[music]

David Furst: This is All Of It. I'm David Furst, in for Alison Stewart. Today is our last day of Full Bio discussing the book Althea: The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson by Sally Jacobs. Gibson broke the color barrier in the sport. We learned in parts one, two, and three about her original story in Harlem, her taking on the conventional tennis organizations and her big grand slams. You can catch all of those on demand. Now we talk about Althea Gibson's life post-tennis. Althea took up singing. Here she is from her LP, Althea Sings.

[MUSIC - Althea Gibson: Don't Say No]

Don't say no,

Don't tell them that we're through

Don't say no,

Just tell them I love you

David Furst: After retiring from tennis, she had her eyes on professional golf. Gibson didn't become a star, but did break the color barrier in 1963 as the first Black woman in the Ladies Professional Golf Association. She married twice, once to her real love, Will Darben. They divorced after 10 years but remained friends. Later, she married her coach, Syd Llewellyn. That also ended in divorce.

Althea Gibson had a series of appointed positions, nothing really seemed to fit in her late years. She was running out of money, and some old friends came in to help. Here is Alison Stewart's final Full Bio conversation with author Sally Jacobs.

Alison Stewart: I want to spend the last part of our conversation talking about Althea the person, Althea's role in history, how Althea felt about her role in history. There was one period in her life when the US government decides to send athletes around the world as ambassadors of goodwill to show the ability to prosper in the States. The Harlem Globetrotters, Jesse Owens. It was a global ambassador position. Why would Althea accept this position?

Sally Jacobs: Because she was smart. That's a simplistic answer, but the truth was, Althea realized that this was going to give her an opportunity. She didn't know how great an opportunity, but she saw, I think, that this could help her. She was not doing so well at this point. It's 1955. She's still in a bit of a slump. What happens is that Emmett Till tragically is murdered, and the Russian government takes advantage of all the racism deep in American culture. They start making fun of America, criticizing them.

The State Department snaps, too, as they had already by sending Blacks overseas. Within, I think it's, gosh, a couple of weeks after Emmett Till's death, they go to Althea and they say, "How would you like to go on a goodwill tour overseas? Okay, you could say she's being used, exploited. Yes, she was a little bit, but Althea was smart, too.

If she was going to get ahead and succeed, then she was going to go on that trip. She goes with three other white people, one of whom, Hamilton Richardson, is a great guy, a great player, and he really helps her with her game. All three of them do, the other white players, and they become a team, the foursome. They do various exhibits all over India, Ceylon, Pakistan, and Althea is the hero of the group because she is the same color as other people that are watching, and they love talking to her.

She wins almost all but 2, 16 out of 18 tournaments. It just was a deal breaker for her. Was she wrong to do it? This is the question that plagues Althea's position on her race, I think. Was she right to be as self-absorbed, as self-focused, or was she smart because Althea broke the barrier? Could she have done it if she didn't focus on herself? I want to tell you one little thing I stumbled upon in my research that I thought really summed it as you try to understand Althea's position because she didn't speak out on the Black cause, and she took a lot of heat for it, but she did break the barrier.

On December 1st, 1955, two things happened on the same day. Rosa Parks sits down on the bus, the seat in the bus for Blacks only, and refuses to get off to make way for a white citizen. Thus we begin the year-long boycott of the buses there. On the same day, I did the math. Althea sits down on a plane in Rangoon, heading out on a goodwill journey, goodwill tour, sorry. She is not a champion for the Black cause.

She never really speaks out about it. Looking at those two people, you could say, Althea was kind of the timid, self-absorbed one. Rosa was the hero, the heroine. I don't really think that's true. Althea did what Althea could do. She fought it was every fiber of her being and she encountered racism at every step of the way, on the court, in the locker room, you name it. She couldn't do both things. She couldn't be a race champion and a tennis champion. I began to appreciate that as I learned more and more about her. I don't think if she'd been a race champion, she could have broken the barrier.

Alison Stewart: Why not?

Sally Jacobs: Because it would have taken too much energy. It would have taken too much harassment. I don't think psychologically, Althea, an abuse victim as a child, who'd struggled so much against so many odds could have done both. She said, "I am not a racially conscious person. I don't want to be. I see myself as just an individual. I can't help or change my color in any way, so why should I make a big deal out of it? I'm a tennis player, not a Negro tennis player. I have never set myself up as a champion of the Negro race." This is from her autobiography, I Always Wanted to Be Somebody.

Alison Stewart: Why is that a quote that's important for listeners to consider?

Sally Jacobs: Because I think it helps you understand why Althea did what she did and why she didn't do what she didn't. What I was trying to explain earlier, that Althea did the best that she could do for her, being a champion of the Black race, was being the best tennis player she could, because that way, she would break the barrier. She would be a symbol. She would be someone who could be the best. If that's not doing something for the Black race, I don't know what is. It wasn't what everybody was clamoring for, but Althea, as usual, had to do it her own way, and so she did.

Alison Stewart: Ebony wrote that no Negro athlete could outrun all the bad news coming from the United States. Some people were much crueler and called her behavior Uncle Tommish. What did she come home to in the Black press?

Sally: Well, again, they felt like she was being used, and if they weren't, she wasn't fighting the good fight, which, again, depends on how you look at it. No, she wasn't on a day-by-day basis. The Black press will turn again. She becomes their heroine again when she starts winning in '57. That's Althea's year. She wins everything. Here is a Black athlete who is number one in the world, and the Black press surrounds her.

Now, I want to point out one other thing of the many, many incidents of racism. This is another one that always just really moves me. In 1958, Althea Gibson is the number one women's tennis player in the world. She's won everything, and she's going to go down to Miami to play in something called the Good Neighbor Tournament. It was one of the first tournaments she played in as a Black player in '51. 1958, she's driving down the interstate, feeling pretty darn good about things.

She got a lot of friends playing in a tournament. She takes a left to go over the bridge into Miami, and there's a toll gate there. As she's about to go through the gate, the guard comes out, puts his hand up, and says, "No, you can't come in here. No Black people can come in here." There've been a long history of Black people not being allowed onto the beach there without permits.

She's astonished. She tells them who she is. "I'm Althea Gibson. It's XYZ." Doesn't believe a word of it, even when she shows her license. At the end of this terrible encounter, she has to call the tournament directors to tell the gatekeeper to let her in, that she's playing in a tournament. At the end of the day, Althea Gibson is another Black girl who can't come through the gate.

Yes, she gets in, but she has to work hard to be able to do it. It so upset her. It enraged her, that by the time she gets on the court, I talked to a number of other women who played that tournament, she just is a wreck. She loses the first match. She's so upset by it. It didn't really leave her for a while. She realizes everybody's talking about it, and it's humiliating to her.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing the book Althea: The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson. My guest is Sally Jacobs. It's our choice for Full Bio. Althea Gibson takes up competitive golf and once again breaks the color barrier, and becomes the first Black golfer in the Ladies Professional Golf Association. Why golf?

Sally Jacobs: Yes, that's a great question. Golf because she could. Golf because more Black people were playing in golf. A number of athletes had started to play. It seemed like a somewhat welcoming community to her. Notwithstanding the larger hostility of the white community, Black people were beginning to play the sport, so she decided to play.

Alison Stewart: She was not a champion in the way she was in tennis. From your research and from reading her files, was this a happy time in her life, this time when she was a golfer?

Sally Jacobs: I would say it was a mixed time. Althea had a job. She was a community representative for something called Tip-Top bread, so she had a bit of an income, not a lot, but enough. You could make money in golf. Althea never was great at golf. She did okay. It took a while. I think she made the most of something like, I don't know, like $15,000 in one year, but she was part of the group.

The white female players really embraced her. She felt very supported there I think. She drove in a long line of cars. Each car had the female golf player. In that respect, I think she felt a community support that she'd never had. That her performance was not better, I think was real disappointment for her. She only played, I think it was a mid '70s. '76, '77, I think she stopped.

Alison Stewart: In a different world, Althea Gibson might have been a singer. She loved music so much. She was at the Apollo as a kid. She, I think, plays second place, you write, and she was the Apollo.

Sally Jacobs: Exactly.

Alison Stewart: I know she made a couple records. Was she ever really serious about being a singer?

Sally Jacobs: Oh, she was serious. She had a singing coach for two years who helped her a lot, but she was not a really great singer. She releases an album called Althea Gibson Sings by Dot Records in '58, and it really didn't sell, so that was the end of that. She sang on and off, but never in any official way, in any professional way.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear a little bit of Althea Gibson singing.

[MUSIC - Althea Gibson: I Can't Give You Anything But Love]

I can't give you anything but love, baby,

That's the only thing I've plenty of, baby

Dream awhile, scheme a while

We're sure to find

Happiness and I guess

All those things you've always pined for

Gee I'd like to see you looking swell, baby

Diamond bracelets Woolworth doesn't sell, baby

Till that lucky day you know darn well, baby

I can't give you anything but love

Alison Stewart: Althea Gibson married twice, divorced twice, no children. Was family life sort of traditional family life ever a priority for her?

Sally Jacobs: Yes. I think, well, when you say family life, she didn't have children. She learned early on that she couldn't have children. I don't know the reason why, but in 1984, the San Francisco Chronicle did a story reporting on this, that she had learned early on. I think that affected her view of marriage and family if she wasn't going to have children. Will Darben was a great guy who adored her and courted her for years. They were really good friends. The joke in the family was that he was the feminine one, she was the masculine one. Whatever, it worked.

They do get divorced, but even after they get divorced, they come back in later years. They get together and go to their favorite sandwich shop and watch sports together. It was really a real relationship. In that sense, I think it was very important to her. She loved Will Darben. Gosh, in her last year, she would drive back to their home where Will Darben had grown up with Rosemary, and where Althea lived for a while in Montclair, New Jersey.

She would sit in her car, parked outside with the engine off, big hat on her head. A guy inside who I talked to would come out and say, "Ms. Gibson, do you want to come inside?" She said, "Oh, no, those days are over. I'm just remembering the good times." This was a very important thing to her.

Alison Stewart: As reading the book, and reading the book, being WNYC, there's a lot of New York. There's a lot of Montclair. There's a lot of the oranges in the book. Later in her life, first time she had a leadership position that she took in New Jersey. Would you share what she did when she worked in New Jersey?

Sally Jacobs: Yes, she had a string of positions, none of which lasted too, too long. She was a director of the Valley View Racquet Club for a while. Her biggest job really was New Jersey State Athletic Commissioner, first female to get that job. She got it in 1976 because the governor was someone she played tennis with. They were very good friends, but she didn't really like it. She felt she didn't have enough authority to do what she wanted to do, so she stepped down the following year in '77. She ran for state senate, a very credible run, but didn't win. Then she was on the governor's council for physical fitness for a number of years in the '80s. She had a bit of a face in the community there. She was in the media quite a bit, but slowly began to fade as years went on.

Alison Stewart: Like many older Black pioneers who didn't make a lot of money and didn't get these huge endorsement deals like now, she was financially strapped in her old age, so much so that fundraisers were held to help pay for her medical care, and there may have been some malfeasance on part of her caretakers. It's not a happy way to remember her, so I do want to ask you, how would you want her to be remembered?

Sally Jacobs: Just to point out one thing about that, it was Angela Buxton who really-- Althea calls up Angela and says, "I'm going to go away." Angela says, "Oh, where are you going to go?" She says, "Well, I'm going to kill myself. I'm done." Angela rockets into action as is her habit and starts to raise money and does, after a couple of hiccups, does raise a little over a million dollars. Althea did have some money in her final years, not a lot, but enough.

I think Althea should be remembered as an athletic champion who broke the color barrier, not just one but two sports, and never to this day has really gotten the recognition that she deserves. She was a model for Arthur Ashe in a big way, for the Williams sisters. Serena wrote a paper about Althea when she was in high school, and yet many, many people don't know who she is. I don't know if you saw the movie King Richard about the Williams sisters, there's a photograph of Althea Gibson on the refrigerator during one of the times when Richard's having a fight with his wife. Just a little picture, a little black and white picture of Althea, no comment, no nothing.

I saw it and I thought, "Oh my gosh, it must be Serena who put that photo up there, or maybe it was Venus or Richard who admired her." I decided I was going to find out. Long story short, I spent weeks trying to find out who put that photo on the refrigerator. I called this person, that person, the Williams sisters' agents. I finally get the set designer for the studio that made the film, and I said to her, "Oh, so that film, that picture of Althea, how did that end up getting up there?" She said, "Well, you know, I put it up there, and I had no idea who it was. It was the only Black woman in tennis that I could find, so I figured that the Williams sisters knew her." It was Althea.

Alison Stewart: The name of the book is Althea: The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson. My guest has been Sally Jacobs. Sally, thank you for giving us so much time.

Sally Jacobs: Sure. Thank you so much.

David Furst: It wasn't until 2019 that a statue of Althea Gibson was erected at the US Open. Thanks again to Sally Jacobs. The audio was provided by Andy Lanset from the WNYC archives. Our engineer was Jason Isaac. Our producer was Jordan Lauf, and the conversation was written by Alison Stewart.

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