Mary Jo Festle, professor of history and director of the honors program, published “Jackie Robinson Without the Charm: The Challenges of Being Althea Gibson,” in “Out of the Shadows: A Biographical History of African American Athletes,” edited by David K. Wiggins of George Mason University and published by the University of Arkansas Press this October. In her essay, Festle examines the ways that Gibson, a 1950s tennis champion, dealt with discrimination she faced as a working class, African American woman trying to break into a sport that was predominately elitist and white.
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