ALTHEA

A noted journalist chronicles the tumultuous life of the first Black American tennis superstar.

Jacobs, author of The Other Barack, presents a comprehensive and elegantly written life of Althea Gibson (1927-2003), one of the greatest athletes America has produced, capturing the considerable triumphs and obstacles she met throughout her life. The author is particularly adept at describing the personal and social conditions in which Gibson rose. An abused daughter languishing on the streets of Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance and the Depression, she flourished on the court, breaking the color barrier and rising to the top in the wealthy White sport of tennis. Jacobs also describes the contributions of Gibson's supporters and benefactors, who made her Grand Slam championship career possible, including Sugar Ray Robinson, several top women players of the day, and Hubert A. Eaton and Robert W. Johnson, civil rights leaders and tennis aficionados who instilled discipline, refinement, and excellence in her game and life. Jacobs writes compellingly and sensitively about societal pressures that the complex and multitalented Gibson endured, including from an often critical Black press (that sometimes trafficked in rumors about her sexuality), to not only excel on the court, but to stand at the forefront of the mid-20th-century Civil Rights Movement despite her natural reticence about such matters. Gibson, writes the author, "let her success…speak for her and for the potential of her race, rather than her raised fist.” As Jacobs demonstrates, such success paved the way for Black players such as Arthur Ashe, Zina Garrison, and Venus and Serena Williams. The author profiles Gibson in full, including her stint with the U.S. State Department, her magnanimous contributions to youth tennis instruction, and the loneliness and financial difficulty of her later life. The book is a fascinating study of Gibson through the prism of 20th-century America.

An essential book about an incomparably authentic American pioneer and the times in which she lived.