Althea Gibson was born on August 25th, 1927 in South Carolina. Her family moved to Harlem in 1930, and as a child, she took up paddle tennis, a game in which she became quite skilled in very quickly. She was able to translate this skill into the real deal, winning several consecutive championships in both the girls' and the women's divisions of the American Tennis Association, the oldest black-operated sports organization in the United States. (Bet you didn't know that, did you? I'm sure people would probably guess some basketball organization - well, think again!) After her success among those ranks, which included 10 straight ATA titles beginning in 1947, Gibson was finally allowed to play in the U.S. National Championships (what we now know as the U.S. Open) in 1950, where she became the first black tennis player - male or female - to enter the draw. After this, many of the rules and regulations surrounding the denial of black players to main tour events were lifted, largely because of Althea. So in a way, she's like tennis' version of Jackie Robinson, only perhaps even more remarkable because she was, of course, a woman - no laughing matter, considering how slow the development of women's professional sports has often tended to be (sadly).
Gibson had success on the tour almost from the start, but it wasn't until 1956 that she broke through and captured the title at Roland Garros, the first player of black descent (again, male or female) to win a major tournament in tennis. In 1957, she captured both the Wimbledon and the U.S. Open titles, and repeated the feat in 1958, feats which earned her the #1 ranking in tennis based on the experts' surveys at the time. These achievements earned her many accolades, including the covers of Sports Illustrated and Time magazines - a first for a black female athlete.
Now, for those of you who are not among the tennis cognoscenti, we have what we call the "Open Era" - 1968 to the present - and the "pre-Open Era," everything before that. Open Era simply refers to the fact that any player with the appropriate ranking, qualification, or wild card can enter a major tournament, regardless of whether they are considered an amateur (unpaid) or professional (paid) player. When Althea was dominating the women's tour, this was during the amateur era - she wasn't getting any money for her accomplishments, aside from basic airfare and the occasional allowance for room and board. As she put it, "Being the Queen of tennis is all well and good, but you can't eat a crown. Nor can you send the Internal Revenue Service a throne clipped to their tax forms." So after her wildly successful 1957 and 1958, she retired from amateur tennis for financial reasons. It was much harder for her to find success as a professional tennis player, however, given that there were no organized tours for professional women's tennis players at that time, and when there WERE opportunities for her to play, she was usually passed over in favor of white players.
So dig this - and here's where my respect for her grew even more, as I had NO idea about this until putting together this profile - Althea decides that if she was going to try and make some money playing a sport, she'd better switch professions. So at age 37, she takes up professional golfing! This was many, many years before Michael Jordan's failed attempt at playing professional baseball, which is the primary reference I always think of when it comes to an athlete switching sports - it's still incredible to imagine a gifted athlete stepping away from a sport that they're good at, and taking up a completely different sport. Sadly, though, the racism that continued to permeate her stay on the tennis tour also carried over to the golf world, as well. Many events refused to allow her to play or even set foot in the clubhouse, and while she made some strides in the golfing world, she never won a tournament and was never able to be a consistent success on the then-relatively new LPGA. Still, the fact that she had any success at all is a remarkable achievement, especially given her relatively advanced age.
Sadly, Althea's health began failing her as she got older, and because of her long-term struggles with money, she was often unable to pay for the health care she needed. A fundraising effort by her doubles partner Angela Buxton secured some much-needed money to help offset some of the costs, but her health continued to flag. In 2003, she had a heart attack early in the year, and in September of the same year, ended up passing away due to respiratory and bladder infections.
Frankly, if you ask me, it seems like this woman gave all she had to give to her various pursuits, and received a raw deal in return, neither being properly compensated for her immense skill, nor fully appreciated by the tennis community as a whole. She seems all but forgotten these days - unlike her American male counterpart in Grand Slam success, Arthur Ashe (who still maintains a fairly high profile in passing; having a stadium named after you will do that), I can't recall ever seeing the tennis world honor her in any way. It's a shame, as she deserves to be recalled fondly for being the remarkable trailblazer that she was.
Well, that's why I'm writing these entries. It's the least I can do to honor these legends. Althea was the first and still among the very best of them all. May she finally have found happiness, whatever or wherever that may be.
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