The participation of Black players in tennis didn’t begin with the Williams sisters, or even when Althea Gibson officially integrated tennis at the U.S. National Championships at the West Side Tennis Club in 1950. Rather, just as every institution in post-Reconstruction/Jim Crow America, the United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA) — the precursor to the USTA — had a parallel Black organization: the American Tennis Association (ATA), set up and run by Black Americans for Black American achievement. Started in 1916 with the union of three smaller Black tennis clubs, the ATA held its first ATA National Championships, consisting of three events (men’s and women’s singles and men’s doubles), at Baltimore’s Druid Hill Park just a year later. Since then, it has been the premiere institution for promoting the sport to minorities in the U.S.
In post-Reconstruction, Blacks still took significant abuse from the white public for trying to play tennis, considered an elite spot. In 1885, Currier & Ives distributed prints illustrating the racial stereotypes that pervaded white attitudes: that Black individuals possessed speed and strength, but lacked the fine motor skills, coordination and intelligence to master the “skill” sports. Yet, Blacks kept coming to Black tennis clubs, such as the Chautauqua Tennis Club in Philadelphia (established in 1890), and others throughout the Northeast.
If Black tennis wasn’t lampooned, it was generally ignored. Prior to the Open Era, local and state ATA tournaments results went largely unreported in the white press. Rather, the Black newspapers, such as the Pittsburgh Courier, the New York Amsterdam News and the Chicago Defender put tennis tournament results on their front pages — a section that might place an article detailing lynchings, burnings and the activities of the Ku Klux Klan alongside such achievements.