FLUSHING MEADOWS, N.Y. Her shoulders emerge out of granite, in front of the biggest stadium in the sport that she forever changed. She watches over the field courts and plazas of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, where once and future tennis fans gather to see Coco Gauff, Ben Shelton, Naomi Osaka, Frances Tiafoe, Venus Williams and Taylor Townsend, the players who came before them and the players who will come after.
What a legend, Tiafoe, a semifinalist in 2022 and 2024, said of Althea Gibson during a news conference at this years U.S. Open.
You always got to pay that forward. You always got to be educated on that understand that without X, Y, and Z, there is no Hailey Baptiste, theres no Sloane Stephens, the Williamses, and all these other things. And they opened that for us.
To X, Y, and Z, add A for Althea and Arthur Ashe, the complex tennis ancestors who broke dams for representation in sport while at times ambivalent about their positions as avatars for something bigger than their own careers. It was 75 years ago that Gibson broke the color barrier at the U.S. Open, back when it was played at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, rather than in a city park in Flushing Meadows.
An abstract profile of her decorates the annual tournament poster. A video celebrating her on-court accomplishments five Grand Slam titles, including two at Wimbledon and two at the U.S. Open plays during matches on the stadium courts. And as always, her monumental sculpture, unveiled in 2019, watches over it all.
I think the most important part is that we are celebrating it and recognizing it, because Althea accomplished so much, and a lot of it has not been given the credit it deserves and the attention and the praise, Venus Williams said ahead of the tournament. Between the womens semifinals Thursday, she announced a community tennis excellence program in concert with the United States Tennis Association, named for her and her sister, Serena.
Thats the most important part to me, just shining light on it and seeing, just acknowledging that.
Williams has a personal connection, as well. Early in her career, she received a telegram from Gibson wishing her luck. Gibson had been through a version of what Williams was about to endure: an outsider coming into a traditionally White sport under a tidal wave of pressure and attention.
Among American tennis players, and especially Black players, Gibson exists as something close to a god and also a role model. In what remains a majority White sport, and at a U.S. Open which brought that subtext onto a packed field court during Jelena Ostapenkos altercation with Townsend, in which Ostapenko told the world No. 1 in doubles that she had no education, Gibsons granite gaze clarifies that her legacy is in the present as the past. In 75 years, so much has changed on the court. Outside of a few events, the U.S. Open being one of them, not much has changed in the cultural makeup of paying tennis fans in the stands that surround them.
Ayan Broomfield, a former top junior in Canada who played college tennis at UCLA is Tiafoes partner and has been trying to address this deficit. In an interview Broomfield, who grew up in Toronto, said she did not realize what a predominantly White sport tennis was until she started traveling around the world with Tiafoe. In Canada and the U.S. there had always been plenty of Black players, but the stands in most locales were mostly White.
I actually felt way more isolated when I sat and watched his matches in a lot of places than I did when I was playing, Broomfield said.
At the Australian Open, Broomfield, now an influencer and model, posted a video, venting her frustrations. She then launched Ayans Aces, to try to increase Black attendance at tennis events. At several tournaments this year, including in Miami, Washington, D.C., and Toronto, Broomfield has secured nearly 400 tickets from the tournaments to bring people to the matches who others would not be there. She said those women are now texting her pictures of them on a tennis court, or meeting up with friends they met to watch tennis.
In Miami and and New York she has partnered with a sponsors, to host Black influencers, athletes, and actors, including Issa Rae, to spread the word. On Thursday for the womens semifinals, she was hosting 30 of them in the Cadillac Suite, two nights after she had 20 in the Grey Goose Suite.
We felt like we could have the biggest impact by allowing them to show their followings that they were here, Broomfield said Thursday evening. That way people can begin to see themselves here hopefully.
Shes hoping to do the same at the Australian Open, where her project began a year ago.
It all leads back to Gibson, and what happened in 1950, three years after Jackie Robinson broke baseballs color barrier in an event that altered not just sports but society. Tennis was a little slower to adapt; country club traditions die hard.
Gibson died in 2003, at the age of 76, so most accounts of that 1950 U.S. Open are second-hand. But in 1960, she published an autobiography, I Always Wanted to Be Somebody. For years it was out of print and copies were hard to come by, until New Chapter Press acquired the rights and published it in 2021.
Gibson had grown up as a solid athlete, though she told people she was better at basketball than tennis. By the time she entered Florida A&M University in 1949, she was a three-time national champion of the American Tennis Association, the tennis equivalent of Negro League Baseball in the days when the USTA did not allow Black players. The ATA remains a thriving association that holds tournaments and supports the development of players of color throughout the U.S.
Gibsons growing reputation earned her an invitation to the National Indoor Championships, where she made the finals. After that performance, the chatter began in tennis circles about whether she would receive one of the 56 invitations to the U.S. National Championships, which is what the U.S. Open was called then.
The committee of the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association, now the USTA, based its invitations on how players performed during the American summer grass court swing at private clubs in Newport, R.I., East Hampton, South Orange and Maplewood. Those clubs did not allow Black players to participate in their tournaments, which were invitationals. This institutional Catch-22 made it impossible for Gibson to build a case to receive an invitation.
In her autobiography, Gibson wrote about biding her time rather than choosing to agitate. Like Ashe, who in his early career had to walk a line between public agitation for civil rights and the muffling expectations of the sport which he played, Gibson did not view herself as a figurehead.
Gibson had an ally on the other side of the club gates. Alice Marble, one of the top White American players of the first half of the 20th century, believed that Gibson deserved an invitation to the U.S. National Championships and wrote an opinion piece on the topic in American Lawn Tennis Magazine.
If tennis is a game for ladies and gentlemen, its also time we acted a little more like gentlepeople and less like sanctimonious hypocrites, Marble wrote. If there is anything left in the name of sportsmanship, its more than time to display what it means to us. If Althea Gibson represents a challenge to the present crop of women players, its only fair that they should meet that challenge on the courts, where tennis is played.
She might be soundly beaten for a while but she has a much better chance on the courts than in the inner sanctum of the committee, where a different kind of game is played.
After the letter appeared, Gibson decided to test the waters. She applied to a tournament at the Maplewood Country Club in New Jersey. The club rejected her for lack of record.
But then Orange Lawn broke the dam, allowing her to play in the Eastern Grass Court Championships, the second-most important American tournament behind Forest Hills. A decent showing and the USLTAs hands would be tied. She won a match against Virginia Rice Johnson, lost the next one, but then made the quarterfinals at the National Clay Court Championships in Chicago. Her tennis talked.
Gibson stayed with Rhoda Smith, a fellow player and friend, on 154th Street in Harlem for the tournament.
On the day of her first match, she rose early, ate a breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast and milk. She packed a small kit bag with a pair of tailored white flannel shorts, a flannel shirt, sweat socks, tennis shoes and a white, knitted sweater that a woman from the ATA. had made for her. She took the D train to 50th Street, transferred to the F and rode to Forest Hills.
She then crushed Barbara Knapp of England, 6-2, 6-2. She took a shower, got dressed and was escorted to the main clubhouse for interviews. She was invited to eat in the main clubhouse, something that would be rare for her, since she often could not even dress in locker rooms, much less sit down for a meal. But she was too excited to eat.
So she stayed and watched a few matches before taking the subway back to her friends apartment for an early dinner. In the evening papers, some writers noted that shed played on Court 14, the farthest one from the clubhouse. She didnt seem to think it was a big deal.
She next faced Louise Brough, the reigning Wimbledon champion and former U.S. champion too. Brough won the first set 6-1, but Gibson battled back as a heckler kept shouting Knock her out of there! Knock her out of there! Brough did not. Gibson took the second set 6-3 and led 7-6 in the third when the skies opened and play was called for the day.
A big crowd arrived for the conclusion. It took just 11 minutes. Gibson saved one match point with a lob, but missed on a backhand on the second one and Brough won 6-1, 3-6, 9-7.
Before she returned to college, she had lunch at Crossroads Restaurant on 42nd Street and Broadway with Bertram Baker of the ATA and Hollis Dann of the USLTA. They discussed how she might prepare for Wimbledon the following year.
Don Felder, a second cousin who now helps manage Gibsons estate and legacy, grew up hearing her tell stories breaking the barriers in tennis and then in golf. She always told them with pride, and without anger toward the people who tried to exclude her, he said, either from competing or using a locker room or forcing her to use a back entrance.
But I think as she aged and later in life it wore on her, Felder said during a recent interview. She had kept so much inside, and I think could tell the hurt was still there.
Three-quarters of a century later, Black players are still absorbing microaggressions, as Townsend did after her second-round win over Ostapenko. When Townsend spoke after the win, she said he had let her racket do the talking. But then she talked some more.
Im proud, proud to be in the position that I am, Townsend said that day. Im proud to honor my culture. Im proud to be here as an American player representing here at the U.S. Open and being able to get the love and support that Ive gotten from the crowd and the fans and everyone even outside.
Im leaning in on it, Im taking everything as it is, and Im just enjoying the ride.
Townsend and Kateřina Siniaková may have fallen to Gaby Dabrowski and Erin Routliffe in search of their third Grand Slam title, but Townsends tournament changed her life. She had been to Grand Slam doubles finals before, but it felt so different.
I felt very honored to be able to carry and hold that flag and that torch, and to be able to continue to move it forward. You know, I feel like representation is very important, and you only need one.
Althea was for us, as women of color, the first. Arthur Ashe was the first man of color for us to be able to really see that performing in this arena at the highest level as possible, no matter what challenges that were faced with.
So being able to navigate through adversity, hardships Thats a lot of things that I felt like I was able to overcome at the U.S. Open just for me with my history, even in my story.
It all goes back to Gibson.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Culture, Tennis, Women’s Tennis
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