The Match
Althea Gibson and a Portrait of a Friendship
Chapter OneAlthea
Althea Gibson was born in South Carolina, but at three years old she was bundled off to Harlem to live with her aunt Sally, who sold bootleg whiskey. That's the story as she tells it in I Always Wanted to Be Somebody, and we have no reason to doubt it. Althea's memory fadeed by the end; she was said to be unable to recall the details of a single tennis match she played. "I don't remember everything I did, or when, or how," she said in a lucid moment not long before her death. But there is enough verifiable fact already on the record to get us where we need to go.
She was born in Silver, South Carolina, on August 25, 1927, to parents Daniel and Annie. She weighed eight pounds. She spent much her youth in Harlem with her younger brother and three sisters, and couple of years in Philadelphia -- most likely 1934 and 1935 -- with ht aunt Daisy. This was not unusual at the height of the Great Depression. Families dispatched their children to live with relatives who still had work, and food t ... read full excerpt from: The Match ebook
