Professional Tennis Great
Born: Aug. 25, 1927, in Silver, South Carolina
Died: Sept. 28, 2003, in East Orange, New Jersey
New Jersey Hall of Fame, Class of 2009: Sports

The winner of 11 Grand Slam titles in the 1950s, Althea Gibson was perhaps the least-likely athlete ever to hoist such prestigious tennis trophies. Her accomplishments as a pioneering woman of color on the court and off opened the door for subsequent African America tennis champs, including Arthur Ashe and Venus and Serena Williams. But Gibson’s beginnings were as far as imaginable from center court.

Born in the rural South to parents who worked as sharecroppers on a cotton farm, Gibson moved with her family to Harlem at the outset of the Great Depression. The family’s new home happened to be on a stretch of West 143rd Street that had been designated as a play street. At age 9, Gibson took up paddle tennis when the Police Athletic League marked off a court in front of her building.
Gibson, who also excelled at basketball and softball, won a citywide paddle-tennis championship at age 12, attracting the attention of a P.A.L. instructor who bought her two tennis racquets and coaxed her to work on her skills at a predominantly black athletic club in the neighborhood. Gibson was reluctant at first. She had dropped out of school at age 13 and was living a tough ghetto life. In its obituary, The New York Times described the young Gibson as a “street-brawling chronic truant.”

Despite the temptations of the street, the tall, athletic Gibson stuck with tennis and won two statewide girls titles under the auspices of the American Tennis Association. (The ATA had been formed in 1916 as an alternative to the United States Lawn Tennis Association—later known as the USTA—which did not allow Blacks to compete.)

Starting in 1947, Gibson won 10 consecutive ATA nationwide women’s titles. With several patrons supporting her continued tennis instruction, Gibson finished her primary education, entered Florida A&M University on a full scholarship, and in 1949, became the first African American woman to compete in the USTA National Indoor Championships, reaching the semifinals.

Although she was gaining national renown, racial barriers effectively barred Gibson from competing in the U.S. National Championships (now the U.S. Open) at Forest Hills. After some intense lobbying by other players, Gibson made her Forest Hills debut in 1950, at the age of 23. She lost in the second round, but her mere presence on the court was viewed as a major breakthrough on par with Jackie Robinson, who had broken baseball’s color barrier three years before.

Gibson won her first international title in 1951 in Jamaica. The same year she became one of the first Black competitors at Wimbledon, the esteemed tournament in London. She continued competing abroad and in 1956 became the first African American to win a Grand Slam title when she triumphed at the French Open.

The year 1957 marked Gibson’s peak. Seeded No. 1 at Wimbledon, she became the first Black champion in the tournament’s 80-year history. Queen Elizabeth II personally presented Gibson with her trophy. Returning home to a tickertape parade in New York City, Gibson proceeded to win the national championship at Forest Hills. In 1957, she also won the Wimbledon and Australian doubles championships (she also won the doubles title at Wimbledon in 1956), and the U.S. mixed doubles championship.

In 1958, Gibson repeated her Wimbledon victories in singles and doubles, and successfully defended her singles title at Forest Hills. Between 1957 and 1958, Gibson won 57 consecutive matches. She was the No. 1-ranked female player in the U.S. and the world for both years, and was voted Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year both years–a first for an African American. During this period, she became the first Black woman to appear on the covers of Sports Illustrated and Time.

In all, Gibson won 56 singles and doubles titles during her amateur career. Needing to earn more of a living, she turned pro after her 1958 triumphs. Unfortunately, prize money was minimal for women on the professional circuit and, as an African American, she found herself blocked from the sort of endorsement deals that white players could score. Multitalented, she recorded an album of vocal standards; appeared as a slave in a John Ford film titled “Horse Soldiers”; and wrote the first of her two memoirs. In 1964, she became the first Black woman to join the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour, but again, earnings were minimal and racial discrimination was a problem on the tour.

Gibson settled in East Orange and in the 1970s became director of women’s sports and recreation in Essex County. In 1976, she was appointed New Jersey’s athletic commissioner. The following year, she made an unsuccessful run for the New Jersey state Senate. She then served on the state’s Athletics Control Board until 1988, and the Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness until 1992.
Among her many honors, Gibson was one of the six original inductees into the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame. She is also a member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame and the National Women’s Hall of Fame, and was granted honorary degrees from Drew University and the former Upsala College in East Orange. In 2012, a bronze statue of Gibson was dedicated in her honor at Branch Brook Park in Newark, near the courts where she ran clinics for young players in her later years.