An August 28, 1950, something historic happened in “white sport”, as tennis was called for a long time. On the grounds of the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, where the US Open was held for many years until the move to New York, people jostled to get to the remote 14th and marvel. The audience was not attracted by the Briton Barbara Knapp, who looked and played like other women of the time, but the exotic from the other side.
Her name was Althea Gibson, she was 23 years old and brisk. But the sensation was her skin color. Gibson was the first black who was not only allowed to play in tournaments among their peers, but also among the well-off on the big stage. “The tall black woman with spider-like arms and legs and an unfathomable smile”, as Bruce Schoenfeld writes in his biography “Althea Gibson”, which has just been published in German, made it out of Harlem. And the white sport had suddenly become more diverse.
What was an attraction in the United States 70 years ago at the time of racial segregation is everyday life today. The winners of the most important tennis tournaments of the past twenty years are more diverse than ever: First the Williams sisters Serena and Venus dominated, then Sloane Stephens, Li Na, Ashleigh Barty, Naomi Osaka and most recently Emma Raducanu triumphs in the Grand Slam -Competitions celebrated. So young women with an Afro-American or Asian background or, like the Australian Barty, with Aboriginal roots.
Vagabond as a pioneer
Althea Gibson, born in 1927 and died in 2003, is considered a pioneer. She said of herself: “I am the greatest.” But when it came down to it on the pitch, the American fell short of expectations for years. She played inconsistently, and strokes of profit were followed by careless mistakes. She was always improvising: “She was a vagabond, carried her life around with her in a suitcase and was constantly aware that the carousel on which she was driving could stop at any time,” writes Schoenfeld.
The carousel only really got going in the second half of the 1950s. In Paris in 1956, Althea Gibson was the first black woman to win a Grand Slam title, and also triumphed in Roland Garros with the British Angela Buxton in doubles and then in Wimbledon. In 1957 and 1958 she continued to write history, winning the individual titles at Wimbledon and at the US Open. When she ended her career in 1958, she had won eleven Grand Slam titles.
Great honor: Althea Gibson shakes hands with Queen Elizabeth II after winning Wimbledon.
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Build: AP
Serena Williams, who more than 40 years later became the second black woman to win a grand tournament, always praises Gibson as “the most important pioneer”: “She was black, looked like me and opened many doors.” But unlike Arthur Ashe refused Gibson spent her life as a role model and supporter of the civil rights movement. And that although she was often not allowed to use the same accommodations, restaurants and toilets as her competitors at tournaments. “I’m just another tennis player, not a black tennis player,” she said.
The Serena Williams of her time
Whatever she was: proud, stubborn and, in the eyes of many, arrogant. She intimidated opponents with her serve-and-volley game as well as with a demeanor that is not far from that of Serena Williams. When tennis wasn’t going well, Althea Gibson tried her hand at jazz and played golf professionally. After the end of her sports career, forgotten for years, ill and practically impoverished, a call for donations from her former twin partner Buxton saved her life. Almost half of the book, sold by the publisher as a Gibson biography, is about the Englishwoman who, as a Jew, was also an outsider in tennis.
What makes Schoenfeld’s book worth reading are the descriptions from the wild fifties in tennis: “The tournament series was like a wandering pajama party, with tennis matches during the day and gala parties in the evening. The women played poker, bridge and rummy together and dueled each other on the pitch the next day. ”As soon as they found a man to marry, they stopped the fun.
As dazzling as the portraits and anecdotes, scattered over 400 pages, are – when you read it, your head is buzzing with all the new names. The book’s great weakness, however, is that it fell out of time. At best, Schoenfeld treats questions of race and gender superficially, the excitement and progress of recent years around Black Lives Matter and the diversity debates are completely absent. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, as the American original appeared in 2004. At that time America had no black President Barack Obama and Althea Gibson had no bronze statue on the grounds of the US Open. The German edition is too late.
Bruce Schoenfeld: Althea Gibson. Against all odds. The story of a forgotten heroine. HarperCollins publishing group, 416 pages, 22 euros.
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