Game, Set, Match: Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women’s Sports

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments Whenever I describe this project, the first question I am invariably asked is whether I interviewed Billie Jean King. The answer is yes, and I would like to thank her for taking time at a Women’s Sports Foundation event in Boston in 2007 to talk to yet another in the long line of journalists and writers who have been wanting a piece of her since she burst onto the tennis scene in the 1960s. In addition to the insights she shared with me, including her observation that feminists often think “from the neck up,” the occasion allowed me to experience firsthand her charismatic energy and passion for history, as well as watch her use her celebrity to work a room for a cause she believed in. I also benefitted from conversations with other major players in my story, including Donna Lopiano, Margaret Dunkle, and Bernice Sandler . In addition to serving as a commentator for a talk on Billie Jean King that I gave at the Harvard Humanities Center, Lopiano welcomed me to the Women’s Sports Foundation while she was still its head and facilitated my use of its archives. 270 Acknowledgments Once again my main scholarly home as I researched this book was the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. The library contains a treasure trove of material on feminism in the 1970s, which I sampled extensively. For their help navigating this material and for always making me feel welcome when I turned up, I would like to thank the entire Public Services team: Ellen Shea, Sarah Hutcheon, Lynda Leahy, and Diana Carey. I would also like to recognize Johanna Carll and Jenny Gotwals, the archivists who processed the Margaret Dunkle and Bernice Sandler papers that were so central to my research. And special thanks to Kathy Jacob for a very special friendship forged over the past several years. I would also like to acknowledge the support I received from the Charles Warren Center at Harvard as a fellow in 2007–8. Arthur PattonHock and Larissa Kennedy keep the Warren Center running so smoothly I was free to interact with a wonderful group of fellows, including Albrecht Koschnik, Dorothy Sue Cobble, Françoise Hamlin, Tim McCarthy, Lisa Tetrault, Manisha Sinha, Dan Kryder, Lisa Materson, and Maartje Janse. Thanks also to Dan Carpenter and Lisa McGirr for their leadership of the Politics and Social Movements seminar where I presented my work. At the University of North Carolina Press, I am tickled to be working again with Chuck Grench after a gap of more than twenty years. From his initial “absodarnlootly” response to the topic, he has been a steadfast supporter as the manuscript worked its way through the review process. Thanks, too, to Katy O’Brien, Ron Maner, and Liz Gray for making the process as easy and seamless as possible. The world of publishing, trade and academic, can be a scary place these days, and I am lucky to have landed at UNC Press. On the friends and family front, Joyce Antler once again performed her now time-honored role as first reader, offering helpful comments and huge doses of encouragement as the book took shape. She was joined at an early stage by Claire Potter, whose sharp skills as a historian and critic are supplemented by her athlete’s competitive sensibility, an excellent combination. I would also like to acknowledge the encouragement and support of Eileen McDonagh, whose work on Title IX pushed me to think more deeply about the separate-but-equal question as it applied to women’s sports. On the home front, Don Ware gets credit for literally pushing me onto a tennis court when I was in college, something he perhaps regretted when I began to beat him regularly. It is a measure of the longevity of our relationship that we watched the Battle of the Sexes match together in 1973 and now 271 Acknowledgments celebrate the publication of a book inspired by that event almost forty years later. This book is dedicated to Imogene Fish, an extraordinary competitive athlete and dear friend who has been my model of an engaged, athletic life for almost thirty-five years. Living proof that women excelled at sports long before Title IX, Imo still thinks of major birthdays divisible by ten as a chance to compete in a new age group! Raised in North Conway, New Hampshire, after...