Althea Gibson: I Always Wanted To Be Somebody I Always Wanted To Be Somebody is the intimate and candid story of a girl who grew up in the asphalt environs of Harlem, skipping school, drinking hard liquor, stealing and fist-fighting, but went on to break the color barrier in tennis and achieving the pinnacle of the sport by winning Wimbledon and the U.S. Open and becoming an inspiration for many future champions such as Billie Jean King, Arthur Ashe, Venus Williams, and Serena Williams, among many others. Click Here to Order!
Althea Gibson
Tennis History
One thing about the life of a tennis champion; you never can rest on your victories, unless you retire, and I'm not ready to retire yet. With my coach Sydney Llewellyn working along with me, I will keep going right...
Tennis History
These days, my life consists mostly of a series of tournament tours, involving pretty much the same routine no matter where I go. Between trips—each trip usually includes a number of tournaments—I may have anywhere from a week to a...
Tennis History
All of my problems weren't solved because I was the champion tennis player of the world after winning Wimbledon and Forrest Hills in the same year. Not by a long shot. I was only thirty years old and I had...
Tennis History
One of the high spots I am not likely ever to forget from my tennis career is my welcome home to New York a couple of days after I won at Wimbledon. I truthfully did not expect anything like what...
Tennis History
Note: After a year of international travel and tennis, Althea Gibson became the first black player to win a Grand Slam at the French Open in 1956. But in her mind that was overshadowed by her failure to win at...
Tennis History
I had made friends with a girl named Gloria Nightingale, and now that I was on my own, I went to live with her in her family's apartment. I got a job as a waitress and I paid rent to...
Tennis History
The 143rd Street block my mother and father lived on was a Police Athletic League play street, which means that the policemen put up wooden barricades at the ends of the street during the daytime and closed it to traffic...
Tennis History
Once he got the idea of me boxing professionally out of his head, all Daddy was trying to do, aside from teach me right from wrong, was to make sure I would be able to protect myself. Harlem is a...
Tennis History
I always wanted to be somebody. I guess that's why I kept running away from home when I was a kid even though I took some terrible whippings for it. It's why I took to tennis right away and kept...