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On This Day: First black Wimbledon winner
Althea Gibson, 29, from America’s bitterly segregated Deep South, beat compatriot Darlene Hard in straight sets to claim the Ladies Singles title
JULY 6, 1957: Althea Gibson became the first black tennis player to win Wimbledon on this day in 1957.
The then 29-year-old from America’s bitterly segregated Deep South beat compatriot Darlene Hard in straight sets to claim the Ladies Singles title.
Afterwards, she poignantly said: 'Shaking hands with the Queen of England was a long way from being forced to sit in the coloured section of the bus.'
When she returned to the U.S. she became only the second black American – after Olympic athlete Jesse Owens - to be honoured with a ticker-tape parade in New York.
Gibson, who born in South Carolina but grew up in Harlem, New York, was already the first black person to win a Grand Slam after her 1956 victory at the French Open.
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Two months after her 1957 victory at Wimbledon, she also won the U.S. Open.
A British Pathé newsreel shows Gibson emphatically beating Louise Brough Clapp in the final at Forest Hills, New York.
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An entirely white crowd, which included many who were still opposed to mixed competition, only gently applauded as she demolished her white American opponent.
She was later filmed being presented with her trophy by the then Vice President Richard Nixon.
She successfully defended her British and American titles the following year in 1958 and, in total, won 11 Grand Slam tournaments, including six doubles titles.
It took until 1975 for a black man to win Wimbledon when American Arthur Ashe beat defending champion Jimmy Connors.
And it would be 43 years before another black woman won a major championship after Serena Williams’s victory at the 1999 U.S. Open.
The 31-year-old American and her sister Venus Williams, 33, have gone on to dominate women’s tennis over the past 14 years.
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After Gibson’s death aged 76 in 2003, Venus wrote: '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.'
David Dinkins, the only black man to ever serve as Mayor of New York, praised her by saying: '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.'
