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NovotnyLawrence.pptxNovotny Lawrence
From Compton to Center Court: Venus and Serena and the Black Female Experience in Professional Tennis
Novotny Lawrence
Novotny Lawrence maps out the history of Black women in tennis. He starts with describing what is considered “the moment that women gained equality in professional tennis” – the Billie Jean King-Bobby Riggs match. (93)
He notes that this story is told at the “expense of African American female tennis players who had been working to gain respectability in the sport long before King and Riggs ever set foot on the court in the Houston Astrodome.” (93)
Novotny Lawrence
In his historical overview, Lawrence comments that “it is unclear why Blacks were attracted to the game [tennis] in the first place.” (94)
“A number of Blacks were playing the game by the 1890s.” When the United States National Lawn Tennis Association was founded in 1881, African Americans were barred from participating in professional tennis.” (94)
In spite of these restrictions, African American interest in the sport grew and a “group of African American businessmen, college professors, and physicians founded the American Tennis Association (ATA).”
Novotny Lawrence
Lawrence observes that the ATA did not restrict whites from playing as the USNLTA prevented African Americans.
The “ATA would become the preeminent Black tennis organization, hosting tournaments.” (94-95)
He mentions the dominance of Ora Williams in tennis. While Williams won several tournaments, she was prevented from playing against white players.
Novotny Lawrence
Lawrence then discusses Althea Gibson. Gibson, like Williams, was an extraordinary tennis player and initially it seemed that she would also never be able to play against white players.
“Four-time U.S. Nationals Champion and 1939 Wimbledon Champion Alice Marble” wrote an open letter that “challenged the USLTA’s racist practices.” (96) This letter along with the ATA persistence enabled Gibson to play tournaments against white players.
In 1956, Gibson wins the French Open and “was the Wimbledon runner-up.” (97). The following year, she won Wimbledon.”
Novotny Lawrence
Zina Garrison is the last player Lawrence cites. Garrison reached the final of Wimbledon in 1990, wins a bronze medal in the 1988 Olympics in Women’s Singles and a gold in doubles with Pam Shriver.
As Lawrence transitions to the second part of the essay, he states that the stories of these women and others “rarely receive the recognition that they deserve in mainstream accounts of tennis history.” (99)
Novotny Lawrence
Lawrence analyzes the documentary Venus and Serena, written, produced, and directed by Maiken Baird and Michelle Major. Baird had produced several documentaries while Major was a producer for Good Morning America.
Baird and Major were granted access to the family and “spent the entire 2011 season with the sisters, recording over 450 hours of footage that they would use in conjunction with archival materials to bring the one-hundred-minute documentary to fruition.” (100)
Novotny Lawrence
The documentary moves between the past and present. During the season, both sisters are injured.
Lawrence observes that “Baird and Major subtly challenge the traditional accounts of Venus’s and Serena’s training, which credit Richard (and their mother, Oracene Williams) for making his daughters successful professional players.” Rich Macci, a coach based in Florida is often not mentioned.
Lawrence discusses the 2001 U.S. Open final where the sisters played one another. It was the first time two Black players played a final and on the court named after Arthur Ashe, an African American tennis legend and activist.
Novotny Lawrence
Lawrence delineates the racism the sisters faced from the start of the careers. He notes the 2001 Indian Wells Final where the crowd was explicitly horrible to Serena. Venus and Serena boycott that tournament for several years.
One of the issues that Lawrence’s chapter addresses is the media’s treatment of Venus and Serena. Though sports is often falsely framed as a meritocracy where the cream rises to the top, it is not. And some of the people most hostile to African American athletes are sports writers, who are mostly white and male.
Novotny Lawrence
One example of this hostility are articles written that condemned the sisters for their continued boycott of Indian Wells. The audacity (or caucasisty) of white men, who typically aren’t even athletes, to tell Black women who had experienced unprecedented racism at a tournament its time to get over their traumatizing experience and return to the place of their assault embodies yet another way racism operates.
Novotny Lawrence
Another example of media hostility is how the sisters are constantly framed as controversial when most of their actions are not. Thus when the documentary premieres there are rumors that the sisters didn’t attend because they disliked the film.
The film was subject to a lawsuit from the USTA.
