ORA WASHINGTON African American Woman Tennis Champion ORIG PHOTO Black Americana

Description

This is a 6x8 inch vintage original
press photo from 1929
of Ora Washington,
possibly from her 1929 match when she won her first singles championship in Chicago.
Ora Belle Washington (1898 – 1971)
was an American athlete from the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was the first prominent African American athlete to dominate two sports, tennis and basketball. Washington was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009. In her first five years, Washington won numerous titles, and she held the ATA national title from 1929 to 1936. Washington continued to play up until the late 1940s, where she added 12 doubles titles, winning her last doubles title at 46 years old, and three mixed doubles championships to her already impressive trophy case.
Washington began playing tennis in the early 1920s around the time that her older sister, Georgia, died of tuberculosis. In 1924, she went on to win the Wilmington, Delaware city championships in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles. The following year, she defeated the reigning national singles champion Isadore Channels. She won her first national title in 1925 with Lula Ballard at the American Tennis Association's national doubles tournament, which she would continue to win for the next eleven years.
After moving to Chicago in 1929, Washington won her first singles championship that same year when she defeated Frances Gittens in three sets.
She would win the title seven more times by 1937.
Despite a desire to play in United States Lawn Tennis Association tournaments, that organization maintained their policy of racial segregation until 1948, after Washington had retired from tennis.
She played basketball first in 1930 with the Germantown Hornets where her 22–1 record earned her the national female title. The Hornets were originally sponsored by a local YMCA, but they separated from the YMCA and became a fully professional team.
The following year, Washington led the Hornets to thirty-three consecutive victories. Their opponents included African American women's teams, white women's teams and occasionally African American men's teams. In one game against the male Quicksteppers in January 1932, they stayed close and then on a last second basket by Evelyn Mann, the Hornets emerged victorious. Later, playing with the Philadelphia Tribune Girls from 1932–1942, she was the team's center, leading scorer, and coach.[1] Washington played for the Tribunes in a three-game event against Bennett College in 1934. The Tribunes won all three games, the second of which was described by the Chicago Defender as "the greatest exhibition ever staged in North Carolina". The Tribune Girls won 11 straight Women's Colored Basketball World's Championships. Washington was said to be "the best Colored player in the world."
(SOURCE: Wikipedia)
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