Lighting a Path for the Sisters

Althea Gibson’s presence was so strong, you hardly noticed she wasn’t around.

We didn’t see the African American tennis pioneer these last few years, when Venus and Serena Williams picked up the torch she left behind and sprinted away from the tennis world. Gibson’s deteriorating health kept her at home in New Jersey, away from the bright light that reflected off the Williams sisters.

But it always felt as if she were there, in the stadium. Over the last five years the Williams sisters’ achievements dragged Gibson’s name out of the history book and onto the morning sports page. To watch Venus and Serena on the court, and to know them, was to know Althea Gibson.

So when she died Sunday, at age 76, it took a while for me to be sure I never had met her.

I have been fortunate to meet several of the groundbreaking African Americans in sports, including Arthur Ashe (Gibson’s counterpart in men’s tennis), Lee Elder (the first African American golfer at the Masters), Earl Lloyd (first African American in the NBA) and Sam Lacy, the sportswriter who helped Jackie Robinson in the fight to break baseball’s color barrier.

The reason it seemed as though I had met Gibson was because I met her descendants -- Zina Garrison, Lori McNeil, Chanda Rubin, Venus and Serena.

There was a little bit of Gibson in all of them. Gibson might have been a trail blazer, but there weren’t many who followed her path. The sight of an African American woman playing tennis wasn’t -- and isn’t -- common. Those who followed might not have been the first, but whenever they reached the sport’s upper echelon, they were inevitably referred to as the first since ... Gibson. And they were always asked about their predecessor immediately afterward.

In 1990, when Garrison became the first black woman to reach the Wimbledon final since Gibson won consecutive championships at the All England Club in 1957 and ‘58, Gibson watched from the royal box.

Gibson was always watching. Even after a stroke and two cerebral aneurysms confined her to her house, she was watching on television. Her friends and caretakers always made sure to let the young descendants know; one even joined a conference call with Venus to pass along the congratulations from Gibson after Venus first reached the top of the WTA rankings.

As children, Venus and Serena watched Garrison. The middle generation always gets overlooked, just like Calvin Peete, the link between Elder and Charlie Sifford and Tiger Woods in the chain of black golfers. It helps to have someone to look to for inspiration. If the Williams girls had Garrison, Garrison could turn to Gibson. Thanks to Gibson, everyone else had someone.

It’s impossible for me, or for anyone my age, to truly imagine the scope of Gibson’s achievements. In 1950 she became the first black woman to compete in what would become the U.S. Open, and she was the first at Wimbledon a year later. In addition to her historic Wimbledon victories, she also won the U.S. championship, the French Open and three Wimbledon doubles championships -- in the same time period as the Montgomery bus boycotts in Alabama.

True, Gibson came along after the integration of baseball, football and basketball. But she carried the fight into the country club world, into places where the dress code wasn’t the only all-white policy in effect.

She wasn’t merely a black athlete in the era before the March on Washington and the Civil Rights Act, playing at a time when there were restaurants and hotels that she couldn’t enter. She was a female athlete before Billie Jean King and Title IX came along, let alone Gloria Steinem.

Not only was she a bold woman, ahead of her time, she was a gifted athlete. In 1962, two years after taking up golf, she made the LPGA Tour.

Ashe became the face of black tennis because his 1968 U.S. Open championship and 1975 Wimbledon title came during a time of greater media exposure (Sports Illustrated didn’t even exist when Gibson first went to Wimbledon).

Ashe’s graceful strength was well suited to carry his advocacy beyond tennis and to address racial injustice throughout the world.

In her 1958 autobiography, “I Always Wanted to Be Somebody,” Gibson wrote: “I am not a racially conscious person. I don’t want to be. I see myself as just an individual. I can’t help or change my color in any way, so why should I make a big deal out of it? I don’t like to exploit it or make it the big thing. I’m a tennis player, not a Negro tennis player. I have never set myself up as a champion of the Negro race. Someone once wrote that the difference between me and Jackie Robinson is that he thrived in his role as a Negro battling for equality whereas I shy away from it. That man read me correctly.”

Athletes, whether they’ve just won a championship or are about to finish a Hall of Fame career, always say the magnitude of what they’ve done won’t hit them until they’re older. I think the same goes for these racial pioneers.

I never met Gibson, but I’ve talked to enough of her counterparts in other sports to know that they’re even prouder as the years go on and they see how others have taken advantage of the opportunities that they created.

Gibson was watching when Venus and Serena Williams took over tennis. It was as if she were there. If you were watching too, if you saw one of the Williams sisters make appearances by African Americans in Grand Slam finals the norm, not the exception, you got to know Althea Gibson as well.

*

J.A. Adande can be reached at [email protected].

*

(Begin Text of Infobox)

Grand Total

Althea Gibson’s results in Grand Slam singles finals:

1956 French Open -- def. Angela Mortimer, 6-0, 12-10.

1956 U.S. Championships -- lost to Shirley Fry, 6-3, 6-4.

1957 Australian Open -- lost to Shirley Fry, 6-3, 6-4.

1957 Wimbledon -- def. Darlene Hard, 6-3, 6-2.

1957 U.S. Championships -- def. Louise Brough, 6-3, 6-2.

1958 Wimbledon -- def. Angela Mortimer, 8-6, 6-2.

1958 U.S. Championships -- def. Darlene Hard, 3-6, 6-1, 6-2.