A Mother’s Day tennis match played 50 years ago set the stage for Billie Jean King, an athlete who made people sit up and pay attention to women’s sports.

            In 1972, the year Title IX became law, tennis player Billie Jean King ruled the world. That year, she was Sports Illustrated’s Athlete of the Year — not female athlete, just athlete, period. (Ironically, in her youth, she had been a star softball player, but her parents urged her to take up tennis, because it was considered more ladylike.)

            That Sports Illustrated title must have rankled Bobby Riggs, a tennis star of the 1930s and ‘40s. He had been ranked first as an amateur in 1939 and first as a professional player in 1946 and 1947, and in his career had won six major titles. But, as 1973 dawned, he was 55 years old and the limelight had faded.

            Certain in the superiority of male athletes and dismissive of the women’s game — and always eager for publicity — he challenged King to a match. She was 29 years old and in the prime of her career, yet she turned him down.

            He turned next to Billie Jean’s greatest rival on the court, Margaret Court. On May 13, 1973, the two faced off in a contest dubbed the “Mother’s Day Match.” Riggs gallantly handed Court a bouquet of roses and then proceeded to trounce her in just 57 minutes.

            Riggs went on to taunt the entire women’s tennis world, challenging any player who dared to a match. “Male Chauvinist Riggs” was itching for a fight.

            That was just the goad King needed to accept the challenge.

It’s Cleopatra v. Caesar

            On September 20, 1973, King took on Riggs in a wildly publicized match that ABC dubbed the  “Battle of the Sexes.” Leading up to the match, Riggs proclaimed that women belonged in the kitchen and the bedroom. King called Riggs a creep. (Riggs definitely won the mud-slinging contest.)

            The match was a huge media event, with more than 30,000 spectators at the Houston Astrodome and another 90 million people watching on television. Legendary sports broadcaster Howard Cosell called the match.

            King was more than aware that everyone was watching. She was afraid of what would happen if she lost.

            “‘See, they don’t deserve a chance. They don’t have it,’” she worried society would say. “‘They can’t walk and chew gum at the same time, and this Title IX thing, let’s keep it in the classroom and not in sports.’”*

            King made a Cleopatra-style entrance on a gold litter carried by shirtless men dressed in togas. Riggs arrived in a rickshaw wheeled in by attractive female models — Bobby’s Bosom Buddies — wearing tight tee shirts that said “Sugar Daddy.” King gave Riggs a baby pig and he gave her a Sugar Daddy lollipop.

            King beat Riggs handily — 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 — and took home the $100,000 prize money. Hers was a performance that forced people to pay attention to women’s athletic pursuits.

All the world is her stage

            But King’s influence wasn’t confined to the Astrodome. In 1971, she was the first female athlete to earn more than $100,000 in a single season. But male tennis players earned infinitely more, and King lobbied hard for parity. In 1973, due to her efforts, the U.S. Open became the first major tennis tournament to award the same amount of prize money to both sexes.

            King retired from tennis with 39 Grand Slam career titles, 20 at Wimbledon. She went on to coach Olympic tennis and co-founded the World Team Tennis League, becoming the first woman commissioner in professional sports. In 2006, the home of the U.S. Open was named in King’s honor. In 2009, President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the first female athlete to be so recognized.

            “ She is the single most important person in the history of women’s sports,” said tennis star John McEnroe.^**

                And let’s not confine her achievements to women’s sports. Earlier this year, King tossed out the coin at Super Bowl LVI to mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX.

            “It is an honor to stand with these outstanding student athletes and celebrate the 50th anniversary of Title IX on one of the world’s biggest stages,” she said.***

            I’d say that honor was fitting.

                                                ______________________

*  Jennifer Frey, “’King-Riggs ‘Battle of the Sexes’ of 25 Years Ago Helped Level the Playing Field,” The Washington Post (September 20, 1998), p. D-6.

** Speech at the ceremony of the renaming of the United States Tennis Association’s National Tennis Center the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center (August 28, 2006).

*** “Billie Jean King performs coin toss at Super Bowl LVI,” U.S. Open website (February 13, 2022).

Trans women playing women’s sports is a controversial topic today. But who gets to play on what team is not a new dilemma.

            In the 1970s, Debbie Millbern Powers took a position as a PE teacher and a coach at Muncie Northside (IN) High School. As a female coach, she was required to coach three sports — both junior varsity and varsity teams — and sponsor a sports club. Seven commitments!

            (Male coaches at her school coached one sport, and some were assistant coaches for another sport. Debbie had no assistants.)

            Debbie chose basketball, tennis and volleyball. For her club, she chose cheerleading. What irony! All her life, Debbie had been told she should channel her athletic ambition into cheerleading, and not the basketball she longed to play.

            “It is more acceptable. It is more feminine,” she’d heard all her life.*

            Debbie took on all her coaching roles with enthusiasm, but it was with the volleyball team that she eventually made headlines.

We have to do what?

            By 1975, in her third year of coaching, Debbie’s team had gelled. Going into tournament season, they were 18-1. They attracted enough attention that they even got their own uniforms. (If you follow this blog, you’ll know that women mostly had to cobble together their own uniforms, were given close-out uniforms in random colors, or wore men’s cast-off uniforms.)

            The team won their tournament games, until finally they got to the championship match. They were elated!

            But the girls’ excitement turned to disbelief when they found they’d be going up against South Bend Clay High School, a team that had two boys on it. One of the boys, Brian Goralski, wanted a scholarship to play volleyball in college, but Clay had no boys team. So he and a friend were placed on the girls team.**

            Debbie was livid.

            “We had to play a team with freakin’ boys on it!” she says in disbelief.

            She couldn’t believe that after fighting so hard for women’s sports, and finally getting onto the field via Title IX, women were being replaced by men.

            “How dare two high school boys deny two females spots on their school’s team! How dare they invade our new arena of opportunity!” she fumed.

            But Title IX worked both ways, the powers-that-be decided.

            “The coach of that team took a lot of grief,” Debbie says. “The other coaches and their players were angry. Parents were screaming and yelling at her. But she had no choice — the athletic director forced her to play the boys.”

It’s a nail-biter

            The match began, and it looked like the 6-foot-3-inch tall Brian and his male teammate might overpower Debbie’s team. They won the first game 15-6, but lost the second, 14-10.

            It all came down to the third game. With 20 seconds left on the clock, Clay had the lead 13-12.

            “Now is when we make history!” Debbie urged her girls in a time-out.

            Debbie’s strategy was to keep Brian stranded in the back row so he couldn’t spike the ball. And her team did indeed make history. When the buzzer sounded, Northside had won 15-13.

            You can just imagine the celebration! Debbie gives all the credit to her players.

            “They were little bulldogs!” she says. “They were more motivated. They were bound and determined to beat that team.”

How about it, Brian?

            But decades passed, and Debbie still hadn’t come to terms with the injustice. She tracked Brian down and called him. How did it feel, she asked him, to take a spot that should have gone to a girl? Not only that, but what about the dozens of girls on other teams that lost to his team, losing their chance at a championship?

            “’I was 17 years old,’” he replied. Debbie could hear the shrug of his shoulders in his voice.

            So, when Debbie hears about trans women playing on women’s teams today, she has strong opinions.

            “I am very much opposed,” she says. “Whether or not they’ve taken hormones, men’s bodies are bigger. They have athletic advantages over women that can’t be erased.”

            She doesn’t know what the answer is, only that it can’t be for athletes who are biologically male — whatever their gender identity — to take spots that women are entitled to.

            “It’s not fair that again men are getting into our space,” she says. “It’s a space we fought so hard for.”

            Some high-level athletes are working on this very issue: How can we make sports fair for everyone? We’ll talk about it on another day in another post.

                                                                ____________________________

* Quotes in the present tense (says) are from my telephone interview with Debbie on April 19, 2022. Quotes in the past tense (said) are from her book, Meeting Her Match: The Story of a Female Athlete-Coach, Before and After Title IX (Leeper Publishing, 2014). https://amzn.to/37GDadG

** Brian did indeed get his athletic scholarship. None of the girls had that opportunity.

In college, Debbie Millbern Powers was a teammate of Tara VanDerveer, today the winningest coach in women’s college basketball. In tournaments, she faced Margie Wright, who went on to a sparkling career as a college and Olympic softball coach. Fellow Indiana University student Jane Pauley interviewed Debbie for a journalism class. Legendary men’s basketball coaches Branch McCracken and Bobbie Knight cheered her on from the sidelines.

            But this isn’t what Debbie wants to talk about. She’s not a name dropper by nature.

            What Debbie wants to talk about is the heartbreak of being a female athlete before females were allowed to be athletes.     

            “In my soul, I knew I was an athlete, and yet they told me I couldn’t be,” she recalls. “I knew it, and yet I worried, ‘Is something wrong with me’?”*

Girls need not apply

            You see, Debbie’s life spans Title IX. Her childhood was spent in the before-times, and she graduated college in 1973, just one year after Title IX was enacted and years before it made any real difference to women’s athletics.

            When you read her memoir, Meeting Her Match: The Story of a Female Athlete-Coach, Before and After Title IX, you’re overwhelmed by her feelings of utter dejection each time her aspirations are thwarted. Hers is not a saccharine story of bucking up and carrying on.

            Take, for example, the moment in fourth grade when the school was holding tryouts for a basketball team. “Boys only,” the teacher told her.

            “Tears began to flood my eyes. I sat down on the gym floor and sobbed as the feelings of injustice and desperation engulfed me,” she said.

            Or the time a teacher took her aside at recess and told her to stop playing with boys and act more like a girl, that it wasn’t normal for a girl to be as competitive as a boy. This time, she blinked back the tears, but the teacher’s words stung.

             Act more like a girl? What does she mean by that? I am a girl. I’m a girl who happens to like playing sports.  

            Each time her ambition to play basketball was thwarted, those blocking her way had the same advice for her: Why don’t you go out for cheerleading?**

            “I don’t want to be a cheerleader, I don’t want to play hopscotch, I want to play basketball!” she says she remembers thinking.

Is that all there is?

            Even in her own home, her mother had different rules for her, the daughter. Shooting hoops on the driveway with her brother and his friends after school, Debbie was called in to set the table for dinner. Not her brother, just her.

            “These were the days of Miss America pageants, of expectations that girls grow up, get married and learn how to make a good meatloaf,” she says. “I thought, Is this what my life is going to be? I’m going to be horrible at it. I want to play on a team. I want to play basketball.”

            On the night of her brother’s first basketball game, Debbie watched from the sidelines, consumed with jealousy. In the dark of her bedroom that night, she ached with the sorrow of her broken dreams. She prayed a girlish but sincere prayer of desperation.

            “Dear God,” she prayed. “I have a huge favor to ask… could you please turn me into a boy during the night so I can play on a real team?”

Dad to the rescue

            Fortunately, she had someone on her team, not someone who could turn her into a boy, but someone who could see her despair — her father. One day he came home with a box under his arm, a present for his sports-loving daughter. Her first pair of basketball sneakers!

            “I felt like Cinderella in her magic slippers!” she said.

            Still, she had doubts about herself.

            “You just didn’t feel normal back then if you wanted to play sports,” she says. Yet, in truth, the character building that sports provide don’t confine themselves to one gender.

            “The camaraderie of working together as a team, making friends, setting goals, learning to lose gracefully and win humbly. In sports, you develop the attributes that make us good human beings,” she says.

            Well, we all know that now. But a few people, like Debbie, knew it long before everyone else. I’ll continue her story in the next blog post.

                                    _________________________

* Quotes in the present tense (says) are from my telephone interview with Debbie on April 19, 2022. Quotes in the past tense (said) are from her book, Meeting Her Match: The Story of a Female Athlete-Coach, Before and After Title IX (Leeper Publishing, 2014). https://amzn.to/37GDadG

** Nothing against cheerleaders! I was one once.

Last week, I listened in on a conversation with author Sherry Boschert about her new Title IX book, 37 Words: 50 Years of Fighting Sex Discrimination. She threw out a name I hadn’t yet heard: Margaret Dunkle.

            Too often, we simplify great movements by choosing one name to ascribe success to and ignore all the others whose hard work brought results. I think this has happened to Dunkle.

            From 1972 to 1979, Dunkle worked with Bernice Sandler on research for Title IX for the Association of American Colleges and then in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the government agency that became responsible for enforcing Title IX.

            Dunkle and Sandler, “The Godmother of Title IX,” worked to identify areas of sex discrimination in educational settings. At first, the focus was on women being barred from graduate and professional schools — medical, law, business schools. It was perfectly legal for schools to use quotas, limits, even marital status, to block women from education and careers.

Unearthing the athletic identity

            Very quickly, though, Dunkle found that discrimination was most visible in the realm of athletics. There, discrimination was easy to identify — women’s sports were almost nonexistent. And athletics had a strong, emotional pull on the national psyche.

            “Athletics was becoming a metaphor for strong, able women on the playing field and in life,” Dunkle said.*

            In those days, there wasn’t any data to unearth and analyze. To make the case for Title IX, researchers had to compile their information one anecdote, one campus news clipping, one phone call at a time. “We had to rely on a story or an example that rang true,” Dunkle said.**

            The discrimination Dunkle’s team unearthed is well known today. Paltry to nonexistent budgets for women’s athletics meant that female athletes had to hold bake sales and sell candy or Christmas trees to fund their teams. They rode on rickety buses, while men’s teams rode cushy chartered buses. They practiced in the early morning or late at night, when men weren’t using facilities. They had no scholarships, no training facilities, no medical attention, no uniforms, no nothing.

            Some of the cases of discrimination are jaw dropping today. In one case, Boschert said, researchers found that women had to use athletic tape that the men had used and discarded. In another, Dunkle found that a college didn’t allow a woman to use their handball courts unless a man signed her in. Universities routinely barred women from taking coaching courses, so that on graduation, they were considered not qualified to coach, and therefore, had no path for professional advancement.

Killing off those myths

            Before addressing these blatant issues, Dunkle and her research team had to first battle centuries-old myths about women participating in sports.

            “Women have not been encouraged to participate in athletics at least partly because the traits associated with athletic excellence — achievement, self-confidence, aggressiveness, leadership, strength, swiftness — are often seen as being in contradiction with the role of women,” she wrote in a seminal report. “Myths die slowly.”***

            It was hard to convince even women themselves that they deserved the same opportunities as men.

            “The inequities have been so great, women have gotten so little in the past, that many women will fear a backlash from the men if they push too hard,” Dunkle said. “Once they [women] get crumbs, they’ll feel like they’re gorging themselves. It takes a while to get rid of double standards.”****

            The injustice seems so blatant, doesn’t it? But this was all new thinking at the time. Dunkle was a Title IX trailblazer, just as Bernice Sandler was. Just as Reps. Edith Green and Patsy Mink were. Just as Sen. Birch Bayh was.

            Thank you, Sherry, for introducing me to this remarkable woman! My copy of your book is on its way now. I can’t wait to read it!

                                                ____________________

* “Margaret Dunkle: Writing Title  IX’s Playbook on Sports.” Sherry Boschert’s 2016 interview with Margaret Dunkle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyBGZ3oPyr8

** Kristine Cornils’s 2012 “Top of the Morning” interview. A local show highlighting the achievements of remarkable Maryland natives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pYWq9m3mUs&t=382s

*** Sandler and Dunkle, “What Constitutes Equality for Women in Sports: Federal Law Puts Women in the Running” (Association of American Colleges, Project on the Status and Education of Women, 1974). Prepared for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

**** Jay Searcy, “Foe of Men’s Myth Braces for Battle,” New York Times (July 14, 1974), p. 25.

NOTE: Sherry Boschert’s website and blog can be found at http://www.sherryboschert.com/

The last few weeks have been great ones for female athletes breaking into the male dominated sport of baseball. Four women led the charge, realizing their dream on the diamond.

            This week, San Francisco Giants assistant coach Alyssa Nakken became the first woman in Major League Baseball history to coach on the field. She took over when the regular first base coach was ejected from the game. Nakken worked in the team’s front office before becoming an assistant coach in 2020.

            Last week, Rachel Balkovec became the first woman to manage an MLB minor league affiliate, skippering the Tampa Tarpons, a Class A affiliate of the New York Yankees. The Yankees promoted her from her previous job as a minor league hitting coach, and everyone knows she’s earned her position.

            “She’s not a token hire. Whether she’s male or female, it doesn’t change the fact that she is a great coach,” said Yankees hitting coach Dillon Lawson.*

            Meanwhile, Team USA’s Kelsie Whitmore signed with the Atlantic League’s Staten Island FerryHawks. (The Atlantic League is a professional league one level below MLB.) A pitcher, Whitmore won silver in the 2014 Women’s Baseball World Cup and gold at the 2015 Pan American Games.

            Finally, last month, Alexis “Scrappy” Hopkins was drafted by the Atlantic League’s Kentucky Wild Health Genomes. With these signings, Whitmore and Hopkins become the first female players to take on-field positions in professional baseball.  

            Hopkins got her nickname for her style of play as a catcher and utility player. But she didn’t always see this future. When she was asked to write a college essay about a dream, she didn’t mention baseball.

            “I was going to put down professional baseball player, but I actually didn’t because I was like, ‘That’s never gonna happen,’” she said. “But I guess here we are today making a dream come alive.”**

Forging a path to home plate

            Women’s achievements in this sport are particularly notable because there’s no path for women who want to play pro baseball. Girls are most often steered — even shoved — into softball. Some women prefer that sport, as it allows them to compete on a team of women with other women.***

            But if a girl really wants to play baseball, she has to break into the male domain. We’ve talked about Maria Pepe, who in 1972 forced Little League Baseball to accept girls.

            But after Little League, then what? My son’s Cal Ripken and Babe Ruth teams had no female players. His college’s varsity and club teams had no female players. His adult rec league has no female players.

            But girls do indeed play baseball. TEAM USA includes collegiate, national and Olympic teams. Just recently, about 130 colleges across the country committed to allowing women to try out for their men’s teams. An organization called Baseball For All is also pushing colleges to form women’s club baseball teams and baseball programs with NCAA status. 

Take a ride with Geena Davis

            Because of the movie “A League of Their Own,” everyone knows about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. During and after World War II, from 1943 to 1954, ten teams competed, with about 600 women participating.

            The league still exists today, promoting baseball for women. In 2019, the AAGPBL established a non-profit, American Girls Baseball, whose mission is to support girls and women who want to play baseball and provide a path to competitive play and financial compensation.

            It’s no surprise that “League of Their Own” actress Geena Davis, who plays star catcher Dottie Hinson, also played a role in Title IX’s history. In 2003, when a federal commission was considering whether colleges could comply with Title IX by using surveys of female students to gauge athletic interest, Davis called that evasive tactic a strikeout.

            “I am here to take you on a short ride in Thelma and Louise’s car if you think it’s fair and just to limit a girl’s opportunity to play sports based on her response to an interest survey,” she said.****

            I’m eager to follow the trajectory of these new initiatives in women’s baseball. Because of my son’s involvement in the game, I’ve come to love it myself. Were I to live my life over, perhaps I’d ditch the music lessons and pick up a baseball mitt instead!

                                                            _____________________

* Elizabeth Merrill, “New York Yankees minor league manager Rachel Balkovec has worked her entire life for this moment,” ESPN (April 8, 2022).

** Legendary softball coach Margie Wright was thrilled to play ball on a women’s team, rather than be the sole female player on a men’s team. Read about Margie’s experiences in my four-part series.

*** Jack Bantock, “Alexis ‘Scrappy’ Hopkins becomes first woman to be drafted by a professional baseball team,” CNN (March 25, 2022).

**** In the 1991 movie, “Thelma and Louise,” the titular characters played by Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon drive over the edge of the Grand Canyon in an impromptu suicide pact. In 1992’s “A League of Their Own,” Davis’s character is based on AAGPBL player Dorothy Green. Davis’s athletic interest is not surprising — in real life, she’s an avid archer.

When we talk about female athletes of the mid-1900s who broke through gender barriers, we tend to make their stories into ones of pure triumph. And triumph they did.

            But I’ve become curious about their entire lives. What happened when they came to the end of the paltry opportunities they had in pre-Title IX days?

            Some women fared better than others.

Didrikson the dame

            Let’s look at Babe Didrikson, who we talked about last week. At the 1932 Summer Olympics, she won gold in the 80-meter hurdles and the javelin, and silver in the  high jump. She had wanted to enter all five events she qualified for, but at the time, women were only allowed to enter three events. Because, of course, women are fragile!

            She could have chosen almost any sport. She excelled at basketball, swimming, diving, riflery, handball and boxing. She even pitched in a few spring training Major League Baseball games.

            Yet the sporting world wasn’t ready for women in professional sports.

            Sportswriter Joe Williams conceded that Didrikson was a talented amateur, but opined that women don’t belong in professional sports. They can’t break male records and they can’t make the same money male athletes can, he argued — Didrikson was just “cheapening herself” by trying.

            “But let the dame play all the amateur golf she wants to,” he shrugged. “By now, she must have learned there is no money in feminine athletics.*

            Fortunately, Didrikson did turn to professional golf and won 10 LPGA major championships. In her career as a golfer, she brought in a comfortable income. Her best year was 1950, when she entered the U.S. Open, the Titleholders Championship, and the Women’s Western Open, which made her an earnings leader. She was a leading earner again in 1951.

            From then on, illness hobbled her, although she still performed well. But in 1938, she had married wrestler George Zaharias, which no doubt brought her an extra measure of financial stability.

Gibson’s struggle

            It was a different story for tennis player Althea Gibson, who we also talked about last week.

            In 1950, at age 23, Gibson became the first African American player to compete at the U.S. National Championships (the U.S. Open). She was the first African American woman to win major titles: the French Open in 1956, and Wimbledon and the U.S. Nationals in 1957 and 1958.

            But racial bias meant that many white players refused to compete with or against her. Discrimination even affected her game — coaches taught her to play any balls within two inches of a line to avoid conflict with opposing white players.

            When Gibson retired from amateur tennis in 1958, she had made almost no money from it. And with no channel to pursue pro tennis — professional tennis tours for women didn’t fully start until 1973 — she struggled to earn a living.

            No one was interested in her as a tennis pro. Race had a lot to do with that, she knew.

             “To hail my talents in public doesn’t cost anything, but to hire a Negro — and a Negro woman at that — to teach white club members called for a bigger expenditure of courage than most club owners were willing to make,” Gibson said.**

            She tried her hand at golf, as Didrikson had, but it didn’t work out. She played exhibition matches on tour with the Harlem Globetrotters, tried life as a singer, coached a few promising players and ran tennis clinics for children in underserved neighborhoods. 

            But by the mid-1990s, Gibson was sick, alone and living in poverty. She told her best friend, fellow Black tennis player Angela Buxton, that she was going to kill herself.

            “She was calling to say goodbye,” Buxton said. “I said, now wait just a minute.”***

            Through a tennis magazine, Buxton arranged a fundraiser, and money poured in. Gibson went on to have another ten years.

            Gibson lived until age 76, a long time to struggle with income insecurity. And who knows what would have happened for Didrikson? She died at age 45 at the height of her fame and what little fortune she enjoyed. Had she lived longer, her story might have ended much differently.

                                    ____________________________________

* Joe Williams, “Let Her Play Golf, Even If She Is a Pro,” New York World Telegram, reprinted in the Oklahoma News (May 15, 1935), p. 9. In the article, he quotes an earlier, undated column of his.

** Alicia Ault, “Althea Gibson’s Momentous Achievement,” Smithsonian (June 1, 2021), quoting Ashley Brown, a University of Wisconsin historian who is writing a biography of Gibson.

*** Althea Gibson, “Tennis Star Ahead of Her Time, Gets Her Due at Last,”New York Times (August 26, 2019).

 

We last talked about Babe Didrickson, an athlete whose accomplishments began to break down the prejudice against women in sports. But it was another athlete who attacked not only the gender barrier, but the barrier of racial hatred as well.

            In 1950, 23-year-old tennis player Althea Gibson became the first African American player, man or woman, to compete at the U.S. National Championships, now known as the U.S. Open. She went on to become the first African American woman to win major titles: the French Open in 1956, and Wimbledon and the U.S. Nationals in 1957 and 1958.

            Those last two years, the Associated Press named her Female Athlete of the Year — no racial qualifier, just the best. After her first Wimbledon triumph, she was honored with a ticker tape parade in New York City, only the second African American person to be so recognized, after Olympic runner Jesse Owens, who was lauded along the Canyon of Heroes in 1936.

            Gibson credited Jackie Robinson, the Black baseball player who in 1947 broke through the color barrier in Major League Baseball, as her inspiration. But historians believe Gibson smashed an even greater barrier than Robinson.

             “You’re talking about an elite, country-club sport, which has a very different meaning in society” than baseball or other team sports, noted Damion Thomas, a curator for the National Museum of African American History and Culture.*

Lightning strikes the tennis world

            In fact, at Gibson’s first appearance at the Open in 1950, even nature seconded that statement. She won her first match, but the second match was halted by rain. During the ensuing storm, lightning shattered a stone eagle at the top of the stadium.

            “It may have been an omen that times were changing,” Gibson said.**

            Gibson was born to a family of sharecroppers in Silver, South Carolina, a speck of a town barely on the map, and the family moved to Harlem when she was 3 years old. She was a problem child — she hated school and often skipped to spend her days playing ball sports of all kinds. She excelled at women’s paddle tennis, and at the age of 13, she dropped out of school.

            Taking on the game of tennis, Gibson competed in tournaments for the American Tennis Association, which was almost exclusively Black in the 1940s. In 1946, two Black tennis-playing doctors, took Gibson under their wings.

            Soon-to-be welterweight champion Sugar Ray Robinson and his wife also befriended Gibson. The families of the doctors provided homes, tennis instruction and academic structure.  She graduated high school in 1949 in Wilmington, N.C., and from Florida A&M in 1953.

Show ‘em who you are

            Gibson had won the national Black women’s tennis championships two years running. But in 1950,  it looked like the lily-white United States Lawn Tennis Association would exclude her from the Nationals. Another tennis player took up Gibson’s cause.

            “If Althea Gibson represents a challenge to the present crop of players, then it’s only fair that they meet this challenge on the courts,” wrote Alice Marble, a tennis star of the 1930s. To Alice, she wrote: “Don’t bother to tell ‘em who you are; prove it instead.”*** 

            Marble’s challenge prevailed and Gibson made her debut that year. Unlike Jackie Robinson, though, Gibson didn’t see herself a trailblazer for the entire Black community. She found that role too oppressive.

            “I don’t consider myself to be a representative of my people,” she said. “I’m thinking of me and nobody else.”****

            Gibson believed instead that individual achievement on its own would lead to opportunities for everyone. Yet, no matter what she said, she did indeed broaden people’s ideas about who exactly gets the chance to excel.

            “Althea’s accomplishments set the stage for my success, but she also made a difference for people of all backgrounds in all areas,” said tennis star Venus Williams. “Through beneficiaries like me, Serena, and many others to come, her legacy will live on.”*****

                                                _______________________________

* Alicia Ault, “Althea Gibson’s Momentous Achievement,” Smithsonian (June 1, 2021).

** Mark Preston, “Gibson’s Forest Hills Debut,” United States Tennis Association (February 5, 2020).

*** American Lawn Tennis (July 1, 1950). Alice Marble wrote an editorial for this issue of the magazine, along with an open letter to Gibson in February 1950, to which Gibson replied in the same issue.

**** Sally H. Jacobs, “Althea Gibson, Tennis Star Ahead of Her Times, Gets Her Due,” New York Times (August 26, 2019).

***** Endorsement for Born to Win: The Authorized Biography of Althea Gibson, by Frances Clayton Grey (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2004).