NEW YORK (AP) — It was on the streets of her Harlem neighborhood in the 1940s that teenager Althea Gibson began working on the tennis skills that would take her all the way to winning Wimbledon. But according to the 1940 census, the trailblazing athlete didn’t even exist. There’s no record of Gibson and her […]

VIA:  AltheaGibson.Com Born August 25, 1927 in Silver, SC, A right-hander, grew up in Harlem. Her family was poor, but she was fortunate in coming to the attention of Dr. Walter Johnson, a Lynchburg VA physician who was active in the black tennis community. He became her patron as he would later for Arthur Ashe, […]

Althea Gibson lived in Harlem in the 1930s and 1940s. Her family was on welfare. She was a client of the Society for Prevention of…