Serving Herself

Sometimes, in a tough neighborhood, where there is no way for a kid to prove himself except by playing games and fighting, you've got to establish a record for being able to look out for yourself before they will leave you alone. If they think you're aneasy mark, they will all look to build up their own reputations by beating up on you. I learned always to get in the first punch. Althea Gibson, 1958. Four days after her historic victory at Wimbledon in July 1957, Althea Gibson sat at the head table between her parents during a luncheon held in her honor at New York City's famed Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Wearing a dress of red and blue silk with a corsage pinned to her lapel, she listened as local officials sang her praises. Gibson was "an American girl,""a real lady," and "a wonderful ambassador ... [and] saleswoman" for the country, they said. Speaker after speaker reached for superlatives and generalities to pay tribute to Gibson for rising improbably from "the sidewalks of New York," in the words of Mayor Robert F. Wagner, to winning the most prestigious tennis tournament in the world. The commissioner of the department of commerce and public events cut closest to the truth with six words: "She came up the hard way""--