| Sport | Tennis |
|---|---|
| Abbreviation | (ATA) |
| Founded | 1916 [1] |
| Location | Largo, Maryland |
| Official website | |
| www | |
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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. [2] [3] 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.
By the early 1890s, despite the association of tennis with upper-class whites, the sport began to attract athletes at black colleges and universities, such as the Tuskegee Institute and Howard University. Because the sport was segregated, blacks established their own tennis clubs around the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., areas to encourage players and create competitions, including Baltimore's Monumental Tennis Club and Washington, D.C.'s Association Tennis Club. [4]
In response to the USTA prohibition against black players in their tournaments, a group of African-American businessmen, college professors, and physicians founded the ATA in Washington on November 30, 1916. Their initial mission statement was to build the infrastructure for black tennis tournaments, to unite black players and fans, and to promote the game within African-American communities. [5] The founders are listed as: Dr. Harry S. McCard, Dr. William H. Wright, Dr. B.M. Rhetta, Ralph Cook, Henry Freeman, and Tally Holmes.
In early tournaments hosted by the ATA, such popular black players as Margaret Peters, Roumania Peters, James Trouman, and Emanuel McDuffle competed. [1] The first ATA National Championships were held the following August at Druid Hill Park in Baltimore, with competitions in men's singles, women's singles, and men's doubles. [5] The earliest tournament recorded might be in early August 1922 at the Germantown, PA YWCA being billed as the "American Tennis Association National Championship Tennis Tournament. [6]
The ATA partnered with prominent black colleges and universities to host their tournaments. This ensured that the tournaments could provide the court time and housing for players and officials, particularly in the Jim Crow South where blacks were excluded from many public facilities and hotels. The colleges and clubs also had facilities for banquet halls and the types of large spaces that enabled the players and fans to organize politically around other issues, and provided space for high-profile events where the universities cultivated donors. [5] [7]
In the 1940s, there was a now famous match between Don Budge, the "white" singles champion at the time, and Jimmie McDaniel, the black champion at the time. Held in Harlem, July 29, 1940, at the Cosmopolitan Tennis Club, in front of a capacity crowd of more than 2,000 patrons. Budge won [6-1, 6-2], but the color-barrier had been broken. [7] Even Althea Gibson had quite a bit of involvement with the organization. [8]
Since 2013, the ATA has been negotiating with the City of Fort Lauderdale and Broward County to build a national training center and home for the Black Tennis Hall of Fame. The city and county were selected because of the preeminence of Sistrunk Boulevard, a historically black neighborhood. The interior of the Hall of Fame is slated to be designed by a Grand Slam champion. [9] [10]
As an effort to secure and maintain a lasting presence online, Rocky Warner a certified tennis coach in Atlanta, Georgia and creative marketing designer volunteered to design, develop and maintain the ATA website. Warner rebranded the ATA Logo (see image below) that currently represents the National Tournament that takes place in the summer. Through the development of the website, Mr. Warner would sit on the executive board as he presented by-laws to the executive committee to represent the Southern Region of the ATA, known as the ATA SOUTH. (https://www.atasouth.org)
Warner's efforts to unify the black tennis south under the ATA SOUTH has been slow as he first needed to build a grassroots youth tennis program in Atlanta. Sugar Creek Golf & Tennis is the home to the ATA SOUTH and the only facility in Georgia with over 100 active black youth learning, training and competing within USTA team tennis, tournament play, Atlanta Lawn Tennis Association league play, UTR, WTN and ATA Regional Rally's. Warner has successfully directed ATA sanctioned tournaments and WTN events.
As part of the USTA’s partnership with the ATA, the National Campus will welcome the National Championships to its ground at least once every three to four years.
The 101st American Tennis Association National Championships were played at the USTA National campus between July 28 – August 4, 2018, [11] with the final results posted. [12]
The 102nd American Tennis Association National Championships were played in Fort Lauderdale in 2021. [13] [14]
First held in August 1917 at Druid Hill Park in Baltimore.
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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. In 1956, she became the first African American to win a Grand Slam event. The following year she won both Wimbledon and the US Nationals, then won both again in 1958 and was voted Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press in both years. In all, she won 11 Grand Slam tournaments: five singles titles, five doubles titles, and one mixed doubles title. "She is one of the greatest players who ever lived", said Bob Ryland, a tennis contemporary and former coach of Venus and Serena Williams. "Martina [Navratilova] couldn't touch her. I think she'd beat the Williams sisters." Gibson was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame and the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame. In the early 1960s she also became the first Black player to compete on the Women's Professional Golf Tour.
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