Source: John Pratt / Getty

Photos of tennis legend Althea Gibson are all over this year’s US Open, 75 years after her contribution to breaking the color barrier in the sport.

In 1950, Gibson participated in the then-called US National Championship event. In 1957, she became a Grand Slam champion, the first Black woman to do so. A full on decade before another notorious tennis great, Arthur Ashe, won.

While Gibson has been memorialized with a statue at the Flushing Meadows site, many still do not know of her pioneering legacy as a tennis player.

Gibson fought with the US Lawn Tennis Association just to get admitted in the competition in 1950. It took a letter from a prominent white player, Alice Marble, for her to even be accepted.

Sally Jacobs, author of “Althea: The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson, said, “(Organizers) put her on a very back court, No. 14. Hard to get to. The area for people to watch was tiny. And they changed the rules and sent photographers to take pictures of her match, which was never allowed for other people.”

Source: Evening Standard / Getty

“Personally, I feel like everybody’s waited too long to really celebrate her,” Billie Jean King told The Associated Press in an interview. “She was the first, and when you’re the first, you should be celebrated the most.”

Black Women Dominate 2025 US Open 75 Years After Althea Gibson Broke Barriers was originally published on ronefoxync.staging.go.ione.nyc