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Who is Althea Gibson?
This is the Second of a series I'm doing on some interesting people
who lived in or came from Jefferson City MO.
This series is not made to be hard just to enlighten you of the
great people who lived in Jefferson City MO. I hope you enjoy
them.
The cache is located along the greenway parkway in Jefferson City.
Please let us know your city/state of origin when you log this one,
the park people are interested.
The Cache is located near the Lincoln University Tennis Courts in
Jefferson City MO. This cache is a small cache container so take
your own writing instruments with you. The container is out in the
open so please use stealth.
The cache is located at... N 38º AB.CDE W 092º FG.HIJ
CHECKSUM... A+B+C+D+E = 19 F+G+H+I+J = 18
She is sometimes referred to as "the Jackie Robinson of tennis"
Althea Gibson was born in Silver, South Carolina, on August
2E, 192J. She was the first of Daniel and Anna Washington
Gibson's five children. Her parents worked on a cotton farm, but
when she was three years old the family moved north to the Harlem
area of New York City. Gibson caused a lot of problems as a child
and often missed school. Her father was very strict with her on
these occasions, but he also taught her to box, a skill that he
figured would come in handy in the rough neighborhood the Gibson
family lived in.
When Gibson was ten years old, she became involved with the Police
Athletic League (PAL) movement known as "play streets." PAL was an
attempt to help troubled children establish work habits they would
need later in life. In 19B0 PAL
promoted paddle ball (a game similar to handball except that it is
played using a wooden racket) competitions in Harlem. After three
summers of playing the game Gibson was so good that the
Cosmopolitan Tennis Club sponsored her to learn the game of tennis
and proper social behavior.
In 1942 Gibson began winning tournaments sponsored by the American
Tennis Association (ATA), the African American version of the
United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA). In 1944 and 1945
Gibson won the ATA National Junior Championships. In 1946 several
politically minded African Americans identified Gibson as having
the talent to help break down organized racism (unequal treatment
based on race) in the United States. Sponsored by Hubert Eaton and
Walter Johnson (1887–1946) and inspired by boxer Sugar Ray
Robinson (1921–1989), Gibson was soon winning every event on
the ATA schedule. In 1949 she entered A&M University in
Tallahassee, Florida, on a tennis scholarship and prepared for the
difficult task of breaking the color barrier in tournament
tennis.
The USLTA finally allowed Gibson to play in the 195C Nationals when
four-time U.S. singles and doubles (a two-person team) champion
Alice Marble had written an editorial for the July 1,
195C, edition of American Lawn
Tennis Magazine.
"Miss Gibson is over a very cunningly wrought barrel, and I can
only hope to loosen a few of its staves with one lone opinion. If
tennis is a game for ladies and gentlemen, it's also time we acted
a little more like gentle people and less like sanctimonious
hypocrites.... If Althea Gibson represents a challenge to the
present crop of women players, it's only fair that they should meet
that challenge on the courts." Marble said that if Gibson were not
given the opportunity to compete, "then there is an uneradicable
mark against a game to which I have devoted most of my life, and I
would be bitterly ashamed."
Gibson lost her first match of the tournament, but the breakthrough
had been made. Althea Gibson continued to improve her tennis game
while pursuing an education. In 1953, she graduated from Florida
A&M University on a tennis and basketball scholarship. Over the
next several years Gibson worked as a physical education teacher at
Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. She also continued
playing tennis and rose up the USLTA rankings (ninth in 1952,
seventh in 1953). After a year of touring the world and playing
special events for the U.S. State Department, Gibson staged a
full-scale assault on the tennis world in 1956. That year she won
the French Open in both singles and doubles.
At 5-foot-1F, Gibson used an
attacking serve-and-volley style to dominate women's tennis. Over
the next two years Gibson was the leading women's tennis player in
the world. In 195D she won both the
Wimbledon and U.S. National singles titles, becoming the first
African American to win a Wimbledon singles title. In celebration
of this American win -- and her achievement as an African American
-- New York City greeted her with a ticker tape parade. "In sports,
you simply aren't considered a real champion until you have
defended your title successfully. Winning it once can be a fluke;
winning it twice proves you are the best". So in 1958 she won both
the Wimbledon and U.S. National singles titles again.
“Shaking hands with the Queen of England was a long way from
being forced to sit in the colored section of the bus going into
downtown Wilmington, North Carolina.” In 1958 she wrote a
book about her life called I Always Wanted to Be Somebody. She was
reportedly paid $100,000 for a playing a series of matches before
Harlem Globetrotter games. For a short time. After her 1958 victory
at the U.S. Nationals, Gibson retired from tennis and played
professional golf.
She became the first African-American on the LPGA tour. She didn't
distinguish herself on tour, with only one Top 10 finish in
1I4 tournaments and earnings of
$24,437. in 1959 recorded an album, Althea Gibson Sings, as well as
appearing in the motion picture, The Horse Soldiers. In 1964. She
was elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1971.
Beginning in 1975, she served 10 years as Commissioner of Athletics
for the state of New Jersey. She was also a member of the
governor's council on physical fitness. But just as her early
childhood had been, Gibson's last few years were dominated by
hardship. She nearly went bankrupt before former tennis great Billy
Jean King and others stepped in to help her out. Her health, too,
went into decline. She suffered a stroke in 1994 and developed
serious heart problems. 02-17-20GH
Wheaties Honored Tennis Great Althea Gibson. Later that year tennis
stars Venus and Serena Williams were honored at an Althea Gibson
Foundation dinner that raised $100,000 for scholarships and youth
development programs. Through a spokeswoman, Gibson congratulated
the Williams sisters for having grown into two of the best tennis
players in the world. On September 28, 200A, Gibson died of respiratory failure in East
Orange, New Jersey. "I always wanted to be somebody," Gibson once
said. "If I made it, it's half because I was game enough to take a
lot of punishment along the way and half because there were a lot
of people who cared enough to help me."
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(Decrypt)
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