http://www.nydailynews.com/09-29-2003/sports/more_sports/story/121614p-109366c.html
A champion unmatched
by Mike Lupica
Althea first to ace major challenge
She came off the streets of Harlem in the '30s and '40s with an old wooden tennis racket somebody gave her when she was 14 and her dreams and hardly anything else of value. The world threw it all at Althea Gibson. She was black and a woman and poor. She finally ran from her father, all the way to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. She slept in the subways sometimes, to avoid school. Once she had that racket, school no longer interested her. She dreamed of being a tennis star, even though no black tennis player, man or woman, had ever played in our national championships, or at Wimbledon.
People say now she was the first Venus Williams, the first Serena. Althea Gibson was her sport's Jackie Robinson, exactly like him in this way: She believed if you had greatness in you, nobody could hold you back.
As a kid, she would even sneak into the Apollo Theater, and imagine herself on that stage. Venus and Serena Williams came out of a hard childhood themselves. At least they had a family. Althea Gibson had herself, and a talent for tennis that only a handful of people, of any color, has ever had.
Most people have this idea that Arthur Ashe was the first tennis champion of color. It was Gibson, out of the Harlem Cosmopolitan Tennis Club and the Harlem River Tennis Courts, out of anyplace uptown where she could find a place to hit a ball.
She died yesterday at the age of 76, poor and mostly forgotten in an East Orange, N.J., hospital. It had been years since anybody had seen her in public. She was too proud to let the world see her sick, finally crippled. She was too proud to ask for handouts. She had been Althea Gibson once, after all.
She wanted the ones who could remember her to remember her as she was. So she did not come to the stadium named after Ashe — one that could just as easily be called Gibson-Ashe Stadium at the U.S. Open — to watch Venus and Serena play there.
She would not let anybody stop her, on her way to having the world know her name. Nobody could talk to her later, when she retreated from the world. She was who she was.
David Dinkins, the ex-mayor of New York, was her friend. Occasionally he would call her on my behalf, ask if she was ready to talk about a historic tennis life, one that did not really begin until three years after Jackie Robinson played his first game for the Dodgers.
"She would know right away," Dinkins said. "She'd say, 'You're calling for somebody, aren't you?' Snapping at me, really. I'd admit I was. She'd say, 'I don't want to talk to anybody.'"
Dinkins and Gibson were born the same year, 1927, Dinkins in New Jersey, Gibson in South Carolina. Dinkins used to call her every year on her birthday, in August. Back in 1999, before Serena Williams won the Open and became the first black woman since Gibson to win a major championship, Dinkins called and greeted her the way he always did — "Hey, champ" — and talked to her that day about the Williams sisters.
"I told her that these women command our attention the way she once did," Dinkins said. "She said to stop comparing people, let them stand on their own."
She always did. She had help along the way. Sugar Ray Robinson helped pay some of her expenses after she won her first tournament, the New York State tournament for black girls, at the age of 15. And it was another American tennis champion, Alice Marble, who wrote about Althea Gibson in the magazine, American Lawn Tennis, in 1950, told how Gibson was being kept away from the important tournaments and important theaters of her sport, because of race.
Gibson played at Forest Hills that year, Wimbledon the next. She won the French Open in 1956, Forest Hills and Wimbledon in 1957, both Forest Hills and Wimbledon again in '58.
When she presented her Wimbledon trophies to the Smithsonian in 1988, she said, "Who could have imagined? Who could have thought?"
She imagined all manner of adventures for herself, because even though she had been born black, this was still America. She did believe she had the voice for the Apollo. She tried women's professional golf, and bowling, and even toured briefly with the Harlem Globetrotters. In her late 40s, before her body began to betray her, she was New Jersey's commissioner of athletics. She could do everything except make the kind of money that sports champions like Venus and Serena now make.
"Can you even imagine the kind of money she would make today?" Dinkins said to me once. "What she could have made if she had even been born 10 years later than she was?"
If Althea Gibson is not the best female athlete this country has ever produced, she is in the conversation. And, more than that, Gibson was first. Forty years before the Williams sisters began to win majors in tennis, 20years before Ashe won Wimbledon, she was what David Dinkins called her. She was the champ, from all the way uptown. Hers was a remarkable American life, one whose best, brightest moments came much too late, did not last nearly long enough, were too quickly forgotten, by us all.
A champion unmatched
by Mike Lupica
Althea first to ace major challenge
She came off the streets of Harlem in the '30s and '40s with an old wooden tennis racket somebody gave her when she was 14 and her dreams and hardly anything else of value. The world threw it all at Althea Gibson. She was black and a woman and poor. She finally ran from her father, all the way to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. She slept in the subways sometimes, to avoid school. Once she had that racket, school no longer interested her. She dreamed of being a tennis star, even though no black tennis player, man or woman, had ever played in our national championships, or at Wimbledon.
People say now she was the first Venus Williams, the first Serena. Althea Gibson was her sport's Jackie Robinson, exactly like him in this way: She believed if you had greatness in you, nobody could hold you back.
As a kid, she would even sneak into the Apollo Theater, and imagine herself on that stage. Venus and Serena Williams came out of a hard childhood themselves. At least they had a family. Althea Gibson had herself, and a talent for tennis that only a handful of people, of any color, has ever had.
Most people have this idea that Arthur Ashe was the first tennis champion of color. It was Gibson, out of the Harlem Cosmopolitan Tennis Club and the Harlem River Tennis Courts, out of anyplace uptown where she could find a place to hit a ball.
She died yesterday at the age of 76, poor and mostly forgotten in an East Orange, N.J., hospital. It had been years since anybody had seen her in public. She was too proud to let the world see her sick, finally crippled. She was too proud to ask for handouts. She had been Althea Gibson once, after all.
She wanted the ones who could remember her to remember her as she was. So she did not come to the stadium named after Ashe — one that could just as easily be called Gibson-Ashe Stadium at the U.S. Open — to watch Venus and Serena play there.
She would not let anybody stop her, on her way to having the world know her name. Nobody could talk to her later, when she retreated from the world. She was who she was.
David Dinkins, the ex-mayor of New York, was her friend. Occasionally he would call her on my behalf, ask if she was ready to talk about a historic tennis life, one that did not really begin until three years after Jackie Robinson played his first game for the Dodgers.
"She would know right away," Dinkins said. "She'd say, 'You're calling for somebody, aren't you?' Snapping at me, really. I'd admit I was. She'd say, 'I don't want to talk to anybody.'"
Dinkins and Gibson were born the same year, 1927, Dinkins in New Jersey, Gibson in South Carolina. Dinkins used to call her every year on her birthday, in August. Back in 1999, before Serena Williams won the Open and became the first black woman since Gibson to win a major championship, Dinkins called and greeted her the way he always did — "Hey, champ" — and talked to her that day about the Williams sisters.
"I told her that these women command our attention the way she once did," Dinkins said. "She said to stop comparing people, let them stand on their own."
She always did. She had help along the way. Sugar Ray Robinson helped pay some of her expenses after she won her first tournament, the New York State tournament for black girls, at the age of 15. And it was another American tennis champion, Alice Marble, who wrote about Althea Gibson in the magazine, American Lawn Tennis, in 1950, told how Gibson was being kept away from the important tournaments and important theaters of her sport, because of race.
Gibson played at Forest Hills that year, Wimbledon the next. She won the French Open in 1956, Forest Hills and Wimbledon in 1957, both Forest Hills and Wimbledon again in '58.
When she presented her Wimbledon trophies to the Smithsonian in 1988, she said, "Who could have imagined? Who could have thought?"
She imagined all manner of adventures for herself, because even though she had been born black, this was still America. She did believe she had the voice for the Apollo. She tried women's professional golf, and bowling, and even toured briefly with the Harlem Globetrotters. In her late 40s, before her body began to betray her, she was New Jersey's commissioner of athletics. She could do everything except make the kind of money that sports champions like Venus and Serena now make.
"Can you even imagine the kind of money she would make today?" Dinkins said to me once. "What she could have made if she had even been born 10 years later than she was?"
If Althea Gibson is not the best female athlete this country has ever produced, she is in the conversation. And, more than that, Gibson was first. Forty years before the Williams sisters began to win majors in tennis, 20years before Ashe won Wimbledon, she was what David Dinkins called her. She was the champ, from all the way uptown. Hers was a remarkable American life, one whose best, brightest moments came much too late, did not last nearly long enough, were too quickly forgotten, by us all.
