Ashley Brown (4)

If you're not a tennis fan, you may not have heard of Althea Gibson, but as she was the first Black athlete to participate in Forest Hills (now the U.S. Open) and other majors, winning five singles titles and more in doubles and mixed doubles for a total of 11, she's an athlete to know. Ashley Brown, the Allen H. Selig Chair of History of Sport and Society at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, brings Gibson's story to life in the detail it deserves.

Althea Gibson was born in 1927 and grew show more up on the streets of Harlem, where she didn't exactly conform to "ladylike" behavior, learned how to box, and loved playing sports with the boys. When her athletic prowess was noticed, a couple of men took her under their wing and helped her become a trailblazer, first winning all of the Black tennis tournaments and then working to get her entry into Forest Hills, despite a long-standing unspoken rule not to allow Black players. Unlike some other Black athletes of her time, however, Gibson was reluctant to speak about race and wanted to be known for her talent alone, not as a (to use the phrase of the time) "Negro athlete". Brown gives a thorough, nuanced portrait of Gibson in all her complexity. I couldn't help but admire what Gibson did, both in winning majors, and also in deciding to give up amateur sports - at the time, there was no prize money - and starting to play golf instead. Brown takes you through her entire life before, during and after tennis, and carries along the narrative to other athletes that did indeed follow in Gibson's footsteps, reluctant trailblazer or not. This book is thoroughly researched with a lot of footnotes and is quite dense at times, but for all that I learned a lot and really appreciated the thoroughness of this biography. show less