The next big thing in Black tennis was the great Althea Gibson in the 1940s and 1950s, followed by Arthur Ashe in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Significantly, the ATA was instrumental in the development of the careers of each of these important players.
As Althea was coming into prominence, the ATA kept pushing for integration of the White tennis organization, the USLTA, similarly to what was happening in the post-WWII era with other sports like baseball, football, and basketball. But the USLTA was reluctant.
Althea graduated to tennis from the local street paddle ball game. Seeing her promise, the ATA began to nurture her. First, by placing her with ATA tennis teachers at the Black Cosmopolitan Club in Harlem, and then arranging for this 19-year-old street child to finish high school by placing her with an ATA supporting Black physician in North Carolina. During high school, she lived with two ATA supporting Black physicians, Hubert A. Eaton in Wilmington, North Carolina, during the school year and R. Walter Johnson in Lynchburg, Virginia, in the summers.
After graduation, she was sent to Florida A & M University, all the while honing her tennis skills and winning ATA events. Althea won the ATA women’s singles title every year from 1947 to 1956. And she won the ATA mixed doubles with Dr. Johnson every year except one between 1948 and 1955.
As Althea was coming into national prominence, the ATA kept pushing for integration of the White tennis organization, the USLTA, similarly to what was happening in the post-WWII era with other sports like baseball, football, and basketball. But the USLTA was resistant.
After much pressure, including a prominent article arguing the case for Althea by Alice Marble, the foremost female tennis player in the years before WWII, the USLTA association relented and let Althea play in selected tournaments in 1950. With that entry, Althea went on the win 11 major tournaments, including five singles and six doubles, by 1958.
In 1957 and 1958, as she dominated women’s tennis, Gibson was ranked as the world’s number one female tennis player. In 1957 she was given a ticker tape parade in New York City. And in 1958, she won the award as best female athlete of the year by the Associated Press.
Before the Open Era in tennis, which started in 1968, there was no prize money at major tournaments, and direct endorsement deals were prohibited. Consequently, not having the means to support herself, Althea retired from tennis after 1958 and turned her attention to entertainment, following one of her passions, singing, which she mainly did in nightclubs.
In 1964, at 37 years of age, Gibson joined the women’s professional golf tour, another first, where she played for several years amid racism that restricted places she could play and bathrooms she could use. She was a journeyman professional earning money, but not a lot.
The bottom line is that Gibson was a great all-around athlete. Playing hooky a lot, she spent her early years in pool halls, basketball courts, and bowling alleys. As a teen, she was almost a scratch bowler.
Arthur Ashe followed Althea Gibson as a prominent Black tennis payer. Ashe came along as a junior player in the 1950s, winning six ATA national championships between 1955 and 1960. Dr. Walter Johnson tutored Ashe and, figuring that Ashe needed year-round coaching that he could not provide, sent him to St. Louis to stay with Black former University of Chicago tennis team captain Richard Hudlin. With this coaching, Ashe won the ATA national singles in 1960, 1961, and 1962; he won six USLTA national championships in the 1960s and the NCAA Singles and Doubles while at UCLA.
Ashe went on to win two singles and two doubles majors. He was on the American Davis Cup team for 11 years and was the U.S. Davis Cup captain for three years. His tennis career was so impactful that the stadium where the U.S. Tennis championships recently competed is named after him.
During Ashe’s time playing tennis, two Black females were prominent at the collegiate level. Bonnie Logan and Anne Kroger. They were ranked first and second on the Morgan State University men’s team that won the CIAA (Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association) men’s tennis title.
Logan was the ATA Women’s champion from 1964 to 1970 and was the first Black woman to play on the Virginia Slims Tennis Tour in 1971. Logan’s teammate, Anne Kroger, played four years on the Virginia Slim’s Tour and later served as an award-winning coach of women’s tennis at Haverford College. She served in that capacity for 35 years.
In 1976, after Logan and Kroger had graduated, Hampton University’s all-male team, who were in the same CIAA conference as Morgan State, won the predominantly white NCAA Division II men’s championship.
In summary: many Blacks played and succeeded in tennis in the 20th century.