Maureen Catherine Connolly-Brinker, known as "Little Mo", was an American tennis player, the winner of nine major singles titles in the early 1950s. In 1953, she became the first woman to win a Grand Slam. She is also the only player in history to win a title without losing a set at all four major championships. The following year, in July 1954, a horseback riding accident seriously injured her right leg and ended her competitive tennis career at age 19. She died of ovarian cancer at the age of 34.
Arthur Robert Ashe Jr. was an American professional tennis player. He won three Grand Slam titles in singles and two in doubles. Ashe was the first black player selected to the United States Davis Cup team, and the only black man ever to win the singles titles at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open. He retired in 1980.
Althea Neale Gibson was an American tennis player and professional golfer, and one of the first Black athletes to cross the color line of international tennis.
Wilmer Leon Fields was an American baseball player who was a household name in the Negro leagues and other baseball circuits between the 1940s and 1950s.
John Albert Kramer was an American tennis player of the 1940s and 1950s, and a pioneer promoter who helped drive the sport towards professionalism at the elite level. Kramer also ushered in the serve-and-volley era in tennis, a playing style with which he won three Grand Slam tournaments. He also led the U.S. Davis Cup tennis team to victory in the 1946 and 1947 Davis Cup finals.
Theodore Roosevelt "Double Duty" Radcliffe was a professional baseball player in the Negro leagues. An accomplished two-way player, he played as a pitcher and a catcher, became a manager, and in his old age became a popular ambassador for the game. He is one of only a handful of professional baseball players who lived past their 100th birthdays, next to Red Hoff and fellow Negro leaguer Silas Simmons.
John Sherratt "Black Jack" Stewart was a Canadian professional ice hockey defenceman who played 12 National Hockey League (NHL) seasons for the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Black Hawks. He won two Stanley Cup championships with the Red Wings and was named to the post-season NHL All-Star team on five occasions: three times on the first team and twice on the second. Stewart also played in the first four NHL All-Star Games. After completing his NHL career as captain of the Black Hawks, he went on to coach numerous teams at various levels of hockey.
Richard Savitt was an American tennis player.
Gardnar Putnam "Gar" Mulloy was a U.S. No. 1 tennis player primarily known for playing in doubles matches with partner Billy Talbert. He was born in Washington, D.C., and turned 100 in November 2013. During his career he won five Grand Slam doubles tournaments and was a member of the winning Davis Cup team on three occasions.
Thomas P. Brown Jr. was one of the top amateur tennis players in the world in the 1940s and a consistent winner in veterans' and seniors' competitions. He was the son of Thomas P. Brown, a newspaper correspondent, later public relations director for a railroad, and Hilda Jane Fisher, who became a schoolteacher when Tom was a boy. Though born in Washington, D.C., Tom was considered a San Franciscan all his life, having been brought west by his parents at the age of two.
Sports in Pittsburgh have been played dating back to the American Civil War. Baseball, hockey, and the first professional American football game had been played in the city by 1892. Pittsburgh was first known as the "City of Champions" when the Pittsburgh Pirates, Pittsburgh Panthers football team, and Pittsburgh Steelers won multiple championships in the 1970s. Today, the city has three major professional sports franchises, the Pirates, Steelers, and Penguins; while the University of Pittsburgh Panthers compete in a Division I Power Five conference, the highest level of collegiate athletics in the United States, in both football and basketball. Local universities Duquesne and Robert Morris also field Division I teams in men's and women's basketball and Division I FCS teams in football. Robert Morris also fields Division I men's and women's ice hockey teams.
Robert Walter "Whirlwind" Johnson was an American physician, college football player and coach, and founder of the American Tennis Association Junior Development Program for African-American youths, where he coached and fostered the careers of Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson.
The American Tennis Association (ATA) is based in Largo, Maryland, outside Washington, D.C., and is the oldest African-American sports organization in the United States. The core of the ATA's modern mission continues to be promoting tennis as a sport for black people and developing junior tennis players, but the ATA welcomes people of all backgrounds.
Robert Larimore Riggs was an American tennis champion who was the world No. 1 amateur in 1939 and world No. 1 professional in 1946 and 1947. He played his first professional tennis match on December 26, 1941.
Ora Belle Washington was an American athlete from the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Washington excelled in both tennis and basketball, and she was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009 and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018. Black newspapers referred to her as "Queen Ora" and the "Queen of Two Courts." According to Arthur Ashe, she may have been one of best tennis players of all time.
Melvin Harold Groomes was an American football player and baseball coach. He played college football at Indiana University from 1944 to 1947 and helped lead the Indiana Hoosiers football team to the Big Ten Conference championship in 1945. In April 1948, he signed with the Detroit Lions, becoming the first African-American signed by the team. He played for the Lions during the 1948 and 1949 seasons and spent the next four years serving in the United States Air Force. He later spent more than 30 years, as a professor and head baseball coach, at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Hubert Arthur Eaton (1916–1991) was an American physician, civil-rights activist, and tennis player in North Carolina.
Jimmie Pierce McDaniel was an African-American tennis player. He won the American Tennis Association, ATA National Championships event four times. He was said to be the "greatest black player of the pre-war (WWII) era." He was a lefty and was about 6 ft 5 in tall.
The Memphis Red Sox were an American Negro league baseball team that was active from 1920 to 1959. Originally named the Barber College Baseball Club, the team was initially owned and operated by Arthur P. Martin, a local Memphis barber. In the late 1920s the Martin brothers, all three Memphis doctors and businessmen, purchased the Red Sox. J. B. Martin, W. S. Martin, and B. B. Martin, would retain control of the club till its dissolution in 1959. The Red Sox played as members, at various times, of the Negro Southern League, Negro National League, and Negro American League. The team was never a titan of the Negro leagues like wealthier teams in northern cities of the United States, but sound management led to a continuous thirty-nine years of operation, a span that was exceeded by very few other teams. Following integration the team had five players that would eventually make the rosters of Major League Baseball teams and two players that were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Oliver Cromwell Dawson was an American athlete and sports coach. After playing several sports at John Carroll University, he served as a coach and athletic director for the South Carolina State Bulldogs from 1935 to 1976. The Bulldogs' Oliver C. Dawson Stadium is named in his honor.
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