A new stadium was opened in August 1997 in Flushing, N.Y., home of the U.S. Open tennis tournament. It was named for Arthur Ashe, the only black man to win the championship. He won it once, in 1968, winning Wimbledon and the Australian Open once as well. But while Ashe was worthy, surely, of such exalted honor, the stadium should have been named for Althea Gibson.
We don’t know what went through Gibson’s mind on the day the Arthur Ashe Stadium was inaugurated. She was just short of her 70th birthday, living alone and destitute in an apartment in East Orange, N.J. How could she not have wondered why the honor didn’t go to her, the very first black player—male or female—to play in the U.S. National Championships at Forest Hills, N.Y. (the amateur precursor of the U.S. Open)?