The impact of barriers in the sport of tennis

[2]

As I was researching this topic more and more, I thought about just typing in race barriers in sports and see what would pop up. I wanted to know more about how African Americans females got their break in the sports world as well. When I first began researching, I noticed that it was all male athletes that I was talking about, and I want to get a different take on the topic. Of all the photos, this one kept to seem showing up. It's a unique photo of a white tennis player giving congratulatory kisses to African American player, Althea Gibson.
On this topic, I was still looking to get another perspective on how Althea Gibson really changed racial barriers in sports. So, I decided to look at books for sources to see what I could find. In the book titled Glory Bound, Black Athletes in a White America, [1] there was an excerpt included about her. This said, "Althea was a great tennis star who broke several racial barriers in the sport, but did not see herself as a champion of civil rights". By reading this I started to think more in depth about how all the African American athletes over time probably thought to themselves how it was no big deal about achieving a great feat in their sport, they were just playing; but to the rest of the world, it was a foreign concept to them. Also from this reading, I was able to grasp how the civil rights movement changed the face of American athletics and society forever and how I wanted to look at other African American female pro athletes and how they made an impact. Who fits this better than the Williams sisters; Venus and Serena?
This photo was a significant part of my research because it led me to what I believe is my grand conclusion, yet is still somewhat of a spinoff from my original idea. It really got me thinking, being a tennis player myself, how there are stereotypes revolved around just this sport alone, which is huge to think about when thinking about racial barriers in all of the sports. As I sit here and think, "what stereotypes could be relate to tennis though?", one keeps popping up in my head. It is one that I have heard for awhile now that I, myself have been irritated by, which is that tennis is referred to as a "rich, white person sport". With both of these ideas spinning in my head, I want to start off by just getting some basic knowledge about Venus and Serena as players and also how they broke racial barriers during their time and go from there to answer my next question on tennis being a "rich, white person" sport.

Nonetheless, it is important to notice this type of social interaction during this time period. What are your thoughts about this? When I look at this, a lot of thoughts and feelings come rushing through my mind. I think about the race and gender issues both being quite prevalent here because of the type of photo it is, still in black and white coloring which shows that it was before the time that color photography was really even a thing.

[1] Wiagins, David K. Glory Bound: Black Athletes in a White America. New York: Syracuse University Press, 1997.

[2] http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/02/sport/tennis/us-open-althea-gibson-tennis/