[16][17][18] Gibson quit school at the age of 13 and, using the boxing skills taught to her by her father, engaged in a life of what she would later refer to as "street fighting", girls basketball, and watching movies.

[19] In 1940, a group of Gibson's neighbors took up a collection to finance a junior membership and lessons at the Cosmopolitan Tennis Club in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem.

"[22] Gibson's ATA success drew the attention of Walter Johnson, a Lynchburg, Virginia, physician who was active in the African American tennis community.

[23] Under Johnson's patronage - he would later mentor Arthur Ashe as well - Gibson gained access to more advanced instruction and more important competitions, and later, to the United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA, later known as the USTA).

[24] In 1946, she moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, under the sponsorship of another physician and tennis activist, Hubert A. Eaton[25] and enrolled at the racially segregated Williston Industrial High School.

[28] Despite her growing reputation as an elite-level player, Gibson was effectively barred from entering the premier American tournament, the United States National Championships (now the US Open) at Forest Hills.

While USTA rules officially prohibited racial or ethnic discrimination, players qualified for the Nationals by accumulating points at sanctioned tournaments, most of which were held at white-only clubs.

[29] In 1950, in response to intense lobbying by ATA officials and retired champion Alice Marble - who published a scathing open letter in the magazine American Lawn Tennis[30] - Gibson became the first Black player to receive an invitation to the Nationals, where she made her Forest Hills debut a few days after her 23rd birthday.

"[34] In 1951, Gibson won her first international title, the Caribbean Championships in Jamaica,[2] and later that year became one of the first Black competitors at Wimbledon, where she was defeated in the third round by Beverly Baker.

She decided against it when the State Department sent her on a goodwill tour of Asia in 1955 to play exhibition matches with Ham Richardson, Bob Perry, and Karol Fageros.

[39] Many Asians in the countries they visited—Burma, Ceylon, India, Pakistan, and Thailand—"felt an affinity to Althea as a woman of color and were delighted to see her as part of an official US delegation.

[47] In July, Gibson was seeded first at Wimbledon - considered at the time the "world championship of tennis" - and defeated Darlene Hard in the finals for the singles title.

[62][24] When the tour ended she won the singles and doubles titles at the Pepsi Cola World Pro Tennis Championships in Cleveland, but received only $500 in prize money.

and was cast as an enslaved woman in the John Ford motion picture The Horse Soldiers (1959), which was notable for her refusal to speak in the stereotypic "Negro" dialect mandated by the script.

[67] She also worked as a sports commentator, appeared in print and television advertisements for various products, and increased her involvement in social issues and community activities.

[72] Racial discrimination continued to be a problem: many hotels still excluded people of color, and country club officials throughout the south—and some in the north—routinely refused to allow her to compete.

[73] Although she was one of the LPGA's top 50 money winners for five years, and won a car at a Dinah Shore tournament, her lifetime golf earnings did not exceed $25,000.

"[77] In 1959, shortly after retiring, Gibson appeared in the John Ford film, The Horse Soldiers, playing the secondary, but pivotal, role of Lukey,[78] the housekeeper (and slave) to Miss Hannah Hunter, mistress of Greenbriar Plantation.

[80] In 1968, with the advent of the Open Era, Gibson began entering major tennis tournaments again; but by then—in her forties—she was unable to compete effectively against younger players.

[81] In 1972, Gibson began running Pepsi Cola's national mobile tennis project, which brought portable nets and other equipment to underprivileged areas in major cities.

[82] She ran multiple other clinics and tennis outreach programs over the next three decades, and coached numerous rising competitors, including Leslie Allen and Zina Garrison.

In 1976, she was appointed New Jersey's athletic commissioner, the first woman in the country to hold such a role, but resigned after one year due to lack of autonomy, budgetary oversight, and inadequate funding.

[84] In 1976, Gibson made it to the finals of the ABC television program Superstars, finishing first in basketball shooting and bowling, and runner-up in softball throwing.

[88] In a second memoir, So Much to Live For, she articulated her disappointments, including unfulfilled aspirations, the paucity of endorsements and other professional opportunities, and the many obstacles of all sorts that were thrown in her path over the years.

[29] Her situation came to light when former doubles partner Angela Buxton publicly shared Gibson's plight with the tennis community, successfully raising nearly $1 million in donations from supporters worldwide.

A decade after Gibson's last triumph at the US Nationals, Arthur Ashe became the first African-American man to win a Grand Slam singles title, at the 1968 US Open.

"[97] In 1980, Gibson became one of the first six inductees into the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame, placing her on par with such pioneers as Amelia Earhart, Wilma Rudolph, Gertrude Ederle, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, and Patty Berg.

[100] In 1991, Gibson became the first woman to receive the Theodore Roosevelt Award, the highest honor from the National Collegiate Athletic Association; she was cited for "symbolizing the best qualities of competitive excellence and good sportsmanship, and for her significant contributions to expanding opportunities for women and minorities through sports.

[104][105] "It was the quiet dignity with which Althea carried herself during the turbulent days of the 1950s that was truly remarkable," said USTA president Alan Schwartz, at the ceremony:[Her] legacy ... lives on, not only in the stadiums of professional tournaments, but also in schools and parks throughout the nation.

[114] In 2012, a bronze statue, created by sculptor Thomas Jay Warren, was dedicated at Branch Brook Park in Newark, New Jersey near the courts named in her honor where she ran clinics for young players in her later years.