Location: 1400 Fayetteville Street in Durham
County: Durham
Original Date Cast: 2018
The American Tennis Association (ATA) was established in 1916 to encourage and support competitive tennis among African Americans, who were not permitted to join the white United States Lawn Tennis Association. It was the nation’s first professional sports league for African Americans. By 1928 North Carolina had twelve clubs registered with the ATA, Algonquin Tennis Club being one of them. Since group travel for African Americans was difficult, especially in the South, after 1927 the ATA National Championships were often held at various Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), where the dormitories and other campus facilities welcomed the athletes and their supporters. The connection with the HBCUs helped to make tennis a popular sport at the schools.
In 1922 a group of tennis enthusiasts in Durham organized a club to give African Americans a place to play the game and to socialize. For the first twelve years the interested members met in private homes. The Algonquin Tennis Club House was purchased in 1934 and improvements were made to fit it out with amenities appropriate to an athletic and social club.
Nathan Garrett described the club in his 2010 memoir as “a two story white frame house with dining and party facilities downstairs and rooms for black tourists up stairs. It was managed by a succession of elderly ladies. Behind the house was a generous and well-kept lawn that sloped down to three red-clay tennis courts that were on two levels…There were umpire stands for each court.” He wrote that any black youth was permitted to learn the game of tennis so long as they had a tennis racket and proper clothing.
The Algonquin Tennis Club hosted tournaments and exhibition matches for black athletes, among them Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe. Dr. Hubert Eaton of Wilmington, with whom Gibson lived for a time, is given much credit for the development of the women’s tennis star. Likewise, Dr. Walter “Whirlwind” Johnson of Lynchburg, Virginia, is credited with Ashe’s training and support.
The Algonquin Tennis Club also provided a meeting place for Durham’s elite African Americans. It was there in 1935 that the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs (DCNA) was formed. The DCNA was (and remains) a powerful political force in the Durham black community. It sought to give a voice to all African Americans in Durham and “to provide a community outlet for the political energy and seldom-seen anger of Durham’s black businessmen.”
The Algonquin Tennis and Social Club, as many called it, became the place where leaders of Black Wall Street, their families, and friends, could relax, socialize, and play tennis. That some of the membership formed and led the politically active DCNA seems inevitable. The tennis club faded away by 1964 but the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs remains active and influential.
References:
American Tennis Association: http://www.americantennisassociation.org/ata-history/
American Tennis Association national circuit: https://theundefeated.com/features/the-rich-and-nuanced-history-of-blac…
HBCU’s roles in supporting the American Tennis Association: https://theundefeated.com/features/role-of-hbcus-black-press-american-t…
“Algonquin Tennis Club Surges Ahead,” Carolina Times, March 4, 1939
Nathan Garrett, A Palette, Not a Portrait (2010)
Walter B. Weare, Black Business in the New South (1973)
Open Durham website: http://www.opendurham.org/buildings/algonquin-tennis-club