SPORTS

Palmetto Past & Present: South Carolina’s Forgotten Tennis Hero

Before Venus and Serena Williams there was Althea Gibson …

There wasn’t much hope for sharecropping families in the run-up to the Great Depression. It was a
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2 comments

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The Colonel Top fan August 28, 2023 at 11:09 am

You left out the pro golf career where she broke multiple course single round records.

She never achieved quite the level of accomplishment at golf as she did tennis but Gibson broke barriers at everything she did. When cast in a John Ford Film (the Horse Soldiers), she refused to play the role in the stereotypically “black” style of the time.

Just for fun, at 49 she finished as the runner up in the “ABC Superstars” contest despite being 20 years older than the rest of the competition.

A remarkable life!

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Thomas Parrish Top fan September 8, 2023 at 9:29 am

She ought to get a posthumous Order of the Palmetto. Quite an athlete

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