They were both outsiders in the starched white world of elite 1950s tennis, superb players but excluded from tournaments and clubs and shunned on the circuit because of their heritage. Angela Buxton, a white, Jewish Englishwoman, was a granddaughter of Russian Jews who had fled the pogroms in the early 1900s; Althea Gibson, a Black American, was born in a sharecropper’s shack in South Carolina and grew up in Harlem. In 1956, they won the French Championships and Wimbledon, the jewel in the crown of a sport that had hardly welcomed them. 1 ranked female player in the world. Ms. Buxton died at 85 on Aug. 14 at her home in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., the International Tennis Federation announced.

Source: International New York Times August 26, 2020 20:15 UTC