To award posthumously a Congressional Gold Medal to Althea Gibson, in recognition of her groundbreaking achievements in athletics and her commitment to ending racial discrimination and prejudice within the world of athletics.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Althea Gibson Excellence Act''.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
The Congress finds the following: (1) Althea Gibson was born August 25, 1927, in Silver, South Carolina. (2) Althea Gibson lived with her family in Harlem during the 1930s and 1940s. She was first introduced to tennis on the Harlem River Tennis Courts. She went on to dominate the all- Black American Tennis Association tournaments throughout the early 1940s, when racism and segregation prevented her from participating in tournaments sponsored by the United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA). (3) Althea Gibson graduated from Florida A & M University in 1953, and was an athletic instructor at the Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. (4) Despite her extraordinary athletic prowess, Althea was repeatedly denied entry into the world's top tennis tournaments based on the color of her skin. Alice Marble, a four-time U.S. Open champion, wrote a historic editorial published in the July 1950 American Lawn Tennis magazine, condemning the sport of tennis for excluding players of Althea Gibson's caliber. (5) Althea excelled in the Eastern Grass Court Championships at the Orange Lawn Tennis Club in South Orange, New Jersey. Her...