Billie Jean King, 1943

Billie-Jean-King-WWP

Billie Jean King's photograph, taken in 1979 by Lynn Gilbert. Presented at the National Portrait Gallery. Photo credit - WWP team

A former World No. 1 professional American tennis player, who won 39 Grand Slam titles.



Born in Long Beach, CA, to a family with an athletic background. From a very young age, Billie Jean excelled in different sports, starting with basketball and softball, but from the moment she tried tennis, she knew that this was her destiny. She practiced and played in the US and gained her international recognition at age 18, when she and her tennis partner, Karen Hantze Susman, won the Wimbledon Women’s Doubles title, the youngest pair to win the tournament.

Five years later she won the singles championship at Wimbledon, ranked #1 World Women Tennis Players, a title she earned five more times. Between ages 18 to 36, King won a total of 39 Grand Slam titles, competing both in singles and doubles.

In 1973, as part of Billie Jean’s campaign for equal pay, she took the challenge and beat the former tennis champion, Bobby Riggs, in a match known as “Battle of the Sexes,” showing that women can play tennis the same level as men. A year later she became one of the first female professional coaches when she served as a player-coach of the ’Philadelphia Freedoms’. Upon her retirement at the age of 41, Billie Jean was appointed as the captain of the U.S Fed Cup Team, as well as the coach of the US Women’s Olympic Tennis Squad.

Billie Jean King was active both on and off the tennis court, and through her career, she led a campaign for the equal rights and prizes of women sports players. She founded and was the first president of the ‘Women’s Tennis Association’, established the ‘Women’s Sports Foundation’ with her husband, co-founded the ‘World Team Tennis’, and established the ‘Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative’ for diverse and inclusive leadership in the workforce. After she was outed as a lesbian and as a result lost her endorsements, she became an advocate for LGBT rights.

This tennis icon paved the way for women in sports | Billie Jean King

Tennis legend Billie Jean King isn't just a pioneer of women's tennis — she's a pioneer for women getting paid. In this freewheeling conversation, she talks about identity, the role of sports in social justice, and the famous Battle of the Sexes match against Bobby Riggs.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more.
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“A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning.”

“A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning.”

Fun Facts

  • She began to play tennis when she was 11 years old because her parents wanted her to play a more “feminine sport”.
  • As a child, she bought her first racquet with the money she earned by herself.
  • At age 12 she was banned from her tennis group picture because she wore a tennis short instead of the traditional tennis dress.
  • In 2017, a movie based on the story of her famous "Battle of the Sexes" was released. It was directed by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton.
  • The USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing, NY is named after her.

Awards

  • 39 Grand Slam Titles
  • Presidential Medal of Freedom
  • Inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame

Creations By and About Her

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This tennis icon paved the way for women in sports | Billie Jean King

Tennis legend Billie Jean King isn't just a pioneer of women's tennis — she's a pioneer for women getting paid. In this freewheeling conversation, she talks about identity, the role of sports in social justice, and the famous Battle of the Sexes match against Bobby Riggs.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more.
Find closed captions and translated subtitles in many languages at http://www.ted.com/translate

Follow TED news on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tednews
Like TED on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TED

Subscribe to our channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/TEDtalksDirector
Share:

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Category: Sports
Tags: Athlete, LGBTQ, and NYC Women

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Arts

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, 1874-1948

A socialite and philanthropist. The co-founder of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and its biggest donor.

Abigail Aldrich Rockefeller was born in Providence, Rhode Island. Her father was a Republican senator, and she grew up traveling back and forth between Rhode Island and Washington, DC. She was educated by a Quaker governess till she was 17 years old, and then attended Miss Abbott’s School for Young Ladies in Providence. During her upbringing, she was introduced to socialite and political circles, and at 19 years old, she made her official social debut. The following year, she embarked on an extensive European tour, where she visited many museums and art galleries and began to sharpen her skills as an art collector. At 20 years old, she met John Davison Rockefeller Jr., the son of the businessman and philanthropist John Davison Rockefeller Sr. After five years of courtship, the couple married at a big society wedding. The young Rockefellers settled in NYC, first in 13 W. 54th Street in Manhattan and later in 10 W. 54th Street. Rockefeller was a philanthropist in the heart, and she devoted herself to various charities. She donated money to the girl scouts, chaired the Auxiliary 336 of the American Red Cross, was a member of the Young Women’s Christian Association National Board, and served as chairman of different committees of the organization. In 1918, Rockefeller was chosen to chair the Housing Committee of the War Work Council, in which she worked for the improvement of living conditions for working women. She later applied the concept to the employees of Standard Oil – her husband’s family firm, purchasing land and building homes for the workers as well as a Community Center that included a clinic, nursery school, gym, and even a bowling alley. In 1925, Rockefeller revived her love for art and began collecting paintings and drawings mainly of contemporary American artists as well as European modernists such as Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Within a few years, she converted part of the room in her 7th floor Manhattan apartment into a gallery, where visitors could view the art on display. In 1929, alongside Lillie P. Bliss, Mary Quinn Sullivan, she co-founded the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in NYC – the first museum in the US devoted entirely to the modern movement. Rockefeller held several positions in the museum management team, from treasurer to Vice-President and Vice-Chairman, as well as served in its committees. She pushed for establishing the museum’s film library and for the War Veterans’ Art Center – a rehabilitation program for WW2 veterans through art. Rockefeller’s dedication to art expanded outside of MoMA; she donated art pieces to other institutes, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Met Cloisters, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Ludwell-Paradise House at Colonial Williamsburg. She passed away after suffering a heart attack at the age of 73. Share:This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Ada Louise Huxtable WWP
Arts

Ada Louise Huxtable, 1921-2013

An architecture critic and a writer. Received the first-ever Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

Born Ada Louise Landman in NYC, an only child in a middle-class Jewish family. Growing up in Manhattan, Huxtable loved strolling along the streets, fascinated by its building, such as the Grand Central Terminal, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Museum of Natural History. She studied art at Hunter College, graduating magna cum laude, and then architectural history at NYU Institute of Fine Arts. At the time, she worked in Bloomingdale’s furnishings department, where she met her soon-to-be husband, Garth Huxtable. In 1946, at 25, Huxtable landed a job as an assistant curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art. After five years, she left her job to study Italian architecture in Italy for a year. Upon her return, she began writing as a contributing editor for various art and architectural journals. At the age of 37, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship, in which she examined the structural and design advances of American architecture. In 1963, 42 years old Huxtable was hired as the first architecture critic at The New York Times, a position she held for almost 20 years. In her column, she wrote about new and old buildings, threatened buildings, and bad-designed buildings. She also mentioned emerging architects, architectural trends, movements, and exhibitions. Huxtable encouraged the everyday readers to look at buildings from a new perspective, not as an assembly of bricks and pilasters but as a public statement with history and meaning. Raising awareness of the city’s heritage, the urban environment, and civic engagement, she set the tone for modern architecture criticism, for which, at the age of 49, she was the first-ever to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. In 1981, at the age of 60, Huxtable received a MacArthur grant that allowed her in-depth research on subjects she was interested in, such as the development of the skyscraper, the negative impact of postmodernism building, and preservation vs. modernity. At 76, she returned to writing for the public as an architecture critic for The Wall Street Journal, publishing columns for the next 15 years. Throughout her career, Huxtable was involved in various committees, serving as a fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Architectural Selection and Building Design Committees for the Getty Center, Getty Villa, and as a Jury member for The Pritzker Architecture Prize. She published more than 10 books on architecture, including “Kicked a Building Lately?,” “Goodbye History,” “Hello Hamburger,” and a biography of Frank Lloyd Wright. Huxtable died in NYC at 91. Share:This post is also available in: Español Read more...
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Economics & Finance

Adena Friedman, 1969

A businesswoman, the president and CEO of Nasdaq, the first woman in this position and to lead a global exchange.

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Adrienne-Rich-WWP
Literature & Poetry

Adrienne Rich, 1929-2012

An award-winning American poet, essayist, and feminist thought influencer, who was called “one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century.”

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