Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Althea Gibson: The Wimbledon Champion Who Beat The Odds

Episode Date: July 18, 2023

The world of tennis in the 1940s wasn't made for someone of Althea Gibson's background.She was the descendent of slaves, and grew up in South Carolina with the nearest tennis courts available to an African American at that time being hundreds of miles away.How did Althea Gibson go on to become the first African American to win a Grand Slam title? What challenges did she face on and off the court? And what's her legacy today?Kate is joined by Ashley Brown, author of Serving Herself: The Life and Times of Althea Gibson, to find out.This episode was edited by Stuart Beckwith, and produced by Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.If you're enjoying Betwixt please vote for us at the British Podcast Awards here. It would mean the world to us!Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Kate Lister, Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Mary Beard and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code BETWIXT. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Favorite tricksters, it's me, Kate Lister. I am here once again to talk to you about all manner of historical fabulousness. I'm so glad you're here. But before we can get on with things, you know what's coming? I have to give you the fair do's warning. So here it is.

This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults in an adulty way about a range of adult things. And you should be an adult too. I don't think this one's particularly rude, but you can bet your bottom dollar there'll be some swearing involved. And you just might not want to listen to that today, in which case this is your chance. Back out now while you still can and go and put something more wholesome into your lugholes. For the rest of you.

Let's do this. As Wimbledon is currently on, I have a tennis-themed quiz for you. Name me a tennis legend. Who are you thinking of? Who you think of? Federer, Djokovic, Murray, maybe Tim. Okay, okay. How about a female tennis legend? What have you got? The Williams sisters? Yep, yep, they're pretty high up there, right? Billy Jean King. How about the tennis player who was the first black player to win Wimbledon, the French Open and the US Open? And not only that. Then became the first African American competitor on the Pro Woman's Golf Tour. Impressive. Her name is Althea Gibson, and we are going to find out

all about her today. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect coppents of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the button. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, for beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, there is. Hello, welcome back to The Twix, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society with me, Kate Lister. It is a story that we know all too well by now. Women, who should be known by everyone for their unbelievable and amazing achievements, have just not received the historical recognition that they deserve.

That happens all the time. Althea Gibson was born in South Carolina during segregation, when black players weren't even allowed to play in white tournaments. But despite facing... incredible discrimination. She went on to become one of the first African-American athletes to compete at international tennis and became one of the most significant athletes in global sport history. But not only that, there are many other unexpected twists and turns in her story, from nearly throwing a racket at the Australian Prime Minister because she was frustrated,

to struggling with money despite being a world champion. Have we piqued your interest? Well, we are going to find out all about that and more with my amazing guest, Ashley Brown. But before we get into it, I'd like to ask you a little favour. If you are enjoying betwixt and you haven't done this already, please just take a couple of seconds to vote for us for the Listeners Choice Awards at the British Podcast Awards. If you follow the link in the show notes, it'll be over so quickly and honestly it'll make us so giddy if we win it.

I mean, we might do, right? We've got to be in with a chance. Right, back to the tennis and Althea Gibson. Let's do this. To Professor Ashley Brown, thank you for joining me but Twix the Sheets. Thanks for having me here, Kate. I'm very much looking forward to this. I am thrilled to be talking to you about this today because this is a person that I've heard the name, Althea Gibson,

but I didn't know nearly enough about this person. First, Black player to Wimbledon and the US. French open titles in the 1950s. That's right. Holy hell. I mean, that's incredible. Before we get to that, what made you want to tell this woman's story? Is it something that you'd always been aware of, or did you come to her in another way?

How did you get to know this story? I would say that I came to her gradually over time. So I've told this story many times on talks that I've given recently, but I first heard the name Althea Gibson when I was just a child. My family made a trip to the public library. We did that very often. And I found two illustrated biographies for kids. I think they were in the wrong place, but now that I think about it, I guess at that moment, it was pretty fortuitous. They were in the right place after all. And one of these little illustrated biographies, very thin, was about Althea Gibson. And it told clearly a children's version of her story.

And it had this bright pink cover and I was really taken by it. And I thought too at the same time, I'm in maybe the third grade and I'm reading about this woman who, according to the author, overcomes so much. And the story stuck with me, just the highlights, of course, the firsts that so many people are aware of. And then her name came back to me, and I'm sure millions of other people learned the name Althea Gibson when the William sisters entered the scene. So in the late 90s, early 2000s, when everyone was enamored with them, they made a point of mentioning Althea Gibson and saying this African-American woman played at these tournaments, won these events before us. And then a few years after Gibson died, she died in 2003. So a few years after this, at that time, I had taken up golf. I loved the game.

And I thought that I would like to learn more about the history of African Americans in golf. And I was just struck when I learned that she was the first black woman to play on the LPGA tour. So it's just incredible. This woman broke through barriers in tennis and then did the same thing in golf. And I just thought, you know, who is this woman? and what kind of person does this, what must she have gone through? And that was really the very beginning of this process and this project. When I first started looking into Althea Gibson,

I think I had this preconceived notion that she must have come from a sporty family. There must have been somebody there, like pushing her into this. And then I read, she was born in, I think, 1927 in South Carolina, and her parents were sharecroppers, really poor people. That just seems like such an unlikely background. Like, how did a child who was born into those circumstances, into poverty and racism and prejudice and all those things, how'd she even get going with tennis? Well, you're really tapping into something. The idea that tennis wasn't really made for someone from Althea Gibson's background, the many elements of it.

Yeah. So she was the descendant of slaves. She's from this very small community in South Carolina, this agricultural background. I came across material that suggested that, obviously, you would imagine, there were not really opportunities for African Americans to play tennis in South Carolina. According to something that I read, the nearest court that might have been available to her, might have even been maybe hundreds of miles away. Wow.

And then, of course, her family, they left the South. They were in New York by 1931, and it was that move out of the South and two New York, and to New York City, specifically to Harlem, that began her path in tennis. So she always loved sports. Love sports and games. Her parents seemed not to have discouraged her from being active and being athletic. She came to the attention of a man named Buddy Walker, who was a supervisor for something called the Police Athletic League.

That had been founded decades earlier as an avenue to encourage children in New York. to take up sports and games and basically to do recreational activities to steer them away from crime and ideas or things that were thought to be unwholesome. She excelled at paddle tennis. Buddy Walker thought that she might make a very fine tennis player because he observed her athleticism. One thing led to another, and she successfully competed for and completed what we might think of today as a tryout for what was an honorary junior membership at,

a tennis club called the Cosmopolitan Tennis Club. It was interracial in membership, but most of the members were African Americans. And that gave her a base. That gave her a place where she could be exposed to the game, be immersed in it. She had some trouble in terms of following the codes of etiquette to go along with it because she was really competitive. And Gibson throughout her life, she wasn't afraid of hurting people's feelings to get what she wanted. And so she took lessons with Fred Johnson, the head professional at the club. And he worked with her. There was a member, Rhoda Smith, who took an interest in her.

And that was really the beginning of the Althea Gibson that we come to know through serving herself, my book. Wow. What was New York Harlem like in the 1930s? We might think that there were maybe multiple Harlems. Okay. And I think about this in terms of class. So this isn't the Harlem that we think of so much in terms of the Harlem Renaissance of,

of the 1920s. Certainly there were still creative people there, but Harlem also was in the midst of some economic struggles related to the Great Depression. And when I think about multiple Harlem's or say that, I'm considering the fact that Gibson's family was quite poor. She was the oldest of five. And her father worked in a garage. She spent a lot of her time on the streets, playing games, but also her father was very hard on her. And in her first book, which is called I Always wanted to be somebody. She doesn't use what we might think of as the A word, you know, to say that he was abusive. But when you read about a parent whipping their child with basically a lash or a belt, getting into fist fights, you know, he's saying that he's teaching her to fight to defend herself,

but ultimately their fights turn into not just lessons, but fights between themselves. That's pretty difficult. So this is Gibson's life. And then just a few blocks away at the Cosmopolitan Tennis Club, she's exposed to a very different way of being. She says that the Cosmopolitan was the Ritzie Black Tennis Club in Harlem, that members of the African American elite belong there. And that they were very mindful of their manners, their ways of interacting with each other. And they had issues of class, but also race on their mind, this idea that they're representing African Americans. and so they need to present themselves as the best of the best. So she's from this very poor background

and she's having these difficulties in her life, but then she's also exposed to people who have far more wealth than her family, and that would also remain a theme throughout her life, of Gibson not having very much money, but she's rubbing elbows with people who are quite sophisticated and who have tremendous means. Even today, tennis or any kind of professional sport, is quite privileged because you have to be able to afford the equipment.

You have to be able to afford to go to a place, to be able to train, you have to have access to things. I mean, you have to have some money and access to be able to do these. And she's coming from nothing, the slums of Harlem and sharecroppers in South Carolina. How was she funding this to get access to these places? She needed help. And this is where her African-American benefactors were tremendously important. So it begins with the honorary junior membership at the Cosmopolitan.

There were people who were seeing to it that she had the membership, but also when she began to play in these junior events for the American Tennis Association, which had been founded, by the way, in 1916 because the United States Law and Tennis Association, as it was known then, did not allow African Americans to belong to its clubs or to compete in its tournaments. these folks were the African Americans were putting together the money to support her travels with them at the various junior events. And then when she's a bit older, when she is 19 and she makes this tremendous move to North Carolina to live with a doctor, his name is Hubert Eaton. She lives with his family, completes her high school education. But this is another important story in terms of class and Gibson's rise.

that it's Dr. Eaton who takes care of all of her expenses when she lives with his family between 1946 and 1949. She has another supporter, Dr. Robert Walter Johnson, who lives in Lynchburg, Virginia. He's very close friends with Dr. Eaton. They're both interested in seeing the color barrier fall in tennis. Gibson trains with him and travels with him on the tennis circuit, the black tennis circuit during the summers, and he covers her expenses when she's living with him. So this is how she makes ends meet in tennis. Before she lived with those two men and their families, she had dropped out of school by about the age of 14,

and she was just working one odd job to the next, not for extended periods of time, but those were the ways in which she supported herself until she met those two very important father figures. So she eventually gets to Wimbledon and to the French and the U.S. open, but it can't have been easy. I mean, talent is one thing. She clearly had talent, talent in spades.

She had so much of it. But the prejudices, the barriers were colossal. So what was she facing in order to represent the US? She was facing history and several other things. So in terms of history, as I mentioned, the USLTA, they were not warm to the idea of African Americans playing in their tournaments. Wow. In 1948, a dentist, his name was Reginald Weir.

he did play in an important USLTA event, which was the national indoor tournament that was held in New York. And this was major news. If you look back at newspaper accounts from the New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, some reporters and those in the African American press, they liken it to Jackie Robinson and his entry in Major League Baseball in 1947. And those writers were also shocked because here's this big moment, an African-American, playing in one of these national tennis events. And they observe that the USLTA, they're really trying to downplay the fact that Dr. Weir is in the tournament. And one of the officials says Dr. Weir is playing in this event.

We're very glad to have him. But this doesn't guarantee that he's going to play at Forest Hills, which was the U.S. Nationals tournament. This doesn't mean that he's going to play in that event, which is the real. championship in August and September. And in fact, Reginald Weir was not invited to play at the U.S. Nationals later that summer of 1948. So this adds to the sense that this is a major moment when Gibson does play at Forest Hills in 1950. She gets there in two ways. First of all, she gets there because leaders from the American Tennis Association had been doing some behind-the-scenes work,

working with members of the United States Launtonis Association who were based in New York, just to try to see whether there might be qualifiers that she could play. Also, she got a big break when American Lawn tennis and the July issue for 1950, the magazine published really what might be considered a glowing article that was focused on Gibson. That piece had been in the works for weeks, if not months, because it required interviews to talk with people to get a sense of, Gibson and just what she was all about and what she was trying to do. And then an important piece that can't be ignored is the support that she received from Alice

Marvel. Alice Marvel, who won the U.S. Nationals four times between the middle 1930s and 1940, was the last women's singles champion at Wimbledon before World War II. She had major standing in the game of tennis. And she saw Gibson play at an important event early in 1940. 1950. Gibson actually saw Marble when Marble came to the Cosmopolitan Tennis Club in 1944 to playing an exhibition match. So that alone tells us that Marble, she was a white woman from California regarded as at that time the best woman in the history of women's

tennis are certainly in the top three to five. But she wasn't afraid to interact with African Americans and she seemed to have no opposition to the integration of sports and certainly the integration of tennis. And when Marble got wind of the fact that many people in the USLTA did not want Gibson to play at Forest Hills, she thought it was a major injustice, and she came forward to say as much. So in that same issue of American-line tennis in which the long story about Gibson appeared, the magazine also published this just more dacious essay that Marvel had written in which she exposed what she thought was wrong in terms of race and tennis. And she came in support of seeing Gibson play at Forest Hills.

So there's some very positive press there. But the more I read about Althea, the thing that I think that I like about her most, apart from her, colossal talent, is the fact that this woman just doesn't seem to have given a fuck. She just seems to just, like, she says exactly what she's thinking. She does what she's saying. And she did get negative press.

And some of the negative press seems to be that she is being rude to people, that she's not being polite enough to people. And I thought that was fascinating. She said herself in 1957 after winning Wimbledon that she supposed that she was not, and these were her words, a run-of-the-mill tennis player. And that phrase sticks with me. Think about the image of the lady playing tennis at this time.

Yeah. Crisp white outfit, generally a skirt or a dress. Tennis is being associated with the very well-off for all the... the reasons that she acknowledged, right? Yeah. And Gibson, you know, she learned to wear the outfits, though she did come to prefer wearing shorts because she felt like they gave her a better mobility, better range of movement. But despite the fact that, for example, Dr. Johnson had taught all of his pupils not to challenge calls, basically to keep a stiff upper lip and just accept what the lines person or, you know, the judge said, she reached a point at which she would speak up for herself.

So there's a match in 1953 when she's playing against the famous Maureen Connoe, who was just the dynamo tennis player in 1950s. And Gibson was called for one foot fault after another, and she questioned the calls. And then according to Connolly, she felt like Gibson just began to maybe commit the footfalls on purpose to try to get under the skin of those who were watching and those she felt criticizing her. Wow. There's a moment in 1956 when she's playing in Australia. Again, the charges of footfalls just come again and again. She questions them. She grows irritated.

She takes her racket and a tennis ball, and she just lashes a tennis ball into the stands and nearly hits the Australian Prime Minister. She went full McEnroe. Before there was McEnroe, there was Althea Gibson, perhaps. Yeah, McEnroe went Althea Gibson. we should say that the right way around. Wow. And some of the press about her said that she was arrogant,

said that she was brushing them off, that she was non-cooperative with them. Why were they saying these things? What was she doing that was leading them to say that? Well, and the moment that you point to, this happens after Wimbledon, 1957. Gibson wanted to win the next big tournament, the major of the US nationals,

but that didn't happen. The tournament didn't begin until August. So she had four to five more weeks before that tournament began, and she also wanted to keep up her form and so win the events before that because people in the United States and in the British press would not just come out and say that she was the best player in women's tennis at that point. No. And so she wanted to prove them wrong as she always wanted to prove people when they were critical of her.

And so she came back to America, was the sub-exam. of that just extraordinary ticker tape parade. Then she goes to Chicago and she's there for the National Clay Court tournament. This is a major moment and I actually begin the book this way. People are asking her questions, members of the media and they're asking her about how she feels about in their minds being a representative of African Americans and comparing her with Jackie Robinson. and she wants to stay focused on practicing and playing. And she wants to stay in a particular mindset. I think athletes today talk about being in the zone,

or you think about actors and actresses and they want to be in character. I think this moment for Gibson was perhaps this desire for this extended period of being able to be in a particular mindset, a particular frame of mind, so that she could achieve her ultimate goal at Forest Hills. And she wasn't really willing to give up her time, her practice time, her rest time for these media moments. That sounds familiar. And she's doing this. Which tennis player was that?

She's doing this in 1957. And she's doing this at a time when people have very clear ideas about what they think women should do and what women should say and this idea that women should be giving, perhaps even giving, to a fault, Gibson knew that she couldn't behave in those ways and lead her career in the way that she wanted to lead it. Let's talk about Wimbledon. Who was she playing against? And by the time she'd got there, had there been any kind of shift around the narratives of like, well, we don't really want her playing or representing us?

Were people behind her by this point? Or was she still experiencing a lot of negativity? Well, she played at Wimbledon for the first time in 1951. So that is her big moment after playing at Forest Hills in 1950. She played in some American events and others, but her next major was Wimbledon. And in 1951, but I think this continued even after she won the tournament in 57 and 58, she was a curiosity to people. You know, think about the number of folks who had not seen a black tennis player there.

But you could say the same thing about America too, right? because of segregation. African Americans knew that they were black tennis players, and the American Tennis Association had white members. So those folks knew. But she was always seen as a curio abroad. And in 1957, which was her first triumphant year at Wimbledon, it's that irony.

The fact that she could win, she played so well at the tournament, ultimately beat Darlene Hard in the final. But there was an ugly cartoon that shows her. And I've got it in the book, but you don't see the opponent. The illustration is by a man named Roy Alleyet, who I think is quite famous. He doesn't show her opponent, but you see Gibson in caricature. It's the work that he does with her eyes, her facial features, especially the size of her lips. Just all the ugly ideas that people have, for whatever reason, historically had about African Americans and their features and standards of beauty.

But he does that with her body. and then you see her arm extending into space to shake the hand of this white opponent that you can't see. But Gibson speaks in dialect and she says something like, am I supposed to shake the hands of so many thousands of people who were in the stands watching because she felt that those were her opponents too. And it just shows how she could be on top of the world in the sense of being a champion. But she also has these other opponents, yes, the people in the stands who didn't want her to win, likely because of race, but also members of the media who could write unfortunate things about

her, calling her things like the black windmill, often using referring to race and any kind of reference to her, and then also to have illustrations such as that. I'll be back with Ashley and Althea after this short break. I'm James Patton Rogers, a war historian, advisor to the UN and NATO, and host of the Warfare podcast from History Hit. Join me twice a week, every week, as we look at the conflict that have defined our past and the one shaping our future. We talked to award-winning journalists. ISIS, this peculiar strain that we all came to know very well in the mid-2010s,

really got its start because of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. We hear from the people who were actually there. The Sudanese have been incredible. They have managed to get supplies to people, to individuals who are suffering. And we learn from the remarkable his first. historians shining a light on forgotten histories. For the most part, the millions of people who were taken to those camps were immediately murdered. Auschwitz combined the functions of death camp and concentration camp and slave labour.

Join us on the Warfare podcast from a History Hit twice a week, every week, wherever you get your podcasts. A biography, she recalled when she wins Wimbledon and Queen Elizabeth comes over and they shake hands and Queen Elizabeth says something along the lines of, oh, it was very hot out there or something. like that, which is very helpful, thanks. And then she remembers that was that the moment, and I can't remember exactly what she said, but along the lines of she'd come a long way since not been able to sit on a bus in South Carolina.

So she'd recognize this as a really important moment. But then, as you say, but then she also goes on to say something like, you can't pay the bills with a crown. You can be the queen of tennis, but you can't pay the bills with a crown. Well, if you want, I can read specifically what she says. Yes, please.

But you're right. So in 1957, this is the first time that Queen Elizabeth comes to Wimbledon as monarch. And Gibson was very much taken with certainly winning, but the fact that she had this moment to meet and to shake the hand of the Queen of England. And that night, she goes through with the tradition, of course, of Wimbledon of the women's singles champion, dancing with the men's singles champion. And this is what Gibson said later. Shaking hands with the Queen of England was a long way from being forced to sit in the colored section of the bus going into downtown Wilmington, North Carolina. Dancing with the Duke of Devonshire was a long way from not being allowed to bowl in Jefferson City, Missouri, because the white customers complained about it. And she says that perhaps the best moment of all came when she received a letter after the tournament, and that letter was from President Eisenhower. Wow.

I mean, this is a woman at the absolute peak of her success. And it would be lovely to think that she got really rich after this and was able to live independently and made her fortune. But that's not the case, is it? That's not the case. And that leads to a few more remarks from Gibson, where she later wrote, being a champ is all well and good, but you can't eat a crown. Nor can you send the internal revenue service a thrown clip to your tax forms. The landlord and grocer and tax collector are funny that way. They like cold, hard cash. I may have been the queen of tennis right now, but I reign over an empty bank account, and I'm not going to fill it by playing amateur tennis,

even if I remain champ from now until Judgment Day. This sounds very naive, and I understand that today it's actually quite difficult to make money in sport, unless you're the best, and she was the best. So why wasn't she making money? What was happening? Was this before there was a lot of prize money? That's it.

the fact that she was playing amateur tennis. And so amateurism, of course, means that the best case scenario is that you're playing for honor and the chance to prove yourself and you're getting trophies. I say best case scenario because we know, of course, that there have been players who have taken under the table payments. So she's playing the amateur game. She's not playing professional tennis. And it's not until we get to 1968 that the amateurs and the professionals are allowed to compete at the Grand Slambs and really in other tournaments. So she wins Wimbledon. She wins Forest Hills just a few weeks later in 1957. And she was interested in playing professionally and making money, but no one came forward with an offer. And she stymied because of gender as well.

Men had made money and done quite well in professional tennis. But the fact that she was a woman was against her because for the longest time, the perception was that the public didn't want to pay to see women compete if they had the option to see men play, because the idea was that men were just better players. So bringing us back to Wimbledon in that scene at the Wimbledon ball, she dances with Lou Hode, the men's champion from Australia. And news soon breaks that Lou Hode had signed a contract for $125,000 to play professional tennis. for Jack Kramer, who was the major tennis promoter at that time. Gibson didn't get that kind of offer. And so I'll let your listeners go to some inflation calculator to figure out what, $125,000 in

1957, what that translates into today into 2023. But she's dancing with someone who was at that time pretty well healed, right? And Gibson winds up staying in amateur tennis. She also, said she acknowledged the discrimination of the American country club scene at that point in time. So she couldn't even leave the game to accept an offer to work as a head professional in tennis at a club because she felt that, well, first of all, no one made that kind of offer to her, but it was clear to her that no one was going to make that kind of offer to her at that time because she was African American and she was an African American woman. So 1958 comes around. She struggles a bit in the early part of the season.

she does defend her titles at Wimbledon and at the U.S. Open or the U.S. Nationals. And she surprises the world when she announces after winning the U.S. nationals that she's going to take a sabbatical from tennis and she's going to explore other opportunities. But during that period from September of 1958 through September of 1959, there's still no announcement that she's going to play professional tennis. she makes a film called The Horse Soldiers, which was directed by the really famous director, John Ford. It co-starred, or maybe the leads, they would say, were Bill Holden and John Wayne. An actress named Constance Towers played the female lead in that part.

So she made the movie. She cut a jazz album. She made some appearances on the Ed Sullivan show because, again, she wanted to have a career as a singer. It's only in October of 1959 that she has what she thought. of at that time as a moment of triumph, Abe Sappresstein, who was the owner of the Harlem Globetrotters, signed her to a contract to play professional tennis with a friend of hers.

Her name is Carol Fagoras. They had met years earlier. They were to play professional tennis together as pre-game, but sometimes as halftime entertainment at Globetriders games. So this becomes Gibson's Avenue, her way of entering professional tennis. I've never heard her sing.

I've not listened. Is she a good singer? I bet she's a good singer. Can she belt a tune? I wouldn't characterize her voice as belting. I describe it in the book as closer to being a crooner. Oh, okay. You can actually find selections from her album on YouTube. I think they're still there. But the album is called Althea Gibson Sings. That's fascinating. I can't wait to hear that. I'm right now down actually. So how in the hell did this woman end up playing golf? Like she finished tennis and she went, do you know what? This is two elites. It's too white. It's too. I'm going to play golf. I'm sarcastic. She left tennis in the very early 1960s, indeed, with a level of disappointment. She played in a professional tennis match, a championship. She won, but she was very unhappy that she didn't earn the same amount as the men's champion from the event, even though she felt that her match was harder.

and she also, it was a tough match and she spent more time on the court than he did. And she came away from it observing that she didn't make enough money really to cover her expenses, certainly not in the way that she would have wished. And she was also fed up that other people in tennis, people that she had beaten, people who she felt that her skills were on the same level as theirs, they were getting opportunities. to teach at clubs or to have endorsements. And these opportunities were not coming to her.

And it really left a bad taste in her mouth. She went to golf because she was deeply competitive. And she liked a challenge. She wanted to remain in sports and have the kind of competitive satisfaction there that she couldn't find in other industries. And there were so few opportunities for women in sports at this time. At least so few professionals. professional opportunities. She said in an interview that she thought about bowling, but that really

didn't appeal to her so well. And bowling was a big thing in the 1950s in the States, but I imagine probably in the UK as well. She wanted to leave tennis. Golf was the other option. And just from a practical standpoint, she'd had some exposure to it in previous years, but also practically, she said it was another sport in which you're taking one object and you're hitting another. I can see that. That makes sense. So when Gibson wanted something, she did not let up. And so she threw herself wholeheartedly into the game of golf. And she was dumb good at it.

She had her struggles. She did. I don't sugarcoat that in the book. Struggles related, yes, to race. So once she begins to play on the LPGA circuit, the circuit has to do, to say the least, some soul searching about where it was on race. because even after she earned her tour card, there were plenty of tournaments that would not allow her to play.

And she had kept her mouth shut, she said, about this when she was, she felt just an apprentice in the game. But when that apprenticeship was over, and she had her playing card by 1965, she came forward publicly to say that there were a number of tournaments that would not accept her, and this added a great deal of pressure on her in later parts of the season when she did have the opportunity to compete. She's also playing at this point against women who had far more experience in the game than she had.

And also at this time, she's in her 30s. Now your 30s are not old by any means, but she's an athlete. And so the body goes through quite a bit of wear and tear. And she went through that with tennis. She's older when she's playing golf. And she also had to try to overcome some of the habits that she developed in tennis, you know, things that were fine in tennis, but she said the strong right arm that she had developed in tennis,

that was not at all good for her golf game. Can I ask you about her personal life as well? Was she, I understand she was married twice? She was married twice. She married for the first time in the fall of 1965 to a long time, I would say, on again, off again, Bo. Ah, one of them. His name was Will Darby.

and he was the brother of one of her very close friends. And they had met by the early 1950s, but it was not a smooth and consistent relationship. They were divorced by the middle 1970s, and then she surprised people in her orbit in 1983, when she married a man named Sidney Llewellyn. Llewellyn had actually been her coach in the 1950s. So I didn't come across any evidence that Gibson and Llewellyn had had a romantic relationship in the 1950s.

And the people who were close to her felt that the marriage to Llewellyn in the 1980s, that that was really about convenience and opportunity for both of them. That's interesting. I'm almost scared to ask the question of like, how did the story end for Althea? She's got a bitter taste from tennis. She is married for a sense of convenience. she's playing golf but facing enormous stigma and prejudice. Did she get the glory in her twilight years?

Did she get the recognition of, because so many stories about women throughout history, they shine really brightly for a short amount of time and then they just fade into obscurity until people recover their history later on. I'm reluctant to say that she achieved the glory and the recognition in her later life because really I don't think that happened.

I think it's beginning to happen now with attention that is now being paid to her. So, you know, in the form I would even say of perhaps my book, just, you know, recovering her life to a great degree. We know, of course, that at the National Tennis Center in New York, as of 2019, there's that beautiful monument that is there. Long and coming, I would say. And then when people learn about the William sisters and they want to learn more about the history of African-Americans, in tennis, then you can't learn that history without encountering Althea Gibson. I think that what she did get in her later life because she fought for it were opportunities

to remind people that she had existed, right, and that she did exist and that she still had ideas and thoughts about the game of tennis, but also about other things. So in the 1970s, Gibson gave a number of speeches and spoke out in support of women's rights. She was an advocate for Title IX. She wanted to see women and girls of all ages have the same opportunities in sports that men and boys had. She was always one to brag and boast. So she kept her name in the press and she kept herself relevant by saying, hey, I think I could beat Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes. And you know what? I could

beat Billy Jean King, too. And I wouldn't be afraid to face Martina Navratilova over the net and across the net. And in the 1970s, she had a chance to compete against Chris Everett. And Chris Everett won. It was effectively an exhibition match. But Chris Everett also said that she didn't think that anyone at that time in tennis had to serve with that kind of pure power, the sort of pure power. power that Gibson had. And at that point, Gibson was in her 40s. Wow. My final question to you about this incredible woman is, I suppose it's kind of complex, but what do you think her legacy is? Or having studied her in so much detail, one of the things that I find is really interesting is she often doesn't react to things that you think that she would. Like when people came to her and said that, you're representative of the black experience and she sort of resisted that is, what do you

think she would want her legacy to be? That's a really good question. And I think it's one that requires a nuanced answer. I think she would want to be remembered for her achievements, five Grand Slam singles titles, and 11 overall across singles doubles and mixed doubles. She definitely want to be remembered for that. I think she'd also want to be remembered as someone who wasn't afraid to take things on the chin. And I say that deliberately because also in the 1970s, she was the athletic commissioner for the state of New Jersey, and boxing was a big part of that work. She approved a women's boxing match, actually, which surprised a number of people in the 1970s. And given her love of boxing and the battles that she got into with her father and on the streets in Harlem, she wasn't afraid to stand there and basically to take the blows and the hardships. And she did it time and again, I think for people who read the book, it's a book.

for anyone. It's a book for people who know what it's like to go through some tough times and have to figure out how to traverse some hardwaters. Yeah, she was definitely a fighter. Ashley, you have just been amazing to talk to today. And if people want to know more about you and more about Althea Gibson, where can they find you? Well, I want them to find the book. Find the book. Don't find Ashley. Leave her alone. You can buy the book wherever books are sold. You can find the book there. It's serving herself the life and times of Althea Gibson.

You have been wonderful to talk to. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you, Kate. Thank you for listening. I thank you so much to Ashley for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcasts.

We have got episodes on the history of makeup and the history of lube. All coming your way. If you would like us to explore a subject, or if you just wanted to say hi, you can also email us and you can get us at betwixt at history hit.com. This podcast was produced by Sophie G and mixed by Stuart Beckwith. The Senior Producer is Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.