Jimmie McDaniel
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Jimmie Pierce McDaniel (September 4, 1916 – March 8, 1990) was an African-American tennis player. He won the
American Tennis Association The American Tennis Association (ATA) is based in Largo, Maryland, outside Washington, D.C., and is the oldest African-American sports organization in the United States. The core of the ATA's modern mission continues to be promoting tennis as a ...
, ATA National Championships event four times (1939–1941, 1946). He was said to be the "greatest black player of the pre-war (WWII) era." He was a lefty and was about 6 ft 5 in tall. He was active from 1939 to 1954 and won 10 career singles titles.


Biography

McDaniel was born on 4 September 1919 in Greenville, Alabama, United States. Jimmie was raised in
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where he attended
Manual Arts High School Manual Arts High School is a secondary public school in Los Angeles, California, United States. History Manual Arts High School was founded in 1910 in the middle of bean fields, one-half mile from the nearest bus stop. It was the third high sc ...
. His father Willis McDaniel was a former baseball player in the
Negro leagues The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams of African Americans. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be used narrowly for the seven relativel ...
who worked as a railroad porter in Los Angeles; his mother, Ruby McDaniel, worked as a domestic six days a week to put food on the table. When Willis died, his wife, Ruby (Harrison) McDaniel, was left to care for their seven young children. Jimmie picked up tennis in elementary school, hitting balls against a backboard or practicing on the school’s sole dirt court. He never had a lesson and never played a junior tournament. At Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles, he focused on track and field until his senior year, when he joined the previously all-white tennis team and led it to the league championship. Although the only Black player on his high school's tennis squad, McDaniel was the highest ranked player at the school. In 1935, McDaniel played a practice match against a fellow Los Angeles high school student
Bobby Riggs Robert Larimore Riggs (February 25, 1918 – October 25, 1995) was an American tennis champion who was the world No. 1 amateur in 1939 and world No. 1 professional in 1946 and 1947. He played his first professional tennis match on December ...
, who was then the top-ranked junior player in the country, and who would go on to win
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in 1939 and the U.S. Nationals in 1939 and 1941. (He is best remembered for losing to
Billie Jean King Billie Jean King (née Moffitt; born November 22, 1943), also known as BJK, is an American former World number 1 ranked female tennis players, world No. 1 tennis player. King won 39 Grand Slam (tennis), Grand Slam titles: 12 in singles, 16 in w ...
in what was billed as the “ Battle of the Sexes,” at the
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in 1973.) At the time of the match Riggs was ranked as the number one junior player in the country and McDaniel had only been playing for two years. McDaniel lost, 7–5, 13–11, in the hotly contested battle. McDaniel continued his tennis career by winning the 1938 Southern California Men's Singles Open title and share the Double's title with his brother Al McDaniel. In 1938, at age 22, McDaniel, recruited by Olympian
Ralph Metcalfe Ralph Harold Metcalfe Sr. (May 29, 1910 – October 10, 1978) was an American track and field sprinter and politician. He jointly held the world record in the 100-meter dash and placed second in that event in two Olympics, first to Eddie Tola ...
, was awarded a track scholarship to
Xavier University of Louisiana Xavier University of Louisiana (XULA) is a Private university, private Historically black colleges and universities, historically black Roman Catholic, Catholic university in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is the only Catholic Historically black c ...
in New Orleans — he was a powerful runner who had once leapt 6 feet 4 ½ inches to win the Southern California scholastic high-jump title — but he quickly found his way to the tennis courts instead. During his tenure at Xavier University McDaniel would win numerous championships among the then-segregated ranks of black tennis players. Banned from the NCAA Championships, he dominated a Black-college circuit that included schools like Tuskegee,
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, and Prairie View. In the spring of 1939, still as a college freshman, he became the National Open Men's Singles Champion, and shared the Doubles title with his schoolmate, Richard Cohen. Between 1939 and 1941, McDaniel would win the Singles title at Prairie View Intercollegiate, the Southwestern Open, the North Carolina Open, the Eastern Sectional Open, the Southern Intercollegiate Sectionals, the New York Open, and the American Tennis Association National Tournament. Paired with Richard Cohen, they would win the Doubles title at the North Carolina Open, the South Carolina Open, the Eastern Sectional Open, and the New York Open. They would go on to win the National Doubles title in 1939 but were upset in the semi-finals in 1940. Cohen had previously held the title in 1938. McDaniel would again win the National Singles title in 1941. He would finish his collegiate career at Xavier University in 1942.


Match against Don Budge

On July 29, 1940, McDaniel would unofficially break tennis' color barrier by participating in an exhibition match against
Don Budge John Donald Budge (June 13, 1915 – January 26, 2000) was an American tennis player. He is most famous as the first tennis player — male or female — to win all four Grand Slam tournaments in one year and complete the Grand Slam. Budge was ...
, winner of the
Grand Slam Grand Slam or Grand slam may refer to: Games and sports * Grand slam, winning category terminology originating in contract bridge and other whist card games Athletics * Grand Slam Track, professional track and field league Auto racing * ...
in 1938, that received wide attention. At the time, The Cosmopolitan Club in
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served as the headquarters of the
American Tennis Association The American Tennis Association (ATA) is based in Largo, Maryland, outside Washington, D.C., and is the oldest African-American sports organization in the United States. The core of the ATA's modern mission continues to be promoting tennis as a ...
(ATA) — home to the nation’s Black players—and the Budge-McDaniel exhibition was held there in conjunction with an ATA tournament. For the first time since tennis arrived in the United States six decades earlier, a white player and a Black player met in a top-level match. Two-thousand people crammed the club’s stands to capacity while others leaned out windows and crowded onto the fire escapes that overlooked the court. Those who didn’t have a view could hear the score called on a public-address system. Prominent tennis writer Al Laney was on hand for the occasion, and he praised Budge for “performing an important service for the good of the game.” Budge won the match 6–1, 6–2. Although hailed as a step forward for Black tennis players, the event would all but be forgotten with the onset of
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
. It would be another 10 years before
Althea Gibson Althea Neale Gibson (August 25, 1927September 28, 2003) was an American tennis player and professional golfer, and one of the first Black athletes to cross the color line of international tennis. In 1956, she became the first African America ...
took the next step by integrating tennis at the United States National Championships (now the
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) at
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, in 1950. McDaniel competed in tournaments for another decade but often faced discrimination. Sometimes he was denied entry into the draw; at other times he was given incorrect directions to the club so that he would arrive late and be forced to forfeit his match. With no way to move up in the sport, McDaniel quit, taking up golf and later bowling. After World War II broke out, McDaniel returned to Los Angeles and went to work at the Lockheed aircraft plant. He began as a janitor and retired 30 years later as a line supervisor. McDaniel would return to the tennis courts in the late 1950s. By then he was allowed to walk into white clubs and enter USTA events, and he eventually earned a Top 20 national ranking in the 60-and-overs. He also gave lessons to adults and children.


Personal life

When he was 18, McDaniel fell in love with a 15-year-old white classmate, and she became pregnant. For his transgression, he was forced to spend a year in a reformatory and was banned from returning to Southern California for an additional year. But his passion for tennis never waned. McDaniel married Audrey Williams, a middle school math teacher, in 1940; they divorced in 1954, and she died in 1981. Their five children — Jimmie Jr., Rosalind, Willis, Kenneth and Audrey — lived with their mother, only seeing their father three or four times a year. Jimmie’s marriage to Dorothy Adams lasted until she died of a brain aneurysm. In 1977, he married Eastlynn Clark; she died in 2009. Jimmie died of pneumonia in Los Angeles on March 8, 1990. He was 73. He was inducted posthumously into the Black Tennis Hall of Fame in 2009.


Accolades

* ATA National Men’s Singles title in 1939, 1940, 1941 and 1946 * ATA National Men’s Doubles title in 1939 and 1941 with his college teammate Dr. Richard Cohen * ATA National Men’s Doubles title in 1946 with James Stocks * ATA National Men’s Doubles title in 1952 with Earthna Jacquet


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McDaniel, Jimmie African-American tennis players Xavier University of Louisiana alumni American male tennis players 1916 births 1990 deaths 20th-century African-American sportsmen