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.
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