Althea Gibson (1927-2003) Wins Wimbledon Singles Tennis Championship. The Detroit News on July 7, 1957, reports the first African American to win at Wimbledon, easily defeating another American, Darlene Hard, for the title.
During her career, Althea Gibson won several other Grand Slam events including the U.S. and French Open, and paved the way for future stars Arthur Ashe and Venus and Serena Williams. But her rise figured as much on happenstance as it did on talent and ability. Truly a Pygmalion of the sporting world, she was born in a sharecroppers shack in South Carolina, brought to New York City as an infant and grew up on the tough streets of Harlem. Althea excelled at most every sport. Dreaming of a career in music, people instead took notice of her natural ability at ping pong. She was given tennis rackets, coached by a one-armed local pro, and the wild street urchin was soon mixing with Harlem’s elite doctors and lawyers on the tennis courts.
In 1946, she caught the eye of two physicians, Hubert A. Eaton, and R. Walter (Whirlwind) Johnson, who were determined to crack the racial barriers of American tennis. They sponsored her in both life and tennis and would later play a similar role for Arthur Ashe. In 1947, Althea won the first of her ten consecutive national championships of the American Tennis Association (formed by black players in 1916 as their alternative to the mainstream U.S. Lawn Tennis Association). Two years later she crossed the color barrier, making it through the Eastern Indoor Championships and into the semifinals at the Nationals.
The next step proved harder. Even after winning the 1950 Eastern, a clamor began for her to compete in the National Grass Court Championships at Forest Hills, NY, the precursor to the U.S. Open. The associations closed rank and no invitations were forthcoming, but Alice Marble, the prior champion, rallied for racial justice and Althea received an invitation. She made it as far as the second round, enough to win a bid to Forest Hills. On Aug. 28, 1950, Althea became the first black player to compete in the National Tennis Championship at Forest Hills, besting Barbara Knapp of England, 6-2, 6-2. The next day, she rallied from behind and was on the verge of beating a nearly spent Wimbledon champion, Louise Brough, when a violent storm postponed the match. When it resumed the next day, Brough won three straight games to win.
Althea played at Wimbledon for the first time in 1951, but over the next five years wasn’t able to win consistently. In 1956 she won 16 of her first 18 tournaments, including the French Open, her first title at a Grand Slam event. Though she and Angela Buxton won the Wimbledon doubles championship, victory in the singles eluded her again. After narrowly losing the 1957 Australian Open, she won every remaining match that year. Passing up the French Open’s clay court to focus on grass courts in England, she defeated Darlene Hard in the final at Wimbledon. “At last,” she said, “at last,” as she accepted the trophy from Queen Elizabeth II. She later wrote: “Shaking hands with the Queen of England was a long way from being forced to sit in the colored section of the bus going into downtown Wilmington, North Carolina.”
Having won the most coveted title in tennis and being named the outstanding woman athlete of 1957 in a poll of Associated Press sports editors, Althea settled an old score by defeating Louise Brough, the Wimbledon champ who had eliminated her in the Nationals seven years before.