Welcome to the history tricks where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.

Hello and welcome to the show. Today will be part two of our coverage of the Life of Tennis Superstar Althea Gibson.

It's been a few weeks since we brought you part one of Althea's story,

so why don't we just do a little refresher a quick recap of where we've been from an

impoverished childhood and some might say a misspent youth many might say that

actually Althea emerged as an enormously talented athlete and honestly a brave individual.

Friends and supporters all over the country have worked hard to teach her both the game game of tennis and the social

game of tennis.

She's top of the country in the American Tennis Association, which of course is the African American tennis organization.

All of the determined efforts of Althea, her mentors, and the ATA as a whole

have led us here on the precipice of a decades long goal.

Althea Gibson was about to be the very first African American to play

at the Westside Tennis Club at Forest Hills.

Althea was about to integrate the national championships of the United States Lawn Tennis Association,

which had, up until this moment, historically been 100% white.

So having just won her fourth straight women's singles title at the ATA, she and her friend

slash chaperone got on a train to New York. We said this in part one but Althea had had to

overcome multiple barriers to get to this point racism, obviously sexism and classism.

Tennis is a pretty fancy sport. There was an enormous amount of pressure on her personally as a tennis player, but also a lot of people's hopes and expectations were resting on her shoulders.

The players were very welcoming in the US-L-T-A.

One of the women players thought Althea might benefit from a private tour of the grounds before the tournament,

which was very nice of her to take her on,

...