On August 14, 1956, Althea Gibson became the first Black player — male or female — to win a Grand Slam title, taking the French Championships at Roland Garros. The following year she won Wimbledon and the U.S. Nationals. She won both again in 1958. She was ranked world number one.

In 1958, after winning Wimbledon, she was invited to a ticker-tape parade in New York City. The parade went down Broadway. Mayor Wagner gave her the key to the city. She was photographed smiling in an open car. The New York Times reported the parade and the key and the smiles.

The New York Times also reported, in the same period, that Gibson's tennis earnings were negligible — professional tennis did not yet exist in its modern form; the major tournaments were amateur and paid nothing. She lived on endorsements and speaking fees. In 1958, the year she was ranked number one in the world, she had no reliable income from tennis.

Gibson had grown up in Harlem, the child of sharecroppers from South Carolina. She learned tennis on the ATA circuit — the American Tennis Association, which ran tournaments for Black players because the United States Lawn Tennis Association was segregated. She was brought to the attention of the USTA in 1950 by Alice Marble, a white former champion who wrote an editorial in American Lawn Tennis magazine demanding Gibson be allowed to compete. The editorial was controversial.

After retiring from tennis in 1958, Gibson turned professional golfer and became the first Black woman to earn an LPGA tour card. She played professional golf through the 1960s. She never won a major.

She spent her later years coaching and teaching in Newark, New Jersey, largely in poverty. She suffered a series of strokes in the 1990s. A fundraising letter she sent to supporters in 1996 was the last time many in the tennis world realized how isolated she had become.

She died in 2003. The USTA National Tennis Center in New York has a statue of her.