“She used to call me Angie.”
In the 1950s, Angela Buxton and Althea Gibson were singled out in tennis because of where they came from and how they looked. Together, however, the granddaughter of Russian Jews who’d settled in England and the African-American woman born in the South and raised in Harlem united to not only become a Grand Slam-winning doubles team, but transcendent figures in the history of the sport.
Called an “an early pioneer of equal rights,” by the International Tennis Federation, Buxton passed away at her home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., earlier this month, just shy of her 86th birthday.
The Briton had graced the US Open grounds as recently as last year, when she traveled to New York to help unveil the commemorative statue of her longtime friend at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.
Born in 1934 in Liverpool, England, Buxton often discussed the anti-Semitism she faced in her formative years and as an adult, revealing that she was often refused entry into tennis clubs because of her religious background.
“I was dealt that card before I even started,” she said last year, “but I am of the nature of being able to take it on. Carry on and ignore it.”
Having spent time training in London and Los Angeles, Buxton became one of the best British players of her era. At 21, she reached the quarterfinals of Wimbledon in 1955 and ultimately befriended Gibson when the two met at an exhibition event in India that December. Buxton quickly became an ally for Gibson in the American's fight against the racism she experienced at home in the United States and abroad, while the two continued to challenge the prejudices that were also present within the sport they both played.
With Gibson struggling to find a doubles partner ahead of the 1956 French Championships, Buxton’s coach, Clarence “Jimmy” Jones, helped arrange the historic partnership. The two went on to win in Paris and at Wimbledon that year, and Buxton also became the first British woman to reach the singles final at the All England Club since 1939.
“She had never played doubles; no one had spoken to her, let alone asked her to play doubles,” Buxton said. “It was out of the question. This is how she came to me in the first place and I came to her.”
Though their doubles partnership itself was brief—Buxton was forced to retire in 1957 as a result of the chronic hand condition tenosynovitis—she stayed close to Gibson until the latter’s passing in 2003.
An author of several books on tennis, Buxton was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, located in Netanya, Israel, in 1981 and New York’s National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, on Long Island, N.Y., in 2014. A year later, Buxton was also included in the Black Tennis Hall of Fame in honor of what she helped Gibson achieve.
And while Gibson’s pioneering legacy is now immortalized in stone on the grounds of the US Open, Buxton succinctly summarized last year why that tangible reminder is just representative of something bigger.
“The main thing is not the statue. It's what I learned from her and what I enjoyed with her. That's the main thing,” she said.
“People are now willing to celebrate it and remember it—that's all very important. The statue goes along [with that]. She would be the same without the statue. The memories would still be the same.”
