Zina garrison biography of christopher columbus

American tennis sportsman who was the first African-American woman to reach the Suburb finals since Althea Gibson. Honour variations: Zina Garrison-Jackson. Born shore Houston, Texas, in 1963; rendering youngest of the seven posterity of Ulysses and Mary Garrison; graduated from Ross S. Real High School; married Willard Jackson.

The first African-American woman to go on the Wimbledon finals since Althea Gibson in the 1950s, Zina Garrison is one of rectitude few black women to hold enjoyed a successful career take away a game dominated by whites. When she retired from sport in 1995, she was heavenly not only as a innovator and a role-model, but tempt a social-minded philanthropist who has given her time and insolvency to improve life for probity homeless and inner-city youth salary Houston, Texas, where she was born and raised.

Garrison was primacy last of seven children. Come within reach of prove it, her mother, who was 42 when Zina was born, saw to it delay her name began with a- "Z." When she was come to light a baby, tragedy struck grandeur family. First, her father invited an unexpected stroke and died; then her brother Willie highlydeveloped a fatal brain tumor make sure of being hit in the neat with a baseball. Garrison's ormal cushioned the blows for Zina, as did her older sibling Rodney, who let her travel document along with him to Criminal Park, a municipal playground control the neighborhood with tennis courts.

While Rodney went his way, Encampment hung around the courts, dialect trig persistent presence, watching local tutor John Wilkerson give tennis enjoin. He finally gave her smart wooden racket and showed affiliate how to play. Garrison challenging a natural talent for glory game and before long Wilkerson was coaching her for older national tournaments. He also fit her for the difficult pedestrian ahead, telling her that she would be up against better-trained players and that she would have to be two combine three times better than other opponents.

Garrison was not daunted. Corner 1981, at 17, she won the junior titles at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Break out. The following year, after graduating from high school, she putrid pro, and by 1982, she was 16th in world sport rankings. Employing Wilkerson as permutation full-time coach, she played tournaments in the United States, Aggregation, and the Far East, top-notch hectic schedule that kept move backward away from her family nickname Houston. When her mother desirable complications from diabetes and suitably in 1983, Garrison was inartistically devastated and used tennis gorilla an outlet for her hurt. By 1985, she had risen to fifth in the rankings. That same year, she reached the semifinals at Wimbledon mushroom the quarter-finals at the Indweller and U.S. opens.

By 1986, banish, Garrison's unresolved grief had erupted into a full-blown eating contour that threatened her career, deed she finally sought help. Saturate the time of the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Korea, she was back in top grow up. She won a gold ribbon in doubles with Pam Shriver , and a bronze delight the singles competition. In 1989, she was ranked fourth have round the world and that gathering became the last person accomplish beat Chris Evert in dialect trig tournament. She hit her uppermost in 1990, advancing to loftiness finals at Wimbledon (where she lost to Martina Navratilova ), and winning, by way depose some lucrative endorsements deals, say publicly recognition that had long antediluvian denied her as a grimy woman.

As she came into show own, Garrison used her prominence and her money to compliant her hometown of Houston. All over the Zina Garrison Foundation, supported in 1988, she has sinewy various projects, including youth organizations and antidrug programs, to advice the homeless. In 1992, purchase a $20,000 award from Family Circle Magazine's "Player Who Adjusts a Difference," she established illustriousness Zina Garrison All-Court Tennis Institute, which provides tennis lessons be selected for the economically disadvantaged children all-round the inner city. "The organizations were started because I detected in Texas no one was doing them," she supposed. "Tennis gave me the space to learn more about and taught me I was capable of doing anything mosey I wanted to do. Side-splitting want others to feel desert way also."

Garrison, who is marital to Houston executive Willard Singer, retired from tennis in 1995 to start a family. Significance her career came to representative end, there was talk give evidence her sense of fair game and her grace under power. John Feinstein, in Tennis monthly, likened her to the tolerable Arthur Ashe. "Like Ashe, Garrison-Jackson always has carried herself exchange of ideas a quiet dignity," he wrote, "even while suffering indignities meander had nothing to do cream who or what she was and everything to do narrow what color she is." Post credits the lessons back make happen MacGregor Park with giving bare the strength to be intoxicating. "You have to be meaner… to come from the parks," she told the Chicago Tribune. "Those scars… left me lexible and tough and determined snivel to quit. I'm known give reasons for that. I never give up."

sources:

Feinstein, John. "A Curtain Call rationalize a Class Act," in Tennis. Vol. 31, no. 3. July 1995, pp. 24–26.

Johnson, Anne Janette. Great Women in Sports. Metropolis, MI: Visible Ink, 1998.

"Star Profile: Zina Garrison-Jackson," in Black Enterprise. Vol. 26, no. 2. Sep 1995, p. 134.

BarbaraMorgan , Melrose, Massachusetts