Out of the Shadows: A Biographical History of African American Athletes

11. “Jackie Robinson without the Charm”: The Challenges of Being Althea Gibson

11 “Jackie Robinson without the Charm” The Challenges of Being Althea Gibson M A R Y J O F E S T L E In her 1958 autobiography, international women’s tennis champion Althea Gibson recalled a telling incident from her childhood. A classmate known for being big and tough kept provoking her, pulling her hair, and ignoring requests to leave her alone. Finally Gibson had enough and said she would meet the girl outside after school. Word spread that there was going to be a fight, so a crowd gathered to hear them curse each other and prepare for battle. After the girl called her a “pig-tailed bitch,” Gibson punched her rival in the face “so hard she just fell like a lump. Honest to God,” she recalled, “she was out cold. Everybody backed away from me and just stared at me, and I turned around like I was Joe Louis and walked on home.”1 This relatively minor incident foreshadowed some important aspects of Althea Gibson’s life. It demonstrated her willingness to take on a challenge , which she did repeatedly in her seventy-six years, occasionally biting off more than she could chew. The story also hinted at the rough childhood that helped shape her fiercely independent and sometimes difficult personality. The fight illustrated both her athletic ability and propensity to engage in behavior considered unfeminine, while the reference to Joe Louis indicated her awareness of the popular boxing champ and race hero to whom she would later be compared when she grew up. Gibson would find the role of pioneering race representative such an unwelcome burden, though, that one journalist called her “Jackie Robinson without charm.”2 Althea Gibson was the first African American to play in and win the United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA) national championship and the ladies’ championship at Wimbledon, and her achievements were as significant as those of men like Louis and Robinson, even if she was never as beloved by either blacks or whites. Gibson’s life was a 2WIGGINS_pages_133-262.qxd 9/12/06 12:00 PM Page 187 Althea Gibson poses for the camera in 1956, the same year she became the first African American to capture a grand-slam tennis title by winning the French Open. (Library of Congress) 2WIGGINS_pages_133-262.qxd 9/12/06 12:00 PM Page 188 difficult one, and the obstacles she faced were enormous. She brought a few of them upon herself, but most resulted from the multiple levels of discrimination she suffered in the midcentury context, as a female in an athletic world that marginalized women, a working-class woman trying to break into an elitist sport, and a black woman in a racist nation, world, and sport. Although race, class, and gender combined to level repeated blows, she rolled with the punches. Born August 25, 1927, in Silver, South Carolina, Althea Gibson was the child of sharecroppers Daniel and Annie Gibson, who like many southern blacks looked to the North for a more rewarding way of life. When she was one year old, Althea was sent to live with her mother’s sister in New York with the plan that her parents would eventually join her. Later Althea lived at least a few years with another aunt in Philadelphia. Perhaps a decade passed before her whole immediate family—father, mother, Althea, three sisters, and a brother—lived together in New York, where her father worked as a garage attendant. By then, young Althea disliked school and played hooky frequently. She claimed she was “mischievous ” (occasionally shoplifting and fighting) but didn’t get into any “real trouble.” She loved going to the movies, hanging out at the pool hall, bowling, and playing “paddle tennis,”3 stickball, and softball. Her basketball club played contests up to four times a week, and she excelled because of her height (approximately 5 feet, 101 ⁄2 inches) and her natural athletic ability. When she dropped out of school, Gibson worked odds jobs or lived on an allowance given by some “ladies from the Welfare Department.” Eschewing dresses and skirts for slacks, she termed herself “the wildest tomboy you ever saw” who “didn’t like people telling me what to do.”4 Gibson’s toughness was shaped by both her neighborhood and her family. She described Harlem as a “mean place to grow up in,” a place where a kid had to prove herself...