Althea
Black History Month
•
1h 24m
Directed by Rex Miller • Documentary • 2014 • 83 minutes
Althea Gibson broke records on and off the tennis court. A truant from the rough streets of Harlem, Gibson emerged as a most unlikely queen of the highly segregated tennis world in the 1950s. A sharecropper's daughter, Gibson's family migrate north to Harlem in the 1930s, when fame that thrust her into the glare of the early Civil Rights movement.
No player, not even the great Arthur Ashe (who came a decade after Gibson), overcame more obstacles to become a champion than Althea Gibson; the first African-American to play at-and win-Wimbledon and the US Open was a woman.
Gibson was celebrated by ticker-tape parades in New York City, twice, to welcome her home after hard-fought victories. But there was no professional tennis circuit for women in her era, so her options were limited. As Gibson said, 'You can't eat a crown.' When she became the #1 player in the world, she still could not afford her own apartment.
In Rex Miller's moving and thoroughly-researched documentary, this elite athlete is finally given the attention she so richly deserves as uncompromising and courageous trailblazer and American pioneer.
Up Next in Black History Month
-
King of the Hill
Directed by William Canning, Donald Brittain • Documentary • 1974 • 56 minutes
Spring 1972. The Chicago Cubs are poised to win the National League's Pennant race, lead by their star pitcher, a Black Canadian named Ferguson Jenkins, who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991. Out of ...
-
Black is... Black Ain't
Directed by Marlon Riggs • Documentary • 1995 • 87 minutes
Having grappled with the stereotypes imposed upon black people by white America, Riggs turned his attention to another fraught issue: the definitions of “blackness” that African-Americans impose on each other. Weaving together poetry, co...
-
Carmen and Geoffrey
Directed by Linda Atkinson & Nick Doob • Documentary • With Carmen de Lavallade, Geoffrey Holder, Ailvin Ailey, Lester Horton, Duke Ellington, Josephine Baker • 2006 • 80 minutes
Carmen de Lavallade and Geoffrey Holder, two living legends in the world of American dance, are the subjects of t...