Tennis fans streaming into Arthur Ashe Stadium in the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center for the US Open every September might be forgiven for not pausing to notice a statue along the way. People can pass by monuments every day without noticing them or, as Robert Musil famously noted, ever having “the slightest notion of whom they are supposed to represent.” That might especially be the case for the bronze bust, emerging from a granite cube, that honors Althea Gibson—likely unrecognizable to most tournament-goers if it weren’t for the name etched into its base. Though Gibson broke the color line in American tennis in 1950 and was the first African American to compete in the US Nationals at Forest Hills (almost a full decade before Ashe made his major tournament debut there), she was overlooked for decades by all but the most ardent devotees of Black or women’s tennis.
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