Althea Gibson
American tennis player (1927-2003)
Biography
Althea Gibson was born in Silver, South Carolina, in 1927 and died in 2003. She was a tennis player and professional golfer who competed across both sports at the highest levels. In 1956 she became the first Black player to win a Grand Slam event, and over the following years she won 11 Grand Slam titles in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles competition. She was voted Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press in 1957 and 1958, the years she won both Wimbledon and the US Nationals. In the early 1960s she became the first Black player to compete in the Ladies Professional Golf Association. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1971 and the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame in 1980.
Occupation
Althea Gibson is recorded as a tennis coach, a autobiographer, a golfer, a tennis player, a professional golfer and a actor, born in South Carolina (1927–2003).
Connections to South Carolina
Althea Gibson was born in Silver, South Carolina in 1927. Explore other notable figures from South Carolina, historic sites connected to this era, and the full colonial and statehood history of the state using the links below.
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More notable figures from South Carolina
Other historical figures born in South Carolina, ranked by historical prominence.
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Biographical content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Source: Wikipedia.
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