Before Venus and Serena Williams, there was Althea Gibson. The trailblazing tennis legend was the first Black player to compete at the U.S. National Championships in 1950, and the first Black player to compete at Wimbledon in 1951. Recognized as the world’s best women’s tennis player of the time, her inclusion in the competition signaled growing momentum for the advancement of rights for Black people.
Gibson was born in 1927 in South Carolina to sharecroppers who worked on a cotton farm. As part of the Great Migration during the Great Depression, her family moved to Harlem in 1930. Due to segregation, Gibson had to play under the protection of the New York Police Athletic League, but she fell in love with paddle tennis. By the age of 12, she was the New York City women's paddle tennis champion. In 1941, she entered and won her first tournament, the American Tennis Association (ATA) New York State Championship, an organization founded by African American players. In 1947, she won the ATA’s women’s singles championship, which she held for 10 consecutive years.
In 1949, Gibson became the first Black woman, and the second Black athlete, to play in the United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA, later known as the USTA) National Indoor Championships, where she reached the quarterfinals. While attending Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University on a full scholarship, she continued competing around the country, and in 1950 she was the first Black tennis player allowed to play in the national grass-court championship tournament at Forest Hills in Queens, New York. The following year marked another historic first when she was the first Black player invited to the Wimbledon tournament.
Gibson continued playing with moderate success for the next few years, but in 1956 hit her stride and broke down barriers. She was the first Black athlete to win a Grand Slam tournament in the French Championships singles event, as well as the French and Italian singles titles and the women’s doubles title at Wimbledon. In 1957, she became the first Black champion in the tournament's 80-year history, and the first champion to receive the trophy personally from Queen Elizabeth II. She was voted Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press, becoming the first Black person to receive the honor.
Gibson went on to win the U.S. Open the following year and went professional. Since there were few tournaments and prizes for women at that time, she took up professional golf in 1964 and was the first Black member of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA). She spent the rest of her career active in sports administration. Her memoir, “I Always Wanted to be Somebody,” is currently being developed into a film.