* A new kind of Gibson girl * Fiarlem comet blazes a trail The original Gibson Girl shocked the fuddy-duddies of | her day by appearing in bloomers. Since then the world | has moved, girls have won,athletic emancipation and taken their rightful place in the sports firmament. One of these | young female athletes who had to overcome a special type | of discrimination is Althea Gibson, brilliant young Negro _tennis star, who performed at Wimbledon last week. Al- | though she failed to reach the finals, being defeated by | another American, Shirley Fry, her appearance in the ‘tournament was in itself an historic occasion, somewhat | similar to Jackie Robinson’s first time on the diamond with | court comet. nd therin lies the story. Althea made her big time ten- is debut in 1950, at the age of 22, when the growing pressures equal opportunities in ports began to catch up to is most ritzy and blue flooded of competitive sports nd her application for the laional championships at orest Hills was accepted. But in the world of tennis, 2 is late in the day to join the ig swim. Althea was thrown to competition with women ho had been carefully tutored om the early teens and rought up through the suc- essive stages of tournament ompetition, ironing out faults nd gaining the invaluable ex- erience of playing steadily gainst players as good or bet- er than themselves. _ There is no substitute for is experience in tennis. Not you are thinking in terms of vinning championships. Althea did surprisingly well, ut was too inconsistent and Ncertain to go all the way. ast season she was rated No. nationally among’ U.S. ’ Id Opsal shot a d place at Calgary. _the Brooklyn Dodgers. New York DAILY WORKER sports _ editor Lester Rodney tells the inside story of this Negro By LESTER RODNEY Althea Gibson walked out>onto the velvet green courts at Wimbledon, England two weeks ago seeking the women’s cham- Pionship of the world’s most famed and _ tradition-encrusted fennis tournament. The tall stylist from Harlem thus became e second Negro to play at Wimbledon. The first was Althea ibson too — in 1951, when she was eliminated in the third ‘ound. She failed to reach the finals this year, but demonstrated at. Althea Gibson of 1956 is a different tennis player entirely, women and going on 28 was thought of as a very good play- er who had found her approxi- mate niche. Then last Decem- ber she began her. historic tour of Asia and Europe, and the picture changed—dramatically. Althea was beaten in one early tournament, by Angela Mortimer of England, in India, but soon afterward began a series of unprecedented vic- tories in tournament after tournament. She won the All- India championship before en- thusiastic crowds at New Delhi, she won the Asian champion ship at Calcutta, she won at Rangoon and Lahore and Bang- kok, the indoor championship at Cologne in Germany, swept - triumphantly through Italy with victories at Palermo, Genoa, Florence and Rome, won at Lyons and Cannes in France and took the French championship at Paris, turning the tables on Miss Mortimer. _ Then it was England and the pre-Wimbledon tourneys, and victories for the first time over such Americans as Shirley Fry, Earl Caldwell (left) and Frank Opsel (right), both from Vancouver, will represent Canada in the. Olympic trap- hooting event. In recent Olympic trials at Calgary the 27-year- azzling 100 straight to tie with Cafdwell for t place with a 485. At the Helsinki Olympics in 1952 Canada’s nly gold medal was won by George Genereux, who finished in ) Althea Gibson is the Jackie Robinson of the tennis courts. rated No. 1 with the retire- ment of Maureen Connolly, and L.ouise Brough, last year’s Wimbledon champion. What: has happened?, It seems evident that the always explosive potential of this talented athlete has jelled with the steady, successive diet of high level tournament play. She has, at least partly, made up for the jimcrow-imposed gap-in her early tennis years by getting “a steady diet” of competitive tourney experience ali at once. With the growing consistency and knowdedge of her weapons has come the full unleashing of her high voltage, smashing type of game, and that great intangible of sports, confidence and true _ poise, based not on some free-wheel- ing inner calm as part of tem- perament, but on knowledge of gained, tempered and control- led abilities, * * x ‘ Althea was the oldest of five children int the family of a garage mechanic. Born in South Carolina, she came to the teeming streets of Harlem as a little girl and there she grew up, tall, lean and speedy. From 1938 to 1942 she was the “paddle tennis” champion of the Police Athletic League tourneys in Harlem. Paddle tennis is not tennis but it is played across a net with a ball and a small wooden racquet and young Althea was out- standing enough to catch the eye. She got her first tennis racguet as a gift of band leader Buddy Walker. Harlem had one tennis club, the Cosmopolitan Club. The Gibson family could not afford the .$7 membership fee, nor certainly the expenses of out- fitting, traveling, etc., involved in playing in tourneys. Boxing champion Ray Ro- ‘binson helped make it possi- -ble for Althea to get around. Cosmopolitan tennis coach Fred Johnson coached her. At this. time she was learning to be a seamstress at Yorkville Trade School. ‘ Perennial champion of the Negro tennis world, and grow- ingly successful in the limited number of public tourneys she could enter, Althea ap- plied for the nationals at For- est Hills in” 1950. No Negro, man or woman, had ever swung ° a raquet within those sacro- sanct. walls before and there was a flutter of excitement and consternation in ‘the ten- nis world.’ It is worth recalling that as Miss Gibson’s entry stood in the balance, the former women’s champion, Alice Marble, spoke up publicly, mincing no words on what was at stake. It was really something, that first day Miss Gibson played at Forest Hills, finally “per- mitted” to compete in the na- tional championships. The little sign on out-of-the- way Court 14 said in tiny let- ters, Miss Baraba Knapp vs. Miss Althea Gibson. There were no seats .at this court, just a rail along the walk- away to lean on. The big sta- dium centre court and the wood grandstand court were in one direction, with bigger matches; at the other end was the “clubhouse court”? where play can be watched by mem- bers sitting under awnings around tables sipping cool drinks, Ginger Rogers, the actress, was there this day, playing in-the mixed doubles, creating quite a flutter. Some __ sportswriters and photographers, from the Negro \ July 13, 1956 —PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 15 press mostly, chatted while waiting, and I remember we all agreed that in many ways this was tougher for Althea than Jackie Robinson’s break into baseball three years earl- ier. This game was more tra- ditionally patrician and lily- white and then, it is always (tougher for a woman. Miss Knapp, an Englishwo- man of some tourney experi- ence, came in with Althea and in surprise: ‘Such a dither!” Althea, tall and sort of clum- sily graceful, an odd com- bination of fine athletic re- flexes and an unmistakable nervousness, lost the first game on the other’s service, and then lost the first two points of her own serve. There was a little murmur as the referee intoned “Love —thirty.” Was she going to make a totally wretched show- ing? She was hitting softly and gingerly in a tentative, defensive way, obviously not her natural game. She knew it too. she took a deep breath, began to hit out, and all at once looked like an athlete intent on her game and oblivious fo all else. Following her hard serve to the net, she volleyed with dar- ing, loosened up and won the match 6-2, 6-2, showing both her lack of experience and her great potential. There was a cordial embrace from Miss Knapp, a jumping, excited group of college girls from Wilberforce, where the Negro national championships are held and Miss Gibson is well_ known,_ some_ flashing camera bulbs and she made her way to the dressing room. Stopped for more pictures, I heard her exhale and murmur _“Oh, brother!” her only vocal reaction to the pressures of the day: The next day the draw threw her into action, against the seasoned, high ranking contender, Louise Brough. Al- thea lost the first set 6-1, ral- lied to win the second 6-3. In the rubber set Brough took ap- parent command 3-0 and 4-1 and then Gibson came “on. It was 7-6 her favor, one game away from an incredible up- sel, she was playing great ten- nis and was clearly less tired than Brough, when the rains _came. Match put off till to- mcrrow. The next day, her compo- sure regained, Brough ran off three straight games against the again slow starting and un- even rookie, and won the match. Oh yes, for those who im- pute such importance -to “nsy- chology” in sports, the Misses Gibson and Brough met again this month in the finals of the All England tournament. Once again Brough won the first set, but this time Gibson won the second AND the third, to beat her old foe for the first_ time.