Althea Gibson: The American tennis player Althea Gibson, who has died from respiratory failure aged 76, was the first black singles champion at Wimbledon and the US Open.
Her powerful serve and remarkable quickness made her a leading figure in the women's game in the 1950s; her unassertive manner disguised her success in overcoming sporting segregation in the US.
She broke tennis's colour barrier at the US Open in 1950, three years after major league baseball had begun to be integrated, though tennis, with its added hurdles of money and class, proved more resistant to immediate change.
Gibson owed her success and demeanour to being taken under the wings of leading black professional people, who gave her opportunities to the point that she could no longer be excluded by the white world.
It began when her parents moved her from Silver, South Carolina, where she was born, to a street in Harlem. Her father, a strict disciplinarian, often beat her, and tried to turn her from tennis to boxing. She ran away to a Catholic girls' home, then lived in welfare apartments, doing menial jobs. She also met Sugar Ray Robinson, who became another patron.
Despite her hardships, by 1946 Gibson, aged 19, reached the all-black American Tennis Association (ATA) national finals. She lost, but her potential so impressed two influential doctors that one, Hubert Eaton, took her in with his family in Wilmington, North Carolina.
The other, Walter "Whirlwind" Johnson, introduced her to the summer tennis circuit, as he later did with Arthur Ashe.
Gibson blossomed, finishing high school in Wilmington and winning a scholarship to Florida A&M University, where she also played basketball. Her tennis flowered, too, and in 1947 she won her first of 10 straight ATA titles.
Gibson played at Wimbledon in 1951, establishing her ranking while coaching at Lincoln College, Missouri. Her breakthrough came after Sidney Llewellyn (her second husband) became her coach, and she made a 1955 State Department goodwill tour of Asia.
The next summer, she won the French Open. In 1957 she lost in the Australian finals, but defeated Darlene Hard in the Wimbledon final and then won the US championship over Brough. In 1958 she repeated the double, beating Angela Mortimer and Hard, respectively.
At the pinnacle of her success, she left tennis to make money. She wrote an autobiography, made a record album and appeared as a slave in John Ford's The Horse Soldiers. Then she signed a $100,000 contract with the Harlem Globetrotters to play exhibition tennis during half-time breaks. From 1963 to 1977 she played Ladies PGA golf. Later she served in various sporting positions in the New Jersey state government, but after losing her job on the governor's physical fitness council in 1992, she went into decline, subsisting on social security.
After she had suffered a series of aneurysms and strokes, in 1996 admirers began organising benefits and formed a foundation to help her receive the recognition she deserved. Both her husbands predeceased her.
Althea Gibson, born August 25th, 1927; died September 28th, 2003