Even growing up playing tennis, I knew embarrassingly little about Althea Gibson, who paved the way for the integration of women's tennis, so I was so glad I could pick up this book and learn more about her story. This book was excellently researched and engaging. I wish Sally Jacobs had spent a little more time on the important matches in Althea's career, as most of them simply stated the score, and only few described simply when the tide turned for or against her in a match. This is a hard book to read, not only the racism that she endured throughout her career but the heartbreaking end of her life alone.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

An in-depth look at one of the great female athletes of the 20th Century who has long been overlooked.

How is it possible that a young woman from an impoverished African American family in Harlem overcame seemingly insurmountable odds during the 1950’s to become not just a great tennis player but a champion time and again at Wimbledon and what is now known as the US Open? She became the first black woman to achieve these and other successes, and yet her name is not often recognized outside of the tennis world. This biography by former Boston Globe reporter Sally H. Jacobs takes a thorough look at who Althea Gibson was; where and how she grew up, how she rose to such heights in a sport dominated by wealthy white people, what obstacles she faced, who helped and who didn’t, and what happened when she stopped playing the game.

While I would not consider myself a tennis aficionado, I certainly remember many of the champions (both male and female) who have succeeded in the sport in my lifetime. From Billie Jean King and Chris Everett through Venus and Serena Williams, with Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe (oh, those tantrums!), Boris Becker, right up to Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic, there have been so many tennis greats who have crossed the line into celebrity. So too did Althea Gibson in her day, but as I discovered through reading this book it was a very different time for tennis and those who played the game. To participate in those tournaments, an athlete had to remain an amateur in status, and therefore was not making large sums of money from appearances and endorsements. As many of the players came from a financially secure background, this was not a huge problem for them, but for someone like Althea the worry of having money for meals and hotel rooms was every bit the concern that playing well was. Jackie Robinson had just broken through barriers in the world of baseball, but Althea faced discrimination and dismissal not only for being Black but for being a woman. Many of the women tennis players of her time were beautiful and feminine, gracious and graceful in their feminine white outfits. Althea was different, very aggressive and athletic in her play, driven to win, not prone to schmoozing the press or ingratiating herself within the tennis world. Her talent could not be denied, but she did not reap the same post-career benefits of the more traditional (and white) tennis players of her generation….no cushy board position at a sporting goods company like Wilson, or offers of writing a sports column for a magazine came her way. Was it because she was a woman? Not entirely, as other women did indeed net such deals. Was it her color? Certainly that was likely a factor. Was it her reserved, often prickly or blunt personality? Again, almost certainly that played into it too. But it meant that this incredibly successful and talented athlete struggled throughout her life for financial security, and towards the end of her life she was living in highly impoverished circumstances. She was a flawed person, and made her share of poor decisions, but she deserved better than what she got. The color of her skin, at a time when race relations were so bad that the US government organized tours of successful Black athletes to show the world that things weren’t as bad in the US as they seemed, was one of the biggest obstacles that Althea needed to conquer, and time and time again she did just that. It is not hard to believe that she was a hero to icons Arthur Ashe and Billie Jean KIng as well as Serena and Venus Williams. Hopefully this biography will start a dialogue that will lead to Althea Gibson getting the recognition today that she so richly deserves, in ways large and small.
You don’t need to love tennis to enjoy this book, though that wouldn’t hurt; you should be prepared to read about some ugly bits of our country’s history while also applauding those who helped to usher in acceptance of all. And be ready to meet a rough, funny, guarded, misunderstood woman who achieved so very much, and the people who helped her, loved her, and lived long enough to tell her story to a generation that had mostly forgotten about her.

First, it must be said that Althea Gibson's accomplishments, legacy, and impact on the world of tennis have been neglected for decades. Sally H. Jacobs biography on Gibson is a well researched and well written look at her life, as well as at the history of U.S. tennis itself. 'Althea' is a fascinating read for not just fans of Gibson, but of tennis in general. Four stars!

*I received an advanced reader copy of this book from NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Before Venus and Serena Williams, before Zina Garrison, before Arthur Ashe, there was Althea Gibson, a pioneer for African Americans in the world of tennis. In her book, Althea: The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson, Sally H. Jacobs chronicles the life and times of this phenomenal athlete who rose from the streets of Harlem to become a Grand Slam and Wimbledon champion. She also played the saxophone and had dreams of a singing career. In fact, Ed Sullivan loved her, and she appeared on his show. She even made a recording, which had lackluster success. https://youtu.be/tAKa6mV84p0

The author goes into great detail about Althea’s upbringing. Her father trained her to box, but he also beat her mercilessly, and Althea frequently spent hours away from home, riding the train or holing up in stairwells just to avoid going home, where she knew another beating awaited her. She was a tall, lanky girl with a deep voice, and frequent reference is made to her boyish appearance. She was often mistaken for male, and her sexuality was frequently questioned.

Althea’s interest in tennis began by playing paddle tennis in the streets. This gave rise to tennis, where she was a diamond in the rough. In fact, this was the story of much of her career. Many saw potential in her athleticism, her power, her drive, and she was mentored and coached by several well-meaning, caring individuals. Always, she was the only woman of color in tennis circles. Despite pressure from the “Negro” community and the press, Althea refused to be a spokesperson for her race. She was her own person, which many saw as selfish, but she’d had to struggle a lot to get as far as she had, and she always claimed that there was no discrimination in tennis. In reading the accounts of what she went through, I had to think she went through it with blinders on; otherwise, how could she have coped?

If you’re a tennis fanatic, you may very well love this book because the author documents many of Althea’s matches during her career, including pre-college, Florida A&M, and of course, her Forest Hills and other Grand Slam tourneys, not to mention Wimbledon. In my opinion, much of this could have been omitted, as the plot is much the same in that Althea’s manner of play repeats itself over and over. It felt tedious. The potential was there, but…
I found myself wondering, too, if I had met this person in those days, would I have liked her? She was very self-involved, brusque, unsportsmanlike, at least on the court. In her later years, however, she seemed to have mellowed quite a bit.

As fantastic a player as Althea Gibson was, it took her years to have success. Because of the time period in which she played, she received very little financial compensation. When her tennis days were over, she turned to golf and played several years in the LPGA. Again, there was little money in it, and there were even fewer Blacks in this White person’s world, but she had much more support among her fellow golfers.

Her personal life was sad, too. She had love interests who proved to be lifelong friends, even after divorce. But she had very little money to live on, and when her health declined, she became despondent. I found the end of the book to be quite sad, and I wished that she had had a better life. However, I think she was proud that she was an inspiration to women like the Williams sisters and Zina Garrison, and she had Angela Buxton for a tennis partner and friend; in later years, Billie Jean King became a friend too. While I enjoyed learning about this great player, whom I’d often heard of, I felt overwhelmed by the plethora of detail of her tennis matches.

I received a digital copy of Althea: The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson as an ARC in exchange for my honest review. My opinions are my own. Thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and the author.

3.5 stars

An abundance of research is evident in this book about Althea Gibson. The hardships she endured are palpable. I could only read 25% of this book given the amount of detail. It was overwhelming to me and much of it laborious to absorb. Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own. #Althea, #NetGalley, # St.Martin’sPress.

The introduction is one of the boldest I have ever read. It sets an audacious tone for Althea Gibson, a grand person fitting for the words that flow on the page.

This is a thorough book. Sometimes, the details felt too concentrated. Still, the biography captures the history of Althean Gibson's career aligned with the Civil Rights Movement, international relations, and further conflicts in America. The attention to Althea Gibson as a Black woman who just wanted to play tennis contrasts with the awareness of athletes who have the voice that Ms. Gibson did not get to have outright.

I never knew.
I'd always known that Althea Gibson was the penultimate tennis pro of her day, but had poor understanding of ALL the hardships she faced or that she was also in the LPGA. The publisher's blurb is a good one as far as it goes while skirting the whole natural hormone issue. She came from financial poverty, overcame almost everything, and retired into emotional poverty. A truly admirable woman who deserved better.
I requested and received an EARC from St. Martin's Press via NetGalley. Thank you!

Review: A well written and complete biography of the tennis champ. A lot of history too which was informative, but also for me a bit too much.
Recommended For: Those interesting in a tennis biography.

What an enlightening and inspiring book. Sally H. Jacobs writes with the utmost care about Althea Gibbons. She goes beyond a simple account of Althea's biography by integrating into the narrative the social and political contexts of her life. In doing so, we gain a much richer understanding of the complicated life and racial discrimination Ms. Gibbons endured not only during the years she was active as a tennis player but also after her retirement.
I highly recommend this book!

I would like to thanks St. Martin's Press and Net Galley for the opportunity to read this book as an ARC. This is a well researched and well written story about Althea Gibson, the first Black Tennis Player to play in the previously all white tournaments. She won the French Open in 1956, and Wimbledon and the US open in 1957. She also played on the Women's Professional Golf circuit. She was talented and strong and virtually forgotten. She was a victim of the times, racism, and segregation.She also did not conform to the accepted look of a female athlete, she wasn't girlish , but strong and athletic.She also played in the years before the Open Era of tennis, when prize money and endorsements flowed. This is a hard book to read in some aspects. It is unsparing in the hardships that Althea Gibson faced. However, it needs to be read, to put into perspective everything that has come after, and what is needed to follow. Thank you Sally Jacobs for writing this book.

Althea Gibson, one of the legends of women's tennis, was also a world-class coper with discrimination. She lived with discrimination on at least six levels, and even Sally Jacobs has not quite comprehended the amount of prejudice she endured for being an introvert.

"Big Al" was almost always accepted as a female, but her biography shows that at least she lived with an unusual amount of testosterone for a woman. When she was born, her birth certificate initially recorded her as male. She was "the big fat one" as a baby, then the big, lean, muscular one as a girl and woman. Her father taught her street fighting the same way he did his sons--by punching her face, forcing her to beat him up. Tennis brought her out of the ghetto, to an all-Black college where her celebrity-athlete status allowed her to break rules and the nice girls muttered that she was a lesbian (without being able to name any possible girlfriends).

Then tennis became her full-time job--only, in order to win prestige as an amateur, under the existing rules, she was only allowed to earn $75 per month from tennis. She towered over older stars, smashed her way to Wimbledon, slowly learned to act like a lady--and some of the rich girls she clobbered were athletes enough to like her. Big Al's only real rival was "Little Mo," Maureen Connolly; officially, at least, both had been longing to meet someone who could play tennis as hard as they did, and liked each other.

Gibson planned for a career as a teacher, dreamed of one as a singer (she had a deep voice), made a few bids at one as a professional tennis player, and wrote a few books, but in fact, after aging out of tennis, she depended on men for money. Her relationships with men seem to have been a classic triangle, with a friend's brother apparently adoring her and another man she apparently loved eluding her, all their lives. Neither man complained of any anatomical surprises; it may have been her craving for solitude that shortened her marriages. She had known since age fifteen that she'd never have children.

This book may leave readers wishing a DNA analysis of Gibson's gender had been available. Other than that it's a well written, informative, uplifting study that should appeal to all readers who are or are not women, gender-confused, Black, athletes, or introverts. Four point seventy-five stars.

I am interested in this subject because I love tennis and history and didn’t know enough about the amazing Althea Gibson and her mark on women’s tennis. It is well written and researched and learning about her early upbringing and how it contributed to her personality was of interest. But I had to put the book down after reading the first 25%. It became a bit of a tedious read with facts but not enough of a compelling story to keep me interested. The author describes each match and the effort it took to be recognized by the white tennis establishment in detail. Maybe too much detail and not enough emotion. Althea still doesn’t come alive for me, nor do the people who supported her success in a time of racial strife. I just got a little bored. Sorry. I wanted to read to the end but couldn’t.

Althea by Sally H. Jacobs tells a captivating story about The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson.

The author does a great job of weaving this very interesting memoir.
I found it very intriguing that Althea became the number one ranked female tennis player in the world for both 1957 and 1958.
And later where she became the first Black woman to join the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA).
Althea is worth reading from the very beginning to the last word at the end; it’s a book that reveals all the experienced emotions, obstacles, sweat and tears she experienced.

"I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own."

Thank You NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!