Renaissance woman: Althea Gibson was a tennis legend, a professional golfer, actress, singer, political candidate, education advocate, and she wrote a memoir

Black Issues Book Review, Nov-Dec, 2004 by Yanick Rice Lamb

Althea Gibson believed that records were meant to be broken, but it took four decades for another black tennis player to catch up to her back-to-back national and international championships. She still holds the record for winning 10 consecutive singles titles in the American Tennis Association (ATA), which was founded in 1916 and is the oldest black sports organization in history.

In 1957 and 1958, Gibson won the singles titles at Wimbledon and the U.S. nationals, now known as the U.S. Open. Venus Williams repeated the feat in 2000 and 2001, but no one will probably ever break Gibson's ATA record from 1947 to 1957 because she broke enough racial barriers in the elite sport of tennis to make such an effort unnecessary. These days, anyone who even shows such potential will automatically start swinging his or her racket on courts at Flushing Meadows, New York, home of the U.S. Open, or at the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club, where Wimbledon winners are crowned.

Nothing was automatic in Gibson's day. It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears on the part of Gibson and her legions of supporters to help her become the Queen of Tennis, as both an amateur and professional athlete. The same type of behind-the-scenes machinations that it took for Jackie Robinson to integrate baseball when he stepped onto the diamond at Ebbets Field as a darker Brooklyn Dodger in 1947 came into play when Althea integrated tournament tennis by competing at the nationals in 1950 and Wimbledon in 1951. She wrote a memoir in 1958 (see NOTEWORTHY TITLES).

Renewed attention has been focused on these efforts and Gibson's triumphs since her death a year ago, on September 28, 2003, at the age of 76. Ironically, many people thought she was already dead at the time complications of respiratory and bladder infections, which came on the heels of a heart attack earlier that summer, finally killed her. She had been reclusive in her later years, preferring to inspire and be admired from afar, as age and depression took their toll. Many fans feel that Gibson had been shortchanged on admiration.

"She didn't get her due," said Billie Jean King, a tennis legend in her own right who had followed Gibson's career since she was 13 and later became a close friend. King speculates that Gibson might have been heralded to a greater extent and retained more visibility had her triumphs occurred after the debut of open tennis in 1968, when professional and amateur tennis players were permitted to compete against each other for the first time. Such was the case for Arthur Ashe, who became the first African American in 12 years to win a Grand Slam after Gibson's capture of the French championship in 1956. Ashe, who won the U.S. Open in 1968 and later teamed with Gibson in mixed doubles in 1973, always credited her for paving the way for him and those who came later.

Gibson, who won 11 Grand Slams and roughly 100 other rifles worldwide, was thrilled to see her sons and daughters in tennis ruling the court, including Ashe, Zina Garrison, Leslie Allen, Yannick Noah, Chanda Rubin and, most notably, Venus and Serena Williams. However, Gibson did not live long enough to witness the publication of Born to Win: The Authorized Biography of Althea Gibson (Wiley, September 2004, $24.95, ISBN 0-471-47165-8), or to consider granting the wishes of those who had hoped to lure her out of ,seclusion perhaps one more time for a public moment of glory.

In Gibson's glory days, she was inundated with letters and telegrams from all over the world in assorted languages. One-hundred thousand people came from near and far to shower her with confetti and strips of paper during a ticker-tape parade down the Canyon of Champions in lower Manhattan after her singles and doubles Wimbledon victories in 1957.

Gibson was also celebrated as a Renaissance woman. She led her alma mater, Florida A&M, to basketball championships; integrated the Ladies Professional Golf Association; recorded an album titled Althea Gibson Sings (1958); sang on The Ed Sullivan Show; and starred in the 1959 film The Horse Soldiers with John Wayne and William Holden. Gibson also ran for political office and made more history as the first woman and first African American to serve as a state athletic commissioner, where her duties included sanctioning wrestling and boxing matches in New Jersey for such contenders as Mike Tyson. As she attempted a series of comebacks in tennis and golf, she also became a champion for education, fitness and equality across the fines of age, race and gender.

With all of her accomplishments, Gibson felt that the tide "Born to Win" appropriately captured the essence of her being. But observers have repeatedly noted that she was also born too soon. "It's one of the many injustices in life that Althea's greatness was not perceived by enough people early enough," said former New York Mayor David Dinkies, a friend since the late 1940s.

Gibson said of her experiences that she "wouldn't have missed it for the world." Her biggest regret was that the barriers she destroyed seemed to have been re-erected behind her far too often.