A compelling narrative of the trials and triumphs of tennis champion Althea Gibson, a key figure in the integration of American sports and, for a time, one of the most famous women in the world. From her start playing paddle tennis on the streets of Harlem as a young teenager to her eleven Grand Slam tennis wins to her professional golf career, Althea Gibson became the most famous black sportswoman of the mid-twentieth century. In her unprecedented athletic career, she was the first African American to win titles at the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open. In this comprehensive biography, Ashley Brown narrates the public career and private struggles of Althea Gibson (1927-2003). Based on extensive archival work and oral histories, Serving Herself sets Gibson's life and choices against the backdrop of the Great Migration, Jim Crow racism, the integration of American sports, the civil rights movement, the Cold War, and second wave feminism. Throughout her life Gibson continuously negotiated the expectations of her supporters and adversaries, including her patrons in the black-led American Tennis Association, the white-led United States Lawn Tennis Association, and the media, particularly the Black press and community's expectations that she selflessly serve as a representative of her race. An incredibly talented, ultra-competitive, and not always likeable athlete, Gibson wanted to be treated as an individual first and foremost, not as a member of a specific race or gender. She was reluctant to speak openly about the indignities and prejudices she navigated as an African American woman, though she faced numerous institutional and societal barriers in achieving her goals. She frequently bucked conventional norms of femininity and put her career ahead of romantic relationships, making her personal life the subject of constant scrutiny and rumors. Despite her major wins and international recognition, including a ticker tape parade in New York City and the covers of Sports Illustrated and Time, Gibson endeavored to find commercial sponsorship and permanent economic stability. Committed to self-sufficiency, she pivoted from the elite amateur tennis circuit to State Department-sponsored goodwill tours, attempts to find success as a singer and Hollywood actress, the professional golf circuit, a tour with the Harlem Globetrotters and her own professional tennis tour, coaching, teaching children at tennis clinics, and a stint as New Jersey Athletics Commissioner. As she struggled to support herself in old age, she was left with disappointment, recounting her past achievements decades before female tennis players were able to garner substantial earnings. A compelling life and times portrait, Serving Herself offers a revealing look at the rise and fall of a fiercely independent trailblazer who satisfied her own needs and simultaneously set a pathbreaking course for Black athletes.
Ashley Brown is Assistant Professor and the Allan H. Selig Chair in the History of Sport and Society at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is an expert on sport history, women's history, and African American history.
Title: Serving Herself: The Life and Times of Althea Gibson
Author: Brown, Ashley
ISBN: 9780197551752
Binding:
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
Publication Date: 2023-02-07
Number of Pages: 544
Weight: 1.1243 kg
Ashley Brown's riveting and truly stunning biography of Althea Gibson fills a gaping hole in the historical literature on the experiences and contributions of African American athletes. Brown's comprehensive and insightful account of Gibson's extraordinary odyssey-a life filled with both triumph and disappointment, ranging from the streets of Harlem to the hallowed tennis courts of Wimbledon and Forest Hills-offers an unblinking look at the challenges that racial and gender discrimination posed for even the most talented of African American women. * Raymond Arsenault, author of Arthur Ashe: A Life *
Ashley Brown's critical feminist biography of Althea Gibson places her squarely-and queerly-at the center of mid-twentieth century American history. Thanks to a perfect match between subject and biographer, Althea Gibson will finally get the recognition and respect she craved and so often lacked during her lifetime. * Susan Ware, author of Game, Set, Match: Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women's Sports *
Tennis is a sport that imposes the rigid boundary of its rectangular court. The tennis champion Althea Gibson, however, devoted her life on and off the court to variously defying, finessing, transgressing, and transcending period norms of race, class, and gender. In this incisive, engaging biography, Ashley Brown both restores Gibson to her place in the athletic pantheon and unflinchingly illustrates the price she paid. * Samuel G. Freedman, author of Breaking the Line: The Season in Black College Football That Transformed the Sport and Changed the Course of Civil Rights *
What does it mean to be an individual when everyone else insists that you are foremost a representative of a category? Althea Gibson, one of the most important sports figures of the twentieth century, constantly juggled the challenges of breaking barriers in the elite worlds of tennis and golf and wanting to compete at the highest levels without the baggage that 'the first Black' and/or 'the first woman' routinely faced. Ashley Brown's comprehensive biography offers searing insight into the history of sports integration through the life of this scrutinized, underappreciated, and underpaid pioneer in Jim Crow America. It is crucial that we know and remember this not-so-distant history that paved the way for latter-day tennis stars like Serena Williams and Venus Williams. * Tera W. Hunter, author of Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century *