Althea Gibson

Also known as Althea Neale Gibson

American tennis player (1927-2003)

OverviewAI-generated

Althea Gibson was an African American tennis player, golfer, actor, and autobiographer from the United States. Born on August 25, 1927, in Silver, South Carolina, she competed in tennis and golf. Her competitive career concluded in 1958. Gibson was a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

She won the women's singles titles at the 1956 French Championships, the 1957 Wimbledon Championships, and the 1957 and 1958 U.S. National Championships. Gibson received the Associated Press Athlete of the Year award and was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame and the National Women's Hall of Fame. She also authored works including *So Much to Live For* and *I Always Wanted to Be Somebody*.

Gibson died on September 28, 2003, in East Orange due to respiratory failure.

Synthesized by Vinony from 47 facts across 9 sources: Wikidata, Crossref, Open Library, MusicBrainz, Last.fm, TMDb, Wikiquote, Thesportsdb, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Born: 1927
Works: 4

Top works

So Much to Live For
I Always Wanted to Be Somebody
I Always Wanted to Be Somebody
So much to live for
I always wanted to be somebody

via Open Library + Wikidata

Film & TV

Acting · Silver, South Carolina, USA

Known for

Althea — Althea Gibson2014
The Journey of the African-American Athlete — Self (archive footage)1996
The Player — Althea Gibson (uncredited)1992
The Mike Douglas Show — Self1961
The Horse Soldiers — Lukey1959
What's My Line? — Self - Mystery Guest1950
The Ed Sullivan Show — Self1948

via TMDB

Music · MusicBrainz

Type: Person
Gender: Female
Origin: United States
Active from: 1927
Active to: 2003

americancountrynashville soundsinger-songwriter

Discogs Stream

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners: 38
Total plays: 151

Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

CLUSTAL W: improving the sensitivity of progressive multiple sequence alignment through sequence weighting, position-specific gap penalties and weight matrix choice
· 1994 · cited 52,092x
Clustal W and Clustal X version 2.0
· 2007 · cited 24,982x
Reproducible, interactive, scalable and extensible microbiome data science using QIIME 2
· 2019 · cited 20,879x
Fast, scalable generation of high‐quality protein multiple sequence alignments using Clustal Omega
· 2011 · cited 14,497x
Enzymatic assembly of DNA molecules up to several hundred kilobases
· 2009 · cited 10,012x

via Crossref · CC0

Quotes

“Being the Queen of Tennis is all well and good, but you can't eat a crown. Nor can you send the Internal Revenue Service a throne clipped to their tax forms...I reign over an empty bank account, and I'm not going to fill it by playing amateur tennis.”
“Suddenly it dawned on me that my triumphs had not destroyed the racial barriers once and for all, as I had—perhaps naively—hoped. Or if I did destroy them, they had been erected behind me again.”
“People thought I was ruthless, which I was. I didn't give a darn who was on the other side of the net. I'd knock you down if you got in my way.”
“I was lean, mean, and hungry.”
“It takes a lot to become a champion. You need to be a killer. If you can't look over that net and see Public Enemy Number One, then you aren't going to be a champ."”

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Key facts

Country sports: United States
Born: ( 1927-08-25 ) August 25, 1927 , Clarendon County, South Carolina , U.S.
Died: September 28, 2003 (2003-09-28) (aged 76), East Orange, New Jersey , U.S.
Height: 5 ft 11 in (1.80 m)
Plays: Right-handed
Int tennis hof: 1971 ( member page )
Highest ranking: No. 1 (1957)
Australian open: F ( 1957 )
French open: W ( 1956 )
Wimbledon: W ( 1957 , 1958 )
Us open: W ( 1957 , 1958 )

via Wikipedia infobox

Sports profile

Sport: Tennis
Team: _Retired Tennis
Position: Tennis Player
Nationality: United States

via TheSportsDB

~27 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Althea Neale Gibson (August 25, 1927 – September 28, 2003) 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 French Open). The following year she won both Wimbledon and the US Nationals (precursor of the US Open), then won both again in 1958 and was voted Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press in both years. In all, she won 11 Grand Slam titles: five singles titles, five doubles titles, and one mixed doubles title. "She is one of the greatest players who ever lived," said Bob Ryland, a tennis contemporary and former coach of Venus and Serena Williams. "Martina [Navratilova] couldn't touch her. I think she'd beat the Williams sisters." Gibson was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1971 and the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame in 1980. In the early 1960s, she also became the first Black player to compete in the Ladies Professional Golf Association.

At a time when racism and prejudice were widespread in sports and in society, Gibson was often compared to Jackie Robinson. "Her road to success was a challenging one," said Billie Jean King "but I never saw her back down." "To anyone, she was an inspiration, because of what she was able to do at a time when it was enormously difficult to play tennis at all if you were Black." said former New York City Mayor David Dinkins. "I am honored to have followed in such great footsteps," wrote Venus Williams. "Her accomplishments set the stage for my success, and through players like myself and Serena and many others to come, her legacy will live on."

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Althea Gibson” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Gallery (7)

Available in 45 languages

Show 26 more

via Wikidata sitelinks · CC0

Althea Gibson