The Jewish tennis player Angela Buxton, who has died aged 85, broke down barriers and showed a healthy disregard for convention along with her doubles partner, the African American Althea Gibson
I met Angela Buxton only once, in New York about a year ago, at the US Open. What a treat it was. She was sitting there in her wheelchair in the main media room of the Billie Jean King Center like an unexploded hand grenade, looking with mild suspicion at the notebooks and tape recorders of a small clutch of reporters, most of whom were not born when she was playing her best tennis and who struggled now to figure her out.
Buxton died at home in Florida at the weekend, remembered here and there, but not with the acclaim she deserved. While her accomplishments garnered a few lines, there was much more to a story that began in Liverpool 85 years ago.
Continue reading...