By Sally H. Jacobs
There aren't many well-known people who go by the name Althea. Althea Gibson - the first Black person (male or female) to win a Grand Slam tournament title in tennis - probably tops the list.
Althea is a Greek name, said to mean "healer" or "wholesome." If her parents had been able to forecast the future, they would have come up with something that translated to "trailblazer" or "champion." That was Gibson, who is certainly underrated on the list of racial pioneers in the United States - even among athletes.
She certainly deserves a full biography, and Sally H. Jacobs comes through with an excellent effort with her 2023 book, "Althea."
Let's start with three quick points about what makes her such an interesting subject even close to 70 years after her prime years as a tennis player:
1. It's difficult to imagine how tough Gibson's road to athletic success was. Tennis was one of the two main "country club" sports in her era, which meant most of the good players came out of relatively wealthy backgrounds. The club was where they learned and played the game. In the 1950s and before, that certainly meant that major championships in America were almost always reserved for white players. (There were some separate events for Blacks, and Gibson became a frequent winner on that circuit.) That was particularly true for tournaments in the South. And keep in mind that the top level of competition in that era was for amateurs only. In other words, you needed outside money to be able to practice your skills and go to tournaments ... because winning didn't carry any financial benefits. Gibson had to rely on help from relative strangers to receive lessons on the game and opportunities to even play in tournaments.
2. Tennis is a sport where the competitor is all alone. Care to travel around the country for events, knowing that a designated hotel for competitors might not let you stay there because of skin color? Right - no thank you. As the only Black on the circuit in the mid-1950s, Althea didn't have many close friends who could listen to her experiences and fully understand her emotions. At least when Jackie Robinson broke into major league baseball in 1947, he had teammates who were rooting for him to succeed.
3. Gibson integrated not one, but two major women's sports. She was the first Black woman to join the LPGA Tour in 1964. Althea wasn't particularly good by professional standards, taking up the game in her 30s. Althea only came close to winning a few tournaments and usually ranked well down the leaderboard. But she was there with the other pros ... and the reception to her presence in the golf world was relatively close to her experiences in tennis. It's as if Robinson could skate and joined the National Hockey League for a while.
That's all a heck of a start of a biography, and the story has plenty of surrounding drama. It starts in South Carolina, where Gibson was born in 1927 to sharecroppers. You might expect that there wouldn't be much time for tennis there. The family moved to Harlem in New York City after her birth. That figured to be a step up in terms of quality of life, and maybe it was. But around the time of their arrival, the Gibsons had to deal with the fact that a Depression was about to start - hitting the Black community hard. Mix an economic downtown with overcrowding, and you have a recipe for serious urban problems. Althea, at least, was quite a physical specimen - on her way to growing to a height of 5-foot-11. She was New York City's paddle tennis champion at age 12. She could compete with boys in almost everything athletic; you might have called her a "tomboy" back then.
Eventually Althea found opportunities to play tennis in New York, and her skills demanded attention. Gibson's talent caught the eye of a North Carolina doctor who took her in as a teen and sponsored her play. She went on to qualify for the U.S. championships at Forest Hills in 1950 - knocking down that racial barrier. Gibson continued to improve in the next few years, climbing up the rankings. In hindsight, it's interesting to read about how women's tennis worked in those days at its highest level. Players would take the usual steps forward and reach the top (or at least fulfill their potential). But remember, there was no prize money and no endorsement money available. The champions sometimes peeled off to get married or make a living. The idea of playing for 20 years would have been preposterous.
That movement left some space for Gibson to reach the top of her sport. She won the French Open in 1956, and took the U.S. Open and All-England titles in 1957 and 1958. And then she was gone, taking a needed long break and having an on-again, off-again relationship with tennis. Althea tried turning professional, which was in the barnstorming stage and didn't really work at all for women. The pro golf idea came up a few years later. It's easy to speculate how she might have done if she had taken up the game earlier.
Around the age of 40, Gibson - a woman who once received a ticker-tape parade down the middle of New York City - was at the point where she had no idea what she'd do with the rest of her life. A couple of marriages failed, some business ventures flopped, and some civic and government jobs more or less had little staying power. And it's not as if most country clubs of the era were willing to hire a Black to be their tennis pro. Old habits die hard. She comes across as rather lost and a little forgotten, although some of her isolation certainly was self-inflicted.
Yes, quite a story - even without a happy ending. Jacobs certainly put a ton of effort into the book, and does a very good job of a balanced portrait of Gibson's good times and bad times. The author seems to have talked to almost everyone who ever met her, or so it seems.
Gibson's death did spark a burst of appreciation for her life on the tennis court. There is a good-sized monument for her in Flushing Meadow, New York - the current home of the U.S. Open. But the question lingers in the background: What if she had been in her prime right now? Could she have become a player like Serena Williams? Since we'll never know, we'll have to appreciate what she did do. "Althea" helps us do exactly that.
Five stars
Learn more about this book from Amazon.com. (As an Amazon.com affiliate, I earn money from qualified purchases.)
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