A compelling narrative of the trials and triumphs of tennis
champion Althea Gibson, a key figure in the integration of American
sports and, for a time, one of the most famous women in the world.
From her start playing paddle tennis on the streets of Harlem as a
young teenager to her eleven Grand Slam tennis wins to her
professional golf career, Althea Gibson became the most famous
black sportswoman of the mid-twentieth century. In her
unprecedented athletic career, she was the first African American
to win titles at the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open. In
this comprehensive biography, Ashley Brown narrates the public
career and private struggles of Althea Gibson (1927-2003). Based on
extensive archival work and oral histories, Serving Herself sets
Gibson's life and choices against the backdrop of the Great
Migration, Jim Crow racism, the integration of American sports, the
civil rights movement, the Cold War, and second wave feminism.
Throughout her life Gibson continuously negotiated the expectations
of her supporters and adversaries, including her patrons in the
black-led American Tennis Association, the white-led United States
Lawn Tennis Association, and the media, particularly the Black
press and community's expectations that she selflessly serve as a
representative of her race. An incredibly talented,
ultra-competitive, and not always likeable athlete, Gibson wanted
to be treated as an individual first and foremost, not as a member
of a specific race or gender. She was reluctant to speak openly
about the indignities and prejudices she navigated as an African
American woman, though she faced numerous institutional and
societal barriers in achieving her goals. She frequently bucked
conventional norms of femininity and put her career ahead of
romantic relationships, making her personal life the subject of
constant scrutiny and rumors. Despite her major wins and
international recognition, including a ticker tape parade in New
York City and the covers of Sports Illustrated and Time, Gibson
endeavored to find commercial sponsorship and permanent economic
stability. Committed to self-sufficiency, she pivoted from the
elite amateur tennis circuit to State Department-sponsored goodwill
tours, attempts to find success as a singer and Hollywood actress,
the professional golf circuit, a tour with the Harlem Globetrotters
and her own professional tennis tour, coaching, teaching children
at tennis clinics, and a stint as New Jersey Athletics
Commissioner. As she struggled to support herself in old age, she
was left with disappointment, recounting her past achievements
decades before female tennis players were able to garner
substantial earnings. A compelling life and times portrait, Serving
Herself offers a revealing look at the rise and fall of a fiercely
independent trailblazer who satisfied her own needs and
simultaneously set a pathbreaking course for Black athletes.
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