Althea Gibson

American tennis player

• Born: August 25, 1927
• Birthplace: Silver, South Carolina
• Died: September 28, 2003
• Place of death: East Orange, New Jersey

The first African American to win a Wimbledon singles title and the winner of five major singles championships, Gibson was an important figure in establishing African Americans as equal competitors at the highest levels of tennis. She overcame the prejudice of the tennis world at a time when racial barriers still operated in the sport. She will be remembered as one of the stellar performers in the history of women’s tennis.

Early Life

Althea Gibson was the eldest of the five children of Daniel Gibson and Anna Washington Gibson. Her parents worked in the South Carolina cotton fields; their families were sharecroppers and poor farmers. When Althea was three, her family moved, and she grew up in Harlem during the 1930s. She was a rebellious child who was often absent from school. Her relationship with her father was stormy, and his treatment of her verged on physical abuse at times. She learned to defend herself in the dangerous world of the streets and honed the courage and self-reliance that would carry her to the top of women’s tennis.

Her athletic career began on the paddle tennis courts of a Police Athletic League “play street” near her home. While she learned tennis on regular courts, she competed in local tournaments in the New York area. After she won the American Tennis Association girls’ singles crown in 1944 and 1945 and was runner-up for the women’s title in 1946, she moved to North Carolina with the family of R. W. Johnson. There she attended high school and practiced her game. In 1948, she won the national American Tennis Association’s women’s title. She won the championship of this African American tennis association for the following nine years.

Life’s Work

Gibson entered Florida A&M University in 1949 on a tennis scholarship. Meanwhile, she pursued her tournament career. She played well in the National Indoor Tennis Championships in 1949, and she won the Eastern Indoor championship of the US Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA) in March of 1950. Nevertheless, she faced an informal racial barrier because of the unwillingness of the USLTA to invite a black player to participate in the US Open at Forest Hills. The USLTA used the excuse that Gibson had not played in enough tournaments to demonstrate her talents on the highest level.

A former women’s champion, Alice Marble, provided a decisive boost to Gibson’s career at this key moment. In a hard-hitting editorial for American Lawn Tennis magazine, Marble urged that Gibson be given a chance to prove herself in genuine competition. “If Althea Gibson represents a challenge to the present crop of women’s players, it is only fair that they should meet that challenge on the courts, where tennis is played.” The USLTA relented, and Gibson was invited to the US Open in August of 1950, the first African American to participate in the tournament. Her debut was a memorable one. In her second-round match, she was ahead of the noted player Louise Brough in the third set when rain stopped play. She was on the verge of upsetting a Wimbledon and US Open champion. The night’s interval and a tense press conference after the match was suspended worked against Gibson’s concentration. The next day Brough came back to beat Gibson, 6–1, 3–6, 9–7. Despite the setback, Gibson had proved that she could play at the highest level of tennis. Her tennis talent, however, was still raw and undisciplined. Her performances varied between excellence and mediocrity. The top women players knew that she might crack if they put pressure on her weaker strokes. She had confidence in her own ability but needed to see her game mature.

For the next six years, however, Gibson did not live up to the expectations that her first appearance at the US Open had created. She played in Great Britain at Wimbledon, the pinnacle of the tennis world, in June of 1951, the first African American to do so, but lost in the quarter-finals. She rose to a ranking of ninth in the United States in 1952 and moved up to seventh a year later. She then fell back to thirteenth in 1954. In the meantime, to support herself in an era when tennis was still ostensibly an amateur sport, she taught in the physical education department at Lincoln University in Missouri during 1954 and 1955. By now, she had given serious thought to retiring from tennis and pursuing a military career.

Gibson then received an offer to be one of the American tennis players on a goodwill tour of Asia for the State Department in late 1955. Playing tennis on such a sustained basis revitalized Gibson’s game, and she found that her talents were still sharp. She went on a run of victories that impressed the doubters in the tennis world. In 1956, she won sixteen of the eighteen tournaments she entered before Wimbledon, including the Asiatic women’s singles crown, the Indian national title, and the French indoor doubles championship with Angela Buxton of Great Britain. She did all this while living from week to week on meager financial resources. Tennis in the 1950s was still an “amateur” sport and an African American player had to struggle to survive without the monetary help that white players enjoyed. Gibson won her first Grand Slam tournament, the French Open, on the red clay of Roland Garros Stadium over Angela Morton, 6–0, 12–10. The American press finally began to take notice of her accomplishments on the court. Her streak of singles victories came to an end when Shirley Fry beat her in the quarter-finals at Wimbledon. The British crowds rooted against her, and their journalists denounced the evident display of racial intolerance that so unnerved Gibson. Nevertheless, she won the doubles title, again teaming with Buxton. Out of this experience came a lifelong friendship with Buxton, a talented British player.

Gibson continued her strong play throughout the remainder of 1956. She won several grass court singles titles and reached the finals of the US Open in September. She lost to Shirley Fry, 6–3, 6–4, in a match in which she did not play her best. The tennis circuit then led her to Australia, where she teamed with Fry to win the doubles crown at the Australian Open. Unfortunately, she lost to Fry in the singles of the tournament several days later.

The rest of 1957 saw Gibson reach the top of the world of women’s tennis. Fry had retired, and Gibson now sensed that she could defeat the other players that she faced. She won several warm-up tournaments for Wimbledon and came into the fortnight’s competition as the odds-on favorite. She reached the finals and played against Darlene Hard. The match was played in 96-degree heat. Gibson’s serve worked well, and she was in command from the early points. When her 6–3, 6–2 victory was secured, she exclaimed, “At last, at last.” Queen Elizabeth II presented Gibson with the trophy. Gibson also won the doubles championship with Hard. Her accomplishments vindicated her hard work and resolve to reach the top of the sport.

When Gibson returned to the United States, she received a ticker-tape parade in New York City. It was, she said, the greatest honor she had ever received. She capped her championship year with a victory at the US Open over Louise Brough, 6–3, 6–2. Vice President Richard M. Nixon presented her with the trophy, and the crowd gave her a sustained round of applause.

The following year brought more victories for Gibson. She took the Wimbledon crown for the second time. She won over Angela Mortimer of Great Britain, 8–6, 6–2. Gibson went on to win the US Open again with a three-set victory over Hard, 3–6, 6–1, 6–2. She then announced that she was retiring from amateur tennis. The trophies were nice, she said, but she had to make a living. Until 1958, she had not ever earned enough money in a single year to require her to file an income tax return.

In her prime, Gibson was an overpowering tennis player. She stood five feet ten inches tall, and her powerful serve reminded many people of the speed and force of the serves of male players. Her volleys and overhead smash were also devastating. She exuded confidence on the court, a quality that sometimes irritated those who competed against her. Billie Jean King has said that Gibson was one of the most underrated champions in women’s tennis. Given the obstacles she had to overcome at a time when racial bias permeated the sport, her record becomes even more impressive. Unlike modern women tennis players, Gibson did not blossom as a teenager. She was in her late twenties before her talents came together in championship form.

After her departure from amateur tennis, Gibson played professionally as an attraction with the Harlem Globetrotters during 1959. She competed on the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour for a time and coached tennis in New Jersey. She also served as the State Athletic Commissioner of New Jersey during the mid-1970s. Gibson had a well-acted supporting role in a John Wayne film set during the Civil War, The Horse Soldiers (1958). She married William Darben in 1965, but they were divorced, and her second marriage was to Sidney Llewellyn in 1983. Gibson was named to the Lawn Tennis Hall of Fame and Museum in 1971, to the Black Athletes Hall of Fame in 1974, and to the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1980. She continued to teach and to play tennis, although she no longer competed in the professional arena. Her last years were a time of loneliness, personal depression, and persistent poverty as the tennis world had forgotten her and her championships. Her friend Buxton worked with others in the tennis community to make Gibson’s life more comfortable than it would otherwise have been. Nonetheless, Gibson did not receive the full recognition that she deserved as a past champion. Only with her death in 2003 did there come a belated sense of what she had meant to her sport and to American society. She gained further recognition when, in 2019, a statue of her was unveiled outside of Arthur Ashe Stadium on the opening day of the US Open.

Significance

Gibson earned a reputation as the greatest African American woman tennis player before the advent of Venus Williams and Serena Williams. Despite the prejudice and discrimination that confronted her during a period before the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, she surmounted the obstacles that were placed in her path to become a dominant player of her era. From 1956 through 1958, she mastered the world of women’s tennis, and she could have added more titles to her record if she had so desired. Unfortunately, Gibson’s successes did not lead to a surge of black women tennis players. The tennis establishment failed to encourage the development of young African Americans with potential to be top-flight players. The next great African American star would be Arthur Ashe, who emerged in the following decade. Gibson was an outstanding champion.

Bibliography

Biracree, Tom. Althea Gibson. Chelsea House, 1989. As one of the entries in the publisher’s American Women of Achievement series for juvenile readers, this biography provides a fine introduction to Gibson’s life and career and includes useful information regarding her activities after her retirement from professional competition.

Brown, Gene, editor. The Complete Book of Tennis. Arno Press, 1980. This compilation of The New York Times coverage of tennis during the twentieth century contains excellent accounts of Gibson’s major tournament victories during the 1950s.

Collins, Bud. My Life with the Pros. E. P. Dutton, 1989. A longtime reporter of tennis, Collins covers Gibson’s emergence as a tennis star, and his book gives a good sense of the obstacles Gibson faced from the white media and tennis establishment.

Davidson, Sue. Changing the Game: The Stories of Tennis Champions Alice Marble and Althea Gibson. Seal Press, 1997. Looks at the careers of these two women in tennis and how Marble helped Gibson get a chance to play in major tournaments despite the racial prejudice against her.

Gibson, Althea. I Always Wanted to Be Somebody. Edited by Ed Fitzgerald, Harper & Brothers, 1958. A vivid account of Gibson’s rise to the top of the tennis world. Its depiction of her formative years makes it an important contribution to African American autobiographies.

Gibson, Althea, with Richard Curtis. So Much to Live For. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1968. A second installment of her autobiography covering her years after tennis as well.

Gray, Frances Clayton, and Yanick Rice Lamb. Born to Win: The Authorized Biography of Althea Gibson. John Wiley, 2004. A full account of Gibson’s struggles and triumphs.

King, Billie Jean, and Cynthia Starr. We Have Come a Long Way: The Story of Women’s Tennis. McGraw-Hill, 1988. The section on Gibson is a perceptive assessment of her career and her effect on women’s tennis during the 1950s. It makes the persuasive argument that Gibson has not received the recognition she deserves.

Lumpkin, Angela. Women’s Tennis: A Historical Documentary of the Players and Their Game. Whitston, 1981. This survey of writing about women’s tennis and the history of the sport provides references to the major published articles regarding Gibson during her years at the top of women’s tennis. A valuable source of information about her career.

Schoenfeld, Bruce. The Match: Althea Gibson and Angela Buxton How Two Outsiders, One Black, the Other Jewish, Forged a Friendship and Made Sports History. Amistad, 2004. A perceptive and insightful treatment of Gibson’s career and her friendship with her doubles partner from the 1950’s. The closest book to a full biography with much fresh information about her life and times.

Wade, Virginia, with Jean Rafferty. Ladies of the Court: A Century of Women at Wimbledon. Atheneum, 1984. Has a very informative chapter on Gibson’s successes at Wimbledon.