📍West 143rd Street, Harlem, New York, NY 10030, USA
1930 – 1946“I was born in August 1927 in Silver, South Carolina, where my parents, Daniel and Annie, were sharecroppers on a cotton farm. When I was three, after a bad harvest, we moved north to Harlem, and we settled in an apartment on West 143rd Street between Lenox and Seventh Avenues. I was the eldest of the children, and I was a tall, restless, rebellious girl who hated school and often skipped it to play ball, go to the movies or roam the city. My father was strict, and we clashed often. Our block was a play street, closed to traffic by the Police Athletic League so children could play, and right in front of our stoop was a paddle tennis court. I started hitting a ball there and soon beat everyone on the block, and at twelve I won the New York City women's paddle tennis championship. The play street director, Buddy Walker, a bandleader who worked for the city in the summers, saw me and bought me my first tennis rackets. He took me to the Harlem River courts, where I was soon beating the men, and then to the Cosmopolitan Tennis Club, the club of Harlem's Black middle class, whose members raised money for my junior membership and lessons with their coach, Fred Johnson. They also tried, with some success, to teach me manners. In 1946 two doctors in the American Tennis Association, Dr Hubert Eaton and Dr Robert Walter Johnson, invited me south to finish school and train. In 1950 I broke the colour barrier at the US Championships, and in 1956 I became the first Black player to win a Grand Slam title, then Wimbledon in 1957 and 1958.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today