Althea Gibson was an consumate tennis champion who first
broached many of the color barriers in the sport. She became the
first Black athelete to win a Wimbledon championship in 1957, nearly
twenty years before Arthur Ashe would become the first Black male
to do so.
She was also the first Black athelete to win a major tennis title,
winning the French Open in 1956; to win a major US title in 1957; the
first Black woman to receive the Theodore Roosevelt Award of the NCAA;
and the first Black athelete to be inducted into the International
Tennis Hall of Fame, in 1968.