Althea Gibson biography
Althea Gibson, (born August 25, 1927, Silver, South Carolina, U.S.—died September 28, 2003, East Orange, New Jersey), American tennis participant who dominated girls’s competitors within the late Fifties. She was the primary Black participant to win the French (1956), Wimbledon (1957–58), and U.S. Open (1957–58) singles championships.
Gibson grew up in New York City, the place she started taking part in tennis at an early age below the auspices of the New York Police Athletic League. In 1942 she received her first match, which was sponsored by the American Tennis Association (ATA), a company based by African American gamers. In 1947 she captured the ATA’s girls’s singles championship, which she would maintain for 10 consecutive years. While attending Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (B.S., 1953) in Tallahassee, she continued to play in tournaments across the nation and in 1950 turned the primary Black tennis participant to enter the nationwide grass-court championship match at Forest Hills in Queens, New York. The subsequent 12 months she entered the Wimbledon match, once more as the primary Black participant ever invited. The tall and lean Gibson quickly turned famous for her dominating serves and highly effective play.
Until 1956 Gibson had solely honest success in match tennis play, however that 12 months she received quite a few tournaments in Asia and Europe, together with the French and Italian singles titles and the ladies’s doubles title at Wimbledon. In 1957–58 she received the Wimbledon girls’s singles and doubles titles and took the U.S. girls’s singles championship at Forest Hills. She additionally received the U.S. combined doubles and the Australian girls’s doubles in 1957. That 12 months Gibson was voted Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press, turning into the primary African American to obtain the honour; she additionally received the award the next 12 months. Having labored her technique to high rank in world beginner tennis, she turned skilled following her 1958 Forest Hills win. However, there being few tournaments and prizes for ladies at the moment, she took up skilled golf in 1964 and was the primary African-American member of the Ladies Professional Golf Association. From 1973 to 1992 Gibson was energetic in sports activities administration, primarily for the state of New Jersey. Her autobiography, I Always Wanted to Be Somebody, appeared in 1958. In 1971 she was elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame.