“So we played there and we won there,”
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Althea Gibson
Althea Neale Gibson was an American tennis player and professional golfer, and one of the first Black athletes to cross the color line of international tennis. In 1956, she became the first Black player to win a Grand Slam event. The following year she won both Wimbledon and the US Nationals, then won both again in 1958 and was voted Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press in both years…
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entertainment · American tennis player (1927–2003) · tennis player · tennis coach · autobiographer · golfer · actor · professional golfer · also Althea Gibson, Althea Neale Gibson, Gibson
Born 25 August 1927 · Died 28 September 2003 · Q53550
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Althea Gibson - Tennis Champion (USIA Film)
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2026· 4 entries
“Well, you just go back to those people and tell them to come to see me themselves, please. I shall be in at two o”
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“She is one of the greatest players who ever lived. . . Martina couldn't touch her. I think she'd beat the Williams sisters.”
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Public attention spiked: 5,431 Wikipedia readers in one day, 21.8× the usual 249, with 12 article edits. Editors noted: Interceptor: Reverting non-constructive edits by Elijah kimble lover
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2025· 1 entry
As part of the final year of the American Women quarters program
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2019· 1 entry
Is only the second Flushing Meadows monument erected in honor of a champion
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2018· 1 entry
The USTA unanimously voted to erect a statue honoring Gibson at Flushing Meadows, site of the US Open
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2012· 1 entry
A bronze statue, created by sculptor Thomas Jay Warren, was dedicated at Branch Brook Park in Newark, New Jersey near the courts named in her honor where she ran clinics for young players in her later years
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2009· 1 entry
Awarded New Jersey Hall of Fame (2009).
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2005· 1 entry
Gibson's friend Bill Cosby endowed the Althea Gibson Scholarship at her alma mater, Florida A&M University
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2004· 1 entry
Earned Silver Olympic Order (2004).
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2003· 2 entries
Died 2003-09-28.
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But died on September 28 of that year due to complications from respiratory and bladder infections
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2001· 1 entry
Awarded National Women's Hall of Fame (2001).
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2000· 1 entry
And 2001, repeating Gibson's accomplishment of 1957 and 1958
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1999· 2 entries
Awarded Florida Women's Hall of Fame (1999).
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Not long after faxing a letter and list of questions to Gibson
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1995· 1 entry
Awarded Women's Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame (1995).
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1991· 2 entries
Awarded Theodore Roosevelt Award (1991).
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Gibson became the first woman to receive the Theodore Roosevelt Award, the highest honor from the National Collegiate Athletic Association; she was cited for "symbolizing the best qualities of competitive excellence and
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1988· 1 entry
Awarded Candace Award (1988).
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1987· 1 entry
At age 60, with the goal of becoming the oldest active tour player, but was unable to regain her tour card
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1983· 1 entry
Married Sydney Llewellyn, who had been her coach during her prime tennis years, but that marriage also ended in divorce
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1980· 1 entry
Gibson became one of the first six inductees into the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame, placing her on par with such pioneers as Amelia Earhart, Wilma Rudolph, Gertrude Ederle, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, and Patty
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1977· 1 entry
Gibson challenged incumbent Essex County State Senator Frank J
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1976· 2 entries
Gibson made it to the finals of the ABC television program Superstars, finishing first in basketball shooting and bowling, and runner-up in softball throwing
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Was appointed New Jersey's athletic commissioner, the first woman in the country to hold such a role, but resigned after one year due to lack of autonomy, budgetary oversight, and inadequate funding
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1972· 1 entry
Gibson began running Pepsi Cola's national mobile tennis project, which brought portable nets and other equipment to underprivileged areas in major cities
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1971· 2 entries
Awarded International Tennis Hall of Fame (1971).
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And the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame in 1980
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1968· 1 entry
With the advent of the Open Era, Gibson began entering major tennis tournaments again; but by then—in her forties—she was unable to compete effectively against younger players
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1966· 1 entry
And her best tournament finish was a tie for second after a three-way playoff at the 1970 Len Immke Buick Open
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1964· 1 entry
At the age of 37, Gibson became the first African-American woman to join the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) tour
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1960· 1 entry
Her first memoir, I Always Wanted to Be Somebody, written with sportswriter Ed Fitzgerald, was published
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1959· 3 entries
Signed to play a series of exhibition matches against Fageros before Harlem Globetrotter basketball games
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Shortly after retiring, Gibson appeared in the John Ford film, The Horse Soldiers, playing the secondary, but pivotal, role of Lukey, the housekeeper (and slave) to Miss Hannah Hunter, mistress of Greenbriar Plantation
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And Gibson performed two of its songs on The Ed Sullivan Show in May and July of that year, but sales were disappointing
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1958· 3 entries
Awarded Associated Press Athlete of the Year (1958).
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And was voted Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press in both years
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Gibson successfully defended her Wimbledon and US National singles titles, and won her third straight Wimbledon doubles championship, with a third different partner
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1957· 3 entries
Awarded Associated Press Athlete of the Year (1957).
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Played for United States Wightman Cup team (1957–1958).
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Winning the Wimbledon and US National singles titles, the Wimbledon and Australian doubles championships, and the US mixed doubles crown, and finishing second in Australian singles, US doubles, and Wimbledon mixed double
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1956· 2 entries
Gibson became the first African-American athlete to win a Grand Slam tournament when she won the French Championships singles event, defeating Briton Angela Mortimer in the final
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Became the first Black player to win a Grand Slam event (the French Open)
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1955· 1 entry
To play exhibition matches with Ham Richardson, Bob Perry, and Karol Fageros
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1952· 1 entry
Was ranked seventh nationally by the USTA
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1951· 1 entry
Gibson won her first international title, the Caribbean Championships in Jamaica, and later that year became one of the first Black competitors at Wimbledon, where she was defeated in the third round by Beverly Baker; Be
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1950· 1 entry
In response to intense lobbying by ATA officials and retired champion Alice Marble—who published a scathing open letter in the magazine American Lawn Tennis—Gibson became the first Black player to receive an invitation t
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1949· 1 entry
Became the first Black woman, and the second Black athlete (after Reginald Weir), to play in the USTA's National Indoor Championships, where she reached the quarter-finals
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1946· 1 entry
Moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, under the sponsorship of another physician and tennis activist, Hubert A
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1944· 1 entry
And 1945, and after losing in the women's final in 1946 to Roumania Peters, won her first of ten straight national ATA women's titles in 1947
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1941· 1 entry
Entered—and won—her first tournament, the American Tennis Association (ATA) New York State Championship
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1940· 1 entry
A group of Gibson's neighbors took up a collection to finance a junior membership and lessons at the Cosmopolitan Tennis Club in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem
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1930· 1 entry
The family moved to Harlem as part of the Great Migration, where Althea's three sisters and brother were born
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1927· 2 entries
In the town of Silver, in Clarendon County, South Carolina, to Daniel and Annie Bell Gibson, who worked as sharecroppers on a cotton farm
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Born 1927-08-25.
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