The great Althea Gibson was the big thing in Black tennis in the 1940s and 1950s, followed by Arthur Ashe in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Significantly, the ATA was instrumental in the development of the careers of each of these important players.
Althea graduated to tennis from the local street paddle ball game. Seeing her promise, the ATA began to nurture her. First, by placing her with ATA tennis teachers at the Black Cosmopolitan Club in Harlem, and then arranging for this 19-year-old street girl to finish high school by placing her in the home of an ATA supporter. After graduation, she was sent to Florida A & M University, all the while honing her tennis skills and winning ATA events.
During high school, she lived with two ATA supporting Black physicians, Hubert A. Eaton in Wilmington, North Carolina, during the school year, and R. Walter Johnson in Lynchburg, Virginia, in the summers. Althea won the ATA women’s singles title every year from 1947 to 1956. And she won the ATA mixed doubles with Dr. Johnson every year except one from 1948 to 1955.
As Althea was coming into national prominence, the ATA kept pushing for integration of the White tennis organization, the USLTA, similarly to what was happening in the post-WWII era with other sports like baseball, football, and basketball. But the USLTA was resistant.
After much pressure, including a public article arguing the case for Althea from Alice Marble, the foremost female tennis player in the years before WWII, the USLTA association relented and let Althea play in selected tournaments in 1950. With that entry, Althea went on the win 11 major tournaments, including five singles and six doubles, by 1958.
In 1957 and 1958, as she dominated women’s tennis, Gibson was ranked as the world’s number-one female tennis player. In 1957 she was given a ticker tape parade in New York City. And in 1958, she won the award as best female athlete of the year by the Associated Press.
Before the Open Era in tennis, there was no prize money at major tournaments, and direct endorsement deals were prohibited. Consequently, not having the means to support herself, Althea retired from tennis after 1958 and turned her attention to entertainment, following one of her passions–singing in nightclubs.
In 1964, at 37 years of age, Gibson joined the women’s professional golf tour, another first, where she played for several years amid racism that restricted places she could play and bathrooms she could use. She was a journeyman professional earning money, but not a lot.
Arthur Ashe came along as a junior player in the 1950s, winning six ATA national championships between 1955 and 1960. Ashe was tutored by Dr. Walter Johnson, who figuring that Ashe needed year-round coaching that he could not provide, sent him to St. Louis to live with former University of Chicago tennis team captain Richard Hudlin. With this coaching, Ashe won the ATA national singles from 1960 to 1962, six USLTA national championships in the 1960s, and the NCAA Singles and Doubles at UCLA.
Ashe went on to win two singles and two doubles titles in major tournaments. He was on the American Davis Cup team for 11 years and the U.S. Davis Cup captain for three years. His tennis career was so impactful that the stadium where the U.S. Tennis Open Championships were recently played is named after him.
During Ashe’s time playing tennis, two Black females were prominent at the collegiate level–Bonnie Logan and Anne Kroger. They were ranked first and second, respectively, on the Morgan State University men’s team that won the CIAA (Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association) men’s tennis title.
Logan was the ATA Women’s champion from 1964 to 1970 and was the first Black woman to play on the Virginia Slims Tennis Tour in 1971. One of Logan’s male teammates on the Morgan State tennis team went on to become a tennis coach at an elite tennis club in a Boston suburb. I once asked him why Logan did not make it as a regular on the professional women’s tour. He explained, “I think she could not handle the racism she encountered.”
Logan’s teammate, Anne Kroger, played four years on the Virginia Slim’s Tour in the 1970s and later was an award-winning coach of women’s tennis at Haverford College. She served in that capacity for 35 years.
Many Blacks played and many succeeded in tennis in the 20th century.
