Yes, Bertram Baker’s story is about Brooklyn politics in the early 1900s. But it's also about how blacks fought to break down barriers keeping them out of all-white tennis competitions in the early twentieth century. During the Great Depression, and all the way through the 1960s, Baker headed the American Tennis Association, the all-black organization that nurtured Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe. Baker helped make history when, in the 1950s, he negotiated to have Althea accepted into white tennis matches like Wimbledon and what's now known as the U.S. Open. Baker believed there was something in sports that strengthened the character. And there was something about Baker that helped Althea focus on winning while navigating racial and gender issues on and off the court. He not only encouraged blacks to play tennis, but he also started baseball leagues for boys in his Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood. As Baker's grandson and biographer, Ron Howell. reports, Bertram Baker believed that life itself was a game.
Yanick Rice Lamb