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Althea saw no need to be sociable. She had come to play tennis, and she had come to win. Anything less rasped her raw nerves. She avoided parties and other players; she spent all her time practicing and playing poker with the ballboys.
One day, when she recognized Boxer Sugar Ray Robinson in a Harlem bowling alley, Althea went up to him and said brashly: "You're Sugar Ray, aren't you? Well, I can beat you." The blunt greeting started a fast friendship. "Althea used to come over to our apartment and sit on the floor," says Sugar Ray's wife, Edna Mae. "She was unhappy; she had a gaunt build and she felt that she was the least good-looking girl she knew. She had insecurity and went into herself. She used to talk wild. I tried to make her feel she could be something."
"Don't Kid Me." The trouble was that by then Althea dominated Negro girls' tennis, and she was getting nowhere fast. She shot pool and billiards, soaked up jazz and thought of a career as a nightclub singer or musician (Sugar Ray bought her a saxophone). Then, in the summer of 1946, Althea moved up to the women's division of the Negro A.T.A. national championships. She was beaten in the finals by Roumania Peters, a Tuskegee Institute instructor, but her tremendous potential as a tennis player caught the attention of two A.T.A. officials: Dr. Robert Johnson, a general practitioner from Lynchburg, Va., and Dr. Hubert Eaton, a surgeon from Wilmington, N.C. Dr. Johnson took Althea aside and asked bluntly: "How'd you like to play at Forest Hills some day?"
Said Althea: "Don't kid me."
Johnson was not kidding; he had a plan. Dr. Eaton would take Althea to Wilmington for the winter and put her through high school; in the summer she would travel the Negro tournament circuit with the Johnsons. Her family agreed, and Eaton still recalls Althea's arrival at the railroad station in Wilmington: "There she was with Sugar Ray's sax in one hand and in the other an old pasteboard suitcase with two belts tied around it. She was wearing an old skirt; she'd never owned a dress in her life. My wife bought her a few dresses and tried to make her more feminine by getting her straight hair curled and showing her how to use lipstick."
First Touch of Fame. The Kid from Harlem gave the Eatons a rough time. She hung out in a poolroom. Her table manners were so bad that the Eatons made her eat in the kitchen ("She was underfed, and it took almost a year to fill her up properly"). At first, 19-year-old Althea could not even qualify for the freshman class in high school. But she worked sternly, and she finished among the top ten in the graduating class. Four or five times a week, Dr. Eaton practiced tennis with her. "I tried to show Althea how to be a lady on the court," he says, "but she was still unable to accept defeat with grace. If I ran up a 4-1 lead, she'd just quit. Anyone who could get' a lead on her could beat her."