- Born:
- August 25, 1927, Silver, South Carolina, U.S.
- Died:
- September 28, 2003, East Orange, New Jersey (aged 76)
Althea Gibson
Who was Althea Gibson
What major tournaments did Althea Gibson win?
Why did Althea Gibson retire as an amateur tennis player?
Althea Gibson (born August 25, 1927, Silver, South Carolina, U.S.—died September 28, 2003, East Orange, New Jersey) was an American tennis player who dominated women’s competition in the late 1950s. She was the first Black player to win the French Open (1956), Wimbledon (1957–58), and U.S. Open (1957–58) singles championships.
Gibson was born to sharecroppers in South Carolina and raised in Harlem, New York. There she began playing paddle tennis at an early age under the auspices of the New York Police Athletic League. She switched her focus to lawn tennis as a teenager. In 1942 she won her first tournament, which was sponsored by the American Tennis Association (ATA), an organization founded by African American players. In 1947 she captured the ATA’s women’s singles championship, which she would hold for 10 consecutive years.
While attending Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (B.S., 1953) in Tallahassee, Gibson continued to play in tournaments around the country and in 1950 became the first Black tennis player to enter the national grass-court championship tournament at Forest Hills in Queens, New York. The next year she entered the Wimbledon tournament, again as the first Black player ever invited. The tall and lean Gibson soon became noted for her dominating serves and powerful play.
Until 1956 Gibson had only fair success in match tennis play, but that year she won a number of tournaments in Asia and Europe, including the French and Italian singles titles and the women’s doubles title at Wimbledon. In 1957–58 she won the Wimbledon women’s singles and doubles titles and took the U.S. women’s singles championship at Forest Hills. (The latter tournament was renamed the U.S. Open in 1968.) She also won the U.S. mixed doubles and the Australian women’s doubles in 1957. That year Gibson was voted Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press, becoming the first African American to receive the honor; she also won the award the following year.
Having worked her way to the top ranks of world amateur tennis, Gibson retired as an amateur following her 1958 Forest Hills win. She explained that the decision was financially motivated: amateur players did not win prize money and could not accept endorsements, and she needed to earn an income. (That system changed in 1968; see What Is the Open Era in Tennis?)
Over the next several years Gibson participated in professional tennis events, although there were few exhibitions, tournaments, and prizes for women at that time. Her autobiography, I Always Wanted to Be Somebody, appeared in 1958. In addition, she recorded a standards album Althea Gibson Sings (1959), performed on The Ed Sullivan Show, and acted in John Ford’s The Horse Soldiers (1959) alongside John Wayne.
In 1964 Gibson took up professional golf and was the first African-American member of the Ladies Professional Golf Association. From 1973 to 1992 Gibson was active in sports administration, mainly for the state of New Jersey. In 1971 she was elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
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