Well, football season may be over but don’t be blue! The games go must on! Welcome to Black History Month: Athlete Week! Let’s kick it off with someone who could give Samuel L. Jackson AP BAMF lessons.
In 1950, at the age of 23, Althea Gibson (1927-2003) was the first black player to play in the U.S. Nationals tennis tournament (now known as the U.S. Open). She was almost not allowed to compete in the tournament, despite being a two-time winner of the national black women’s tennis championship. It took Alice Marble, a four-time champion, to argue Gibson’s case in a national tennis publication to gain Gibson’s admission to the tournament.
Six years later, Gibson became the first black person to win the French Open. She was also a member of the winning doubles team. She followed that win with victories all over the world.
In 1957, Gibson won Wimbledon and the U.S. Nationals. She was the first black person to win both tournaments and doubled down on those victories in 1958, winning both the individual and doubles tournaments.
In 1957 and 1958 the Associated Press voted her Female Athlete of the Year, the first black woman to win that honor. Jackie Joyner-Kersee gets the credit for being the first black woman on the cover of Sports Illustrated, but a simple Google search turns up Gibson with her own S.I. cover in 1957, as well as a complimentary Time magazine cover story in the same year.
In 1964, Gibson was the first black woman to join the Ladies Professional Golf Association. She retired from golf in 1978.
In 1959, Gibson wrote her autobiography, I Always Wanted to Be Somebody, and recorded an album, Althea Gibson Sings!
Gibson settled in New Jersey and ran for state senate in 1977. She lost that election but continued her work as a county commissioner for a decade. In 1992 she suffered a series of strokes that left her weakened and reclusive in her East Orange home. She died in 2003. At the 2007 U.S. Open, the 50th anniversary of her win in 1957, she was inducted into the U.S. Open Court of Champions.
Her impact on tennis was acknowledged by fellow groundbreaker Billie Jean King. “If it hadn’t been for her, it wouldn’t have been so easy for Arthur [Ashe] or the ones who followed.”
