Harlem to the World 1

Being champion is all well and good, but you can't eat a crown.

—Althea Gibson

At the age of 3, Althea Gibson moved to Harlem from South Carolina as many families had done following the Great Depression. She lived on 143rd Street between Lenox Avenue and Seventh Avenue, a designated Police Athletic Area, where she became a local table tennis champion. Little did she know that her love of sports and an introduction to the Harlem River Tennis Courts would eventually take her around the world to India, France, Jamaica, and more. Later she’d say, “In the field of sports you are more or less accepted for what you do rather than what you are.”