thing that could stop them, and in fact DID stop them, was war; America's entry into World War II put a halt to the team, which eventually disbanded. But Ora had more than made her mark in not one but TWO sports. Amazing!

After her sporting career wound down, Ora remained in the Germantown area and worked as a housekeeper; she also continued to give lessons at the YWCA and the public courts in the area. She died in 1971, virtually unknown and unappreciated aside from those who got the chance to see her play. In fact, according to what I was able to find on the internet, when she was inducted into the Black Athletes Hall of Fame in 1976, the organization was surprised to discover that she had died five years earlier - her profile had slipped so low that no one was even aware that she'd passed. It's a shame, because this woman deserves to be celebrated just as much as any of the great champions of yesteryear. Again, I may sound like a broken record, but I can't say it enough - this type of stuff right here is exactly why I'm doing this series, to shine the spotlight on many of the forgotten heroes of the past, so that they can be remembered just as fondly as their white counterparts are. Ora was nicknamed "the Queen of Tennis" in her Germantown neighborhood; it is as apt a nickname that has ever been bestowed upon a player, from the sounds of it. May she never be forgotten.

OG

You may have noticed that almost every single player I've covered so far has been a contemporary player, or at least, has played on the ATP or the WTA tours in relatively recent times. Of course, there have been some exceptions, but I have yet to cover anyone before Althea Gibson, who came to prominence in the 1950s. There are a lot of things that factor into this - it's obviously a lot easier for me to talk about players that I've personally seen, or about those that started their careers in the modern era, simply because it's easier to dig up information on them. However, starting with this and the next few posts, I want to take a look at some of the players that came before Althea - though she was the first great black champion in the sport on a national level, she was hardly the first black person to pick up a tennis racket, as there were several notable players before her. Granted, the consequence of profiling these players is that information and records were not kept as stridently in the past as they are now; as such, there isn't nearly as much information and pictures abound the way they are for the modern pros. So these posts will more than likely be shorter than what I've been doing so far, but I'm still plowing ahead with them. I'll try to fill in the gaps of info whenever I can.

Jimmie McDaniel is the first player we will take a look at. There's a book called Blacks at the Net: Black Achievements in the History of Tennis, which I've long seen referenced but have yet to read (I really need to pick it up on of these days); it is through this book that we find what little of Jimmie's background that we do have. (Thanks, Google books!) His father, Willis McDaniel, was a player in the Negro Leagues, so sports ran in his family. Once the elder McDaniel's playing career ended, he moved the family from Alabama to Los Angeles, where he began working as a railroad porter. Jimmie played many sports in his youth, but tennis became his greatest love; he taught himself how to play the sport by hitting the ball against a backboard while in elementary school. He tried out for his high school tennis team in his senior year and led the team to the league championship. Despite not having any formal lessons, he exhibited considerable skill; he played Bobby Riggs (a future amateur world #1 and best known in his later years for losing the "Battle of the Sexes" match against Billie Jean King) in a match in high school, where he put up a respectable effort, losing 7-5, 13-11 (tiebreakers have only existed since 1970, so a lot of these older matches have very long final scores). It was around this time that Jimmie was sent away from Los Angeles to serve a year in a reform school for a statutory rape charge; the high school he attended was primarily white and, having had a relationship with a younger white student (he was 18, she was 15), he got her pregnant. The issue was pressed, primarily because of their differences in race (of course it was), and off Jimmie went.

Jimmie stopped playing tennis during his time at the reform school, but upon his return to Los Angeles, he picked the sport up again. It was actually his exploits in track and field, however, that earned him a scholarship to Xavier University (New Orleans, not Ohio). But tennis began to take over the top slot in his sporting interests once more, and before long, Jimmie was playing in a summer tour, sponsored by Xavier, for the top black collegiate players. It was here that Jimmie began to play in tournaments by the American Tennis Association, which is, as I mentioned way back in Althea Gibson's post, the oldest black-run sports organization in America. (I'll be covering the formation of the ATA later on in this series.) He went on to win four national singles titles in the ATA's championships, and was generally considered by many observers to be the best black tennis player in the pre-war years, known for his powerful lefty serve and his volleying skills.

What Jimmie is best known for, however, is an exhibition match that he played with Don Budge on July 29th, 1940. In the grand scheme of sports and the constant celebration of players who broke the color line, a la Jackie Robinson, I'm really surprised that this event is not more widely known and celebrated - this is, as far as we know, the first time a black tennis player and a white tennis player played a match of any kind of important standing against one another. If you're a casual tennis fan and your knowledge doesn't stretch far back enough to know who Don Budge was, he was, at this particular moment in tennis history, the shit. (Okay, obviously there's more to it than that, but I just wanted to use that description for him. 'Cause it's true.) Budge was the leading amateur player in 1937 and 1938, and in the latter year, he was the first person to complete tennis' Grand Slam - winning all four majors in one year. In fact, if you believe what he says in his book, Don Budge: A Tennis Memoir (a great read if you can track it down), he unwittingly created the concept that we now know as the "Grand Slam"; after becoming the world's top amateur in '37, he entered the following year with the goal of winning all of the national championships of the four countries who had won the Davis Cup at that point - Australia, France, Great Britain, and the United States. He succeeded in doing so, and, having nothing left to accomplish as an amateur, turned professional, where he was the #1 ranked player at the time of his exhibition against Jimmie McDaniel.

As I said earlier, I'm really surprised that this match doesn't get mentioned in tennis' history the same way that similar events are portrayed in other sports. It was honestly both pretty brave and very receptive of Don to give Jimmie the chance to play this match at all; obviously, other great black athletes were never afforded the chance to compete against their white counterparts, including baseball, which was still to be segregated for another seven years at this point, and boxing, where Jack Dempsey, the great champion in the 20s, refused to fight Harry Wills, the top black contender of the time. But Budge agreed to this match, largely because, as Blacks at the Net notes, the event was sponsored by Wilson Sporting Goods, who furnished Budge's rackets and with whom he had signed a deal to do promotional work. The match was played on a clay court in the Harlem area of New York City at the Cosmopolitan Tennis Club, in front of a predominantly black audience. It would be nice to say that McDaniel held his own; however, the fact of the matter is that Budge won quite easily, 6-1, 6-2. It was said that McDaniel got lost on his way to the club and arrived just minutes before the event was to start, and he was a bundle of nerves, unable to summon his best. He was also a player who was weaned on hard courts; the clay surface was a foreign beast to him. Still, Jimmie played well enough that he earned praise from the great champion; Budge is reportedly quoted as saying that he thought McDaniel was a good player, possibly in the top 10 ranks of the white players he played on a regular basis, and thought that Jimmie could improve even more if he were allowed to play in their ranks.

According to Blacks at the Net, Jimmie eventually stopped playing tennis full-time and worked at an aircraft plant during the war years; segregation still barred him from competing in the major tournaments, so he played during weekend events in Los Angeles. He picked up the sport again later in life, though, after seeing how out of shape he was getting, and began teaching the game, though not to black youngsters, but mostly white, middle-class students. The youngsters saw him as emblematic of a bygone era, something which Jimmie resented; the book has him quoted as saying, "I don't care if they honor me. But maybe, maybe they could acknowledge me."

THAT'S WHY I'M DOING THIS SERIES, JIMMIE. I'm acknowledging you - for being one of the first truly great black pioneers in the sport of tennis, and for unofficially breaking the color line in tennis. These are absolutely accomplishments worth celebrating, and this man definitely deserves more recognition than time has permitted to him. I salute you, Jimmie McDaniel!

And honestly, I ended up digging up way more info about him than I expected. I don't know if the rest of these older players will have the same amount of info at my fingertips, but as my beloved Rafa would say, "I gonna try, no?"