Althea Gibson
Althea Gibson was the best tennis player in the world in 1957 and 1958. She won Wimbledon twice. She won the U.S. Nationals twice. She was the first Black person — man or woman — to compete at Wimbledon and at Forest Hills. When she won, she was greeted at a ticker-tape parade in New York City. When she retired from amateur tennis, she had no money. There were no endorsement deals for Black women. She spent years in poverty before finding a second career on the LPGA golf tour — becoming the first Black player there too.
Althea Gibson grew up in Harlem, the daughter of sharecroppers who had come north during the Great Migration. She was athletic, competitive, and difficult to manage — she skipped school, got in fights, and had no patience for rules she didn't understand. A musician named Buddy Walker noticed her playing paddle tennis on 143rd Street and introduced her to the Harlem tennis community.
She was a natural. She began competing in the American Tennis Association — the all-Black tennis circuit that existed because the United States Lawn Tennis Association, which governed the sport's official rankings and tournaments, excluded Black players. She dominated the ATA.
In 1950, after a campaign by ATA officials and a public call from former champion Alice Marble, she was finally accepted into USLTA events. In 1951, she became the first Black player to compete at Wimbledon. She was twenty-three years old and had never played on grass before.
She kept improving. In 1956, she won the French Open — the first Black player to win a Grand Slam singles title. In 1957, she won Wimbledon and the U.S. Nationals. She was named AP Female Athlete of the Year. New York City gave her a ticker-tape parade down Broadway.
She won both titles again in 1958. Then she retired from amateur tennis. Not because she wanted to. Because there was nothing left to win financially. Amateur tennis meant no prize money. She had no endorsement deals — no major company was interested in a Black woman as a brand representative in 1958. She had won the sport's highest honors and could not pay her bills.
She tried professional exhibition tours, singing, acting. In 1964, she joined the LPGA golf tour, becoming the first Black player there too. She was thirty-seven years old, learning a new sport at a professional level.
She struggled financially for much of the rest of her life. She lived with the costs of being a pioneer in a sport and an era that celebrated her and then offered her nothing sustainable. She died in 2003. The USTA National Tennis Center in New York — the home of the U.S. Open — has a street named Althea Gibson Way that runs past Arthur Ashe Stadium.
I always wanted to be somebody. If I made it, it's half because I was game enough to take a lot of punishment along the way, and half because there were a lot of people who cared enough to help me.Althea Gibson
She won Wimbledon twice and the U.S. Nationals twice and retired broke. The sport she dominated had no mechanism to financially support its Black champion. She spent years in financial difficulty after her tennis career ended, trying multiple paths toward stability. She integrated two major professional sports leagues and received no lasting economic benefit from either.
Althea Gibson is to tennis what Jackie Robinson is to baseball — except her story is less told, her financial ruin after integration is less discussed, and the system that celebrated her without sustaining her is less examined.
She also shows that integration is not the same as equity. She broke barriers. She won at the highest levels. And then the sport moved on without ensuring she could live on what she had accomplished. That pattern — celebrating Black excellence while denying Black economic security — is a pattern worth naming directly.