Firsts
(b. Aug. 25, 1927, Silver, S.C., U.S.), American tennis player who dominated women’s competition in the late 1950s. She was the first black to win the Wimbledon and U.S. singles championships.
Gibson grew up in Harlem in New York City and in 1950 became the first black athlete to play Forest Hills, narrowly losing to third-seeded Louise Brought in the second round. She graduated from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, Tallahassee, in 1953, and rose to sudden prominence in 1956, becoming the first black to win a major title–the Wimbledon doubles–as well as the French singles and doubles and the Italian singles. She went on to win the Wimbledon singles and doubles and the U.S. singles in 1957-58, as well as the U.S. mixed doubles and the Australian women’s doubles (in 1957).
Gibson turned professional in 1958, but women’s professional tennis at that time offered few tournaments and prizes. After winning the U.S. professional women’s title in 1960, she became a professional golfer in 1963, with moderate success. She married William Darben in 1965 and attempted professional tennis again, after open tennis started in 1968, but without much success. In 1971 she was elected to the National Lawn Tennis Hall of Fame. In 1975 she was named athletic director for the state of New Jersey.
Firsts
(b. July 10, 1943, Richmond, Va., U.S.–d. Feb. 6, 1993, New York, N.Y.), American tennis player, the first black winner of a major men’s singles championship.
Ashe began to play tennis at the age of seven in a neighbourhood park. He was coached by Walter Johnson of Lynchburg, Va., who had coached tennis champion Althea Gibson. Ashe moved to St. Louis, Mo., where he was coached by Richard Hudlin, before he entered the University of California at Los Angeles on a tennis scholarship. In 1963 Ashe won the U.S. hard-court singles championship; in 1965 he took the intercollegiate singles and doubles titles; and in 1967 he won the U.S. clay-court singles championship. In 1968 he captured the U.S. (amateur) singles and open singles championships. He played on the U.S. Davis Cup team (1963-70, 1975, 1977-78) and helped the U.S. team to win the Davis Cup challenge (final) round in 1968, 1969, and 1970. In the latter year he became a professional.
His criticism of South African apartheid racial policy led to denial of permission to play in that country’s open tournament, and, as a consequence, on March 23, 1970, South Africa was excluded from Davis Cup competition. In 1975, when he won the Wimbledon singles and the World Championship singles, he was ranked first in world tennis. After retiring from play in 1980, he became captain of the U.S. Davis Cup team, a position he held from 1981 to 1985.
Ashe underwent coronary bypass operations in 1979 and 1983. In April 1992 he revealed that he had become infected with the virus that causes AIDS, probably through a tainted blood transfusion received during one of those operations. For the remainder of his life, Ashe devoted considerable time to efforts to educate the public about the disease.
Medicine
Augustus Nathaniel Lushington was born in August 1, 1869. He became the first African American to earn a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (D.V.M.), earning the doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1897. He practiced two years in Philadelpha, PA then served as an instructor in Veterinary Sanitation and Hygiene at Bell Mead Industrial and Agricultural College at Rock Castle, Virginia. Later, he resigned and returned to a practice located in Lynchburg, Virginia. He was known for the proficient, high-class scientific service maintained in his practice in the Lynchburg area.
Politics
Texas attorney Barbara Charline Jordan announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for state representative on February 3, 1962, borrowing the $500 filing fee. Despite a vigorous campaign, she lost, then ran and lost again in 1964. She was finally successful in her 1966 bid for the Texas senate, serving there until 1972. Jordan’s elec-
tion to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1972 made her the first African American woman ever elected to that body from the South.
A year and a half later, Jordan became one of the best-known political figures in the country when she served as a member of the judiciary committee debating President Richard Nixon’s impeachment. Her 1976 keynote address to the Democratic National Convention confirmed her reputation as one of the most commanding and articulate public speakers of her era.
Civil Rights
Benjamin L. Hooks became the first black criminal court judge in Tennessee in 1965. b. Memphis, Tenn. In 1972 President Nixon named Hooks, a lawyer and Baptist minister, to the Federal Communications Commission, making him its first black member. From 1977 to 1993 he was the executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
