Keith Summey North Charleston Library's Adult Services Librarian Ramon Maclin interviews Author Sally H. Jacobs about her newly released book, Althea: The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson.
Jacobs is a former reporter for the Boston Globe, a winner of both the coveted George Polk Award and the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Reporting with the Globe newsroom. She is also the author of The Other Barack, a biography of Barack Obama’s father.
Could you explain the writing process for this book. I began research on the book in 2018 after signing a contract with St. Martin's Press. My first, and possibly most important interviews, were with two of the people who knew Althea the best, her longtime friend and sister-in-law, Rosemary Darben, and her British doubles partner, Angela Buxton. From there I travelled throughout the U.S. to Harlem, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, New Jersey, California, and Wimbledon, England, and beyond interviewing about another 150 people. By the spring of 2020 my last in-person visit was to a storage unit in Newark where many of Althea's belongings were kept including letters from her two husbands, her mother and others. Covid had begun it's deadly creep by then and, since most of my reporting was done, I retreated to my third floor office outside Boston and got to work writing for the next two years.
What are the ethics of writing about historical figures? "That is a good question, although I’m not quite sure what it means! I presume you are asking about the ethics of writing about someone who has passed away. Having written about both alive and dead people I am not sure there is a great deal of difference. The upside is that you are free to interview people without getting permission from the subject, but of course having permission in such cases is often helpful. The downside of not having the person alive is, of course, that you can not speak to them. Otherwise, with some notable exceptions, relevant documents and papers are more or less equally available."
What was one of the most surprising things you learned about her while working on this project? "That's easy. The most surprising thing I learned had to do with Althea's birth certificate. Althea was born in August of 1927 and when her birth certificate was written - presumably by the attending midwife - there were three apparent errors on it. Althea was given the name Alger, her gender was assigned that of boy, and her father, whose name was Daniel and whose nickname was “Dush,” was given the name Duas. Twenty seven years later, in 1954, Daniel took the birth certificate to court and had each of those items changed: Alger became a girl named Althea, and he became Daniel. Just what prompted him to do that, what larger bearing that might or might not have on Althea’s universe, is something that one just might want to read about in a new biography about her called Althea - The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson."
How should Althea Gibson be remembered? "She should be honored as one of the the greatest sports champions of our time, one who broke the color barrier in not just one but the two sports of tennis and golf. She was also someone who never got the recognition that she deserved and that remains true to this day."
What are some of your favorite biography books? "Needless to say I am a big reader of biographies, especially of sports figures lately. My List includes: Arthur Ashe, A Life, by Raymond Arsenault, Satchel, The Life and Times of An American Legend, by Larry Tye, The Power Broker; Robert Moses and The Fall of New York, by Robert Caro, Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson and Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, and finally, not exactly a biography but one of my favorites, The Boys in The Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, by Daniel James Brown and Edward Hermann."
About Althea: The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson
In 1950, three years after Jackie Robinson first walked onto the diamond at Ebbets Field, the all-white, upper-crust US Lawn Tennis Association opened its door just a crack to receive a powerhouse player who would integrate "the game of royalty." The player was a street-savvy young Black woman from Harlem named Althea Gibson who was about as out-of-place in that rarefied and intolerant world as any aspiring tennis champion could be. Her tattered jeans and short-cropped hair drew stares from everyone who watched her play, but her astonishing performance on the court soon eclipsed the negative feelings being cast her way as she eventually became one of the greatest American tennis champions.
Gibson had a stunning career. Raised in New York and trained by a pair of tennis-playing doctors in the South, Gibson’s immense talent on the court opened the door for her to compete around the world. She won top prizes at Wimbledon and Forest Hills time and time again. The young woman underestimated by so many wound up shaking hands with Queen Elizabeth II, being driven up Broadway in a snowstorm of ticker tape, and ultimately became the first Black woman to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated and the second to appear on the cover of Time. In a crowning achievement, Althea Gibson became the No. One ranked female tennis player in the world for both 1957 and 1958. Seven years later she broke the color barrier again where she became the first Black woman to join the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA).
In Althea, prize-winning former Boston Globe reporter Sally H. Jacobs tells the heart-rending story of this pioneer, a remarkable woman who was a trailblazer, a champion, and one of the most remarkable Americans of the twentieth century.