by This February, Black History Month, USA TODAY Sports is publishing the series “28 Black Stories in 28 Days”. We examine the issues, challenges, and opportunities black athletes and sports officials continue to face in the wake of the country’s reckoning on race following the 2020 murder of George Floyd. This is the third part in the series.
Traci Green, a women’s tennis coach at Harvard University, remembers when her father took her to see Zina Garrison play at the US Open.
Garrison was the first black woman to reach the final of a Grand Slam tournament in the modern tennis era. “I was about 10 years old and had never seen a professional or black professional match before up close. A few years later, I met Zina and Katrina Adams and hit a few balls with them,” said Green. “Had I not seen Zina, Lori (McNeil), Katrina and Chanda (Rubin) often and up close, I don’t think I would have fully believed that there was room for me in tennis and that I truly belonged. Representativeness matters.”
Green’s journey from Philadelphia dreamer to one of the winningest coaches in Harvard women’s tennis history reflects the kind of inspiration that catapulted many black women into competitive tennis. Tennis superstars of today Cori “Coco” Gauff and Naomi Osaka found themselves in Serena Williams. Madison Keys was 4 years old when she saw Venus Williams’ dress on television and decided she wanted to play tennis too.
Indeed, Black women in tennis have nurtured and encouraged each other for over 100 years. The lineage of black women in sports stretches from pioneers in the early 1900s to world-renowned female players of the 21st century such as Gauff, Osaka, Keys and Sloane Stephens.
“Black tennis in America has always been strong and competitive at a high level,” said Adams, a former professional player and the first African-American president of the Tennis Association of the United States, the sport’s national governing body. “We just didn’t get the opportunity to play against everyone else who didn’t look like us.”
pioneers
Less than 50 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, blacks who had accumulated any semblance of wealth sought to flaunt their brand of high society. Tennis provided a lot of flexibility.
During the Great Migration, millions of black people moved from the south. Many came to Chicago, bolstering its African-American middle class and creating an upper class. Among the most notable was Mary Ann “Mother” Seames, a savvy businesswoman considered the mother of black tennis in Chicago.
Seames supposedly started playing tennis in 1906. She hosted tournaments and soirées on grass tennis courts on her property. In 1912, she led a small group that formed the Chicago Prairie Tennis Club.
In 1916, pioneer Lucy Diggs Slowe co-founded the American Tennis Association, America’s oldest black sports organization.
Slowe was as fearless in the classroom as she was on the tennis court. In 1904, she became the first female graduate of the Baltimore Colored School and the first from the school to obtain a scholarship to Howard University in Washington, DC. In 1917, Slowe won the first ATA National Championship.
She was also a founding member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority and the first Dean of Women at Howard University. She would later help organize the National Council of Black Women and become its secretary.
Slowe and others formed the ATA to fight the National Lawn Tennis Association of the United States, now the USTA, which banned black and brown players.
As for the ATA, “it was started by doctors, lawyers, and business people, the upper tier of the black community,” said Roxanne Aaron, president of the ATA. to 1939 Time The magazine article emphasized the same point, noting that the ATA governed over “150 black clubs and 25,000 players, but also gave upper-class black doctors, lawyers, teachers, and preachers a chance to shine socially.”
early royalty
Tennis great Arthur Ashe once said The New York Times newspaper that Ora Washington may have been the greatest female athlete of all time. Washington dominated in both tennis and basketball, earning her the title “Queen of Two Courts”.
“Rainha Ora” once scored 38 points in a game in an era when many women’s basketball teams finished a game with 35 total points.
Washington was 1.70 meters tall but lacked proper tennis technique, holding his racket halfway down the shaft. However, she was strong, agile and fast. Her footwork, honed on the basketball court, was unparalleled and allowed her to chase down balls and score points.
Washington was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009 and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018.
She won eight ATA national women’s singles titles between 1929 and 1937. She wanted to compete against Helen Wills Moody, winner of 19 Grand Slam singles titles and the woman the white tennis world considered the best. However, Moody refused to play her.
While Washington ruled in singles, two sisters from Washington, DC, Romania and Margaret Peters, won in doubles. Nicknamed “Pete and Repeat”, the Peters sisters won 14 ATA doubles titles in 15 years, starting in the late 1930s.
They were bona fide sports celebrities. Blacks and whites traveled to see them play. During World War II, famous actor, dancer and tennis fan Gene Kelly was stationed at a naval base in Washington and stopped to watch the sisters play, even joining them in a game. Younger sister Roumania also won ATA singles titles in 1944 and 1946, defeating the legendary Althea Gibson for the 1946 championship.
Washington and the Peters sisters never got the chance to test their mettle against their white peers.
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Gibson, however, had that opportunity.
ATA board members approached the National Lawn Tennis Association about obtaining a wild card tournament berth for Gibson.
“There have always been other great players, even in football or baseball or basketball. But they are not the right person for the moment,” said Aaron. “When you look at Jackie Robinson, there were a lot of better black players, but he had the personality to pull through the odds.”
White fans booed Gibson, sometimes even throwing things at her. “She left with her head held high,” Aaron said.
Gibson won five Grand Slam singles titles from 1956 to 1958, when he was in his 30s. “Who knows how many titles she would have if she could compete (before),” says Adams.
game changes
The “open era” of tennis began in 1968, when professionals were allowed to compete in Grand Slams. Despite Gibson’s earlier successes, however, the Open era seemed closed to black women until 1981, when Cleveland native Leslie Allen won the Avon Championships. That tournament was the forerunner of today’s WTA Finals, for the top players in the Women’s Tennis Association.
“As a WTA rookie, I was part of a training cohort with Althea at the Sportsmen’s Tennis Club in Boston,” Allen told WTA news site WTXtennis.com in 2021. “Althea asked each of us – Zina Garrison, Andrea Buchanan, Kim Sands and I – about our individual goals in tennis, and I said, ‘Being in the main draw of WTA Tour events.’”
She recalled that Gibson looked at her and said, “With your wingspan, you need to think about winning WTA tournaments.”
Allen described his 1981 win as “similar to going viral today”.
“My win was exactly what the WTA needed to raise awareness,” Allen told WTXtennis.com.
Joining Allen on the tour were childhood friends Garrison and McNeil, who learned to play tennis in a public park in Houston.
In 1987, McNeil reached the quarterfinals of the Australian Open and the semifinals of Wimbledon. A few years later Rubin and Adams joined them on tour. “As soon as I went on tour, Zina Garrison took me under her wing,” says Adams.
The camaraderie came naturally. “That’s just what you have in common, that you gravitate towards those you’re comfortable with,” Adams said. Among current players, “Sloane (Stephens) and Madison (Keys) are best friends. In this sport, you are rising together in juniors. You know each other from an early age. … This friendship already exists.
In 1990, Garrison reached the final at Wimbledon, the first black woman to reach a Grand Slam final since Gibson.
McNeil reached the semifinals at Wimbledon in 1994.
Five years later, Serena Williams won the US Open, the first of her record 23 Grand Slam titles. Venus Williams won the tournament the next two years, en route to seven Grand Slam singles titles, and the face of the sport was forever changed.
