Michael Benson - Althea Gibson: Tennis Player

Althea and her parents, Annie and Daniel.

Source: Corbis.

Daniel said Silver was a "three-store" town, bigger than the one-store towns but not that big. Both of Althea's parents were large, strong people who were used to hard work. Annie enjoyed riding the farm animals. If a horse wasn't available, she'd ride a cow or a pig instead.

Times were tough during Althea's childhood, especially when bad weather caused the cotton crops to fail for three years in a row. To make matters worse, this was the time of the Great Depression in the United States. Almost everyone was poor and prices were very low. The cotton that the farm did produce sold for very little money. During their last year in South Carolina, the Gibsons made only $75. Althea's family decided to move north, where they hoped they would find opportunities.

However, they couldn't afford to move all at once. Althea's Aunt Sally Washingtonher mother's sisterlived in New York, and Althea went to live with her when she was three.

Althea's father came north next and looked for work. When he quickly found a job as a handyman, he arranged for his wife to join him and Althea. All three of the Gibsons lived with Aunt Sally in Harlem, an African-American neighborhood in Manhattan.

In addition to this being the time of the Depression, it was also the time of prohibition in the United States. Under prohibition, selling and drinking alcoholic beverages was illegal. Until 1933, when prohibition ended, Aunt Sally made money by selling illegal (bootleg) liquor out of her Harlem apartment.

Althea grew up around a lot of drinking and often saw her uncles and their friends drunk. They would even give liquor to Althea, who was drunk on whiskey more than once before she was old enough to go to school.

Not wanting their daughter to grow up in this unhealthy environment, Althea's mother and father sent her to live with another aunt, Daisy Kelly, in Philadelphia.

By this time Althea often refused to do as she was told. To put it mildly, Aunt Daisy found her to be quite a handful. Althea got her clothes dirty, fought with boys, and seemed always to be getting into mischief.

When Althea was nine, she was sent back to New York to live with her mother and father. By this time, however, Daniel and Annie had managed to get their own apartment, on West 143rd Street in Harlem.

As Althea later put it, the story of her youth "wasn't all pretty." She continued to be a problem. She simply did not like being told what to do.

In the meantime, Althea grew and grew. She became very tall and strong, standing close to six feet. She was queen of the playground. When neighborhood children were playing a game or a sport, the chances were good that Althea was better at it than anyone else.

It was after Althea returned to New York and her family had their own apartment that she began, as she put it, "getting into real trouble." She skipped school frequently, missing more school than she attended.

Truancy had always been a problem for Althea. Even when she was little she skipped school. Once, she was caught and spanked right in the classroom. Now the problem was more severe, and Althea was missing weeks of school at a time.

Her father's solution was to give her frequent whippings, but this only sent the little girl to the local police precinct where she told police that she feared going home because her father was beating her.

In addition to skipping school, she began to steal. She and her friends called it "snitching." Most of it involved sneaking into movies and taking fruit from fruit stands without paying, but there were signs that the "snitching" problem was getting worse. One time, she stole a bike and sold it.

Afraid of being beaten for her bad behavior, Althea would stay away from home for days at a time. Eventually Daniel realized that whipping his daughter was not going to improve her behavior.

Althea was convinced that her father had wanted a son but instead he got her. He treated her as much like a boy as he could get away with. Daniel signed her up for boxing lessons. His plan was twofold. For one thing, he thought that as she grew to her full adult size, she could become a professional-quality boxer, and there was money to be made in those days in women's boxing. Plus, since Althea seemed determined to live on the streets, Daniel figured she should learn to defend herself. She learned to stand up to bulliesand became a very good boxer, very quickly.

Althea never really wanted to fight professionally, and Daniel soon gave up on the dream. Still, it wasn't long before her ability to duck and throw a punch came in handy.

On one occasion, Althea was going to visit her Aunt Sally when she came across one of her uncles surrounded by a local gang called the Sabres. Her uncle seemed slightly drunk and the gang was in the process of robbing him.

The little girl came to her uncle's defense. One of the gang members threw a sharpened screwdriver at her, cutting her on the hand. Althea dragged her uncle into the apartment building. She then went back out to get the boy who had cut her.

The two had a fight that, according to Althea, went up one side of the block and down the other. Although there was no clear-cut winnerboth were bloodied and bruisedAlthea gained the respect of the gang. None of the Sabres bothered her or members of her family again.

It was a couple of years later, after her boxing lessons, that Althea became a legend in her neighborhood. It happened when Althea had a street fight after school. With a huge crowd gathered to watch, Althea ended the fight against the girl who had challenged her with one punch.

After learning of Althea's one-punch knockout, nobody on 143rd Street was quick to bother her.

Althea may have been a good fighter, but she didn't like to fight. She did it to protect herself, or her family, but not for fun. There were plenty of other games to play that were more fun, and Althea was good at them all.

She still didn't like to go to school, but now instead of snitching she preferred to spend her days in the playground playing baseball or basketball.

Basketball was her favorite sport. She and her best friends could be found on the playground for hours each day. They would play any kind of game. If there were just two of them, they would play one-on-one. If a couple of others showed up, boys or girls, they'd play two-on-two. After playing all day and much of the night, they would go to a cheap restaurant for plates of collard greens and rice.