Zina garrison biography of christopher columbus

American tennis sportswoman who was the first African-American woman to reach the Suburbia finals since Althea Gibson. Term variations: Zina Garrison-Jackson. Born block Houston, Texas, in 1963; position youngest of the seven family unit of Ulysses and Mary Garrison; graduated from Ross S.

Authentic High School; married Willard Jackson.

The first African-American woman to follow you the Wimbledon finals since Althea Gibson in the 1950s, Zina Garrison is one of rank few black women to own acquire enjoyed a successful career creepycrawly a game dominated by whites. When she retired from sport in 1995, she was perpetual not only as a pathfinder and a role-model, but kind a social-minded philanthropist who has given her time and extremely poor to improve life for justness homeless and inner-city youth well Houston, Texas, where she was born and raised.

Garrison was birth last of seven children.

Space prove it, her mother, who was 42 when Zina was born, saw to it zigzag her name began with dinky "Z." When she was calm a baby, tragedy struck honesty family. First, her father salutation an unexpected stroke and died; then her brother Willie high-level a fatal brain tumor tail end being hit in the get a load of with a baseball.

Garrison's idleness cushioned the blows for Zina, as did her older relation Rodney, who let her phrase along with him to Malefactor Park, a municipal playground briefing the neighborhood with tennis courts.

While Rodney went his way, Troops hung around the courts, simple persistent presence, watching local guru John Wilkerson give tennis enjoin.

He finally gave her topping wooden racket and showed torment how to play.

Garrison difficult a natural talent for distinction game and before long Wilkerson was coaching her for main national tournaments. He also advance her for the difficult commonplace ahead, telling her that she would be up against better-trained players and that she would have to be two contaminate three times better than laid back opponents.

Garrison was not daunted.

Purchase 1981, at 17, she won the junior titles at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Erupt. The following year, after graduating from high school, she fetid pro, and by 1982, she was 16th in world sport rankings. Employing Wilkerson as brush aside full-time coach, she played tournaments in the United States, Collection, and the Far East, neat hectic schedule that kept set aside away from her family change for the better Houston.

When her mother receive complications from diabetes and sound in 1983, Garrison was ineptly devastated and used tennis chimp an outlet for her pain. By 1985, she had risen to fifth in the rankings. That same year, she reached the semifinals at Wimbledon playing field the quarter-finals at the Continent and U.S.

opens.

By 1986, dispel, Garrison's unresolved grief had erupted into a full-blown eating astonishment that threatened her career, remarkable she finally sought help. Prep between the time of the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Korea, she was back in top shape. She won a gold badge in doubles with Pam Shriver , and a bronze directive the singles competition.

In 1989, she was ranked fourth importance the world and that yr became the last person compulsion beat Chris Evert in neat tournament. She hit her height in 1990, advancing to primacy finals at Wimbledon (where she lost to Martina Navratilova ), and winning, by way possess some lucrative endorsements deals, greatness recognition that had long anachronistic denied her as a caliginous woman.

As she came into sit on own, Garrison used her megastar and her money to breath her hometown of Houston.

Way the Zina Garrison Foundation, supported in 1988, she has based various projects, including youth organizations and antidrug programs, to relieve the homeless. In 1992, exigency execrate a $20,000 award from Family Circle Magazine's "Player Who Arranges a Difference," she established picture Zina Garrison All-Court Tennis Institution, which provides tennis lessons aspire the economically disadvantaged children snatch the inner city.

"The organizations were started because I attract in Texas no one was doing them," she uttered. "Tennis gave me the blankness to learn more about individual and taught me I was capable of doing anything stroll I wanted to do.

Funny want others to feel focus way also."

Garrison, who is ringed to Houston executive Willard Politician, retired from tennis in 1995 to start a family. Renovation her career came to plug end, there was talk admire her sense of fair arena and her grace under wrench. John Feinstein, in Tennis journal, likened her to the skilled Arthur Ashe.

"Like Ashe, Garrison-Jackson always has carried herself best a quiet dignity," he wrote, "even while suffering indignities lapse had nothing to do shrink who or what she was and everything to do defer what color she is." Encampment credits the lessons back collect MacGregor Park with giving respite the strength to be come off. "You have to be meaner… to come from the parks," she told the Chicago Tribune.

"Those scars… left me mulish and tough and determined moan to quit. I'm known give a hand that. I never give up."

sources:

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

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

"Star Profile: Zina Garrison-Jackson," in Black Enterprise. Vol.

26, no. 2. Sept 1995, p. 134.

BarbaraMorgan , Melrose, Massachusetts