Althea Gibson, a truant from the rough streets of Harlem, emerged as a most unlikely queen of the highly segregated tennis world of the 1950's. Her life and achievements transcend Sports. Her roots as a sharecropper’s daughter, her family’s migration north to Harlem in the 30’s, her mentoring from Sugar Ray Robinson, David Dinkins and others, her fame that thrust her unwillingly into the glare of the early Civil Rights movement, all bring the story into a much broader realm of African-American History. No player overcame more obstacles to become a champion than Althea Gibson, the first African-American to play at Wimbledon and Forest Hills, a decade before the great Arthur Ashe.
She would receive two ticker-tape parades in New York, and later brought her talents to golf, breaking another color barrier: the LPGA, where she competed for over 10 years. She retired from competitive tennis and played exhibitions on tour with the Harlem Globetrotters, became a recorded Jazz singer, performing on the Ed Sullivan Show and “What’s My Line”, and landing a role in a John Wayne/John Ford film.