Ways of Grace

by James Blake

  Acknowledges the bravery of Peter Norman in donning an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge on the podium, in solidarity with African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who gave the black power salute;

  Apologises to Peter Norman for the wrong done by Australia in failing to send him to the 1972 Munich Olympics, despite repeatedly qualifying; and Belatedly recognises the powerful role that Peter Norman played in furthering racial equality.3

  The Australian Olympic Committee has since disputed the claims made in the Australian Parliament apology about Norman being shunned in supporting Carlos and Smith. According to the November 2015 Australian Olympic Committee News article “Peter Norman Not Shunned by AOC,” the AOC made the following comments:

  AOC: Peter Norman’s performance at the Mexico 1968 Olympic Games to win silver in the 200m and then support the black salute from American gold and bronze medallists, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, will forever give him a place in Olympic folklore.

  The Australian Team Chef de Mission at the 1968 Games Mr Julius Patching supported Norman and this continued throughout his life including honorary roles at Australian Olympic Committee events.

  There is a misleading and inaccurate report on social media that the Australian Olympic Committee shunned Peter Norman.

  When the incident happened at the 1968 Mexico Games, Norman was not punished by the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC). He was cautioned by Patching that evening, and then given as many tickets as he wanted to go and watch a hockey match. That was his punishment! This is confirmed in the Official History of the Australian Olympic Movement, compiled by the late and respected historian Harry Gordon.

  It has been claimed that Norman was not picked for the next Olympics in 1972 because of the incident in 1968. This too is incorrect. At the time Ron Carter, athletics writer for The Age, wrote that Norman was injured and failed to perform at the Trials.

  In the lead up to the Sydney 2000 Olympics, Norman was involved in numerous Olympic events in his home city of Melbourne. He announced several teams for the AOC in Melbourne and was on the stage in his Mexico 1968 blazer congratulating athletes. He was very much acknowledged as an Olympian and the AOC valued his contribution.

  As for the accusation that Norman was not invited to the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. The AOC was not in a financial position to invite all Olympians to Sydney 2000. They were given special assistance to purchase tickets but it would have cost the AOC hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring Olympians from around the country to Sydney for the Games. The suggestion he was shunned is totally incorrect. He was treated like any other Australian Olympian.

  Norman has been profiled by the AOC over recent years on the AOC corporate website—corporate.olympics.com.au—as one “Of Our Finest” Olympians.4

  We can certainly understand why the African Americans Carlos and Smith would want to risk so much to take a stand for human rights and racial equality, but why would Peter Norman, a white man, commit to a cause that may not have directly affected him when he could have simply enjoyed his moment of victory? He could have returned home to Australia a hero, his financial future secure. Perhaps the best answer comes from Norman’s own words, in the award-winning 2008 documentary Salute, written, directed, and produced by his nephew Matt Norman. Salute is an insightful account of that historic moment in civil rights history. It is also a shocking reminder of how the world was less than fifty years ago.

  “I couldn’t see why a black man couldn’t drink the same water from a water fountain, take the same bus, or go to the same school as a white man,” Norman says in the film. “There was a social injustice that I couldn’t do anything about from where I was, but I certainly hated it. It has been said that sharing my silver medal with that incident on the victory dais detracted from my performance. On the contrary, I have to confess, I was rather proud to be part of it.”

  All three Olympians should go down in history for putting their principles before their personal interests, and for their willingness to accept the outcome.

  Game. Set. Match.

  I can think of no other athlete who has had such an all-around impact on so many lives in so many areas of society than Billie Jean King. Being a tennis superstar was only one of her many accomplishments. King stood for the acceptance of people regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation. She advocated for women’s rights, gender equality, LGBT rights, and marriage equality. She also fought for equal pay for female athletes and for equality not only in sports but also in the workforce.

  King, who always thought that “if you could see it, you could be it,” used her global tennis platform to not only inspire, educate, and empower women—who saw that she was just as good an athlete as men—but also inspire men to see that women were not less than men, but that they were equal. In 1973 King threatened to boycott the US Open unless women were awarded equal prize money as men, and won. Using her leverage as the defending champion, King secured for female champions the same prize purse as the men’s champion.

  On Mother’s Day in 1952, when Billie Jean King was nine years old, she went with her family to Wrigley Field in Los Angeles. As she looked out at the players it dawned on her that there were no women. She was shocked when she found out that women did not play professional baseball, and, in fact, many women did not play professional sports at all. She was disappointed but determined that nothing would keep her from playing tennis, a game that she loved. King eventually saved enough money to buy herself a racket. It was lavender, and she was so thrilled that she slept with it. King was so excited about learning to play that she read all the tennis books she could find at the time, all three. Then she went to the park for her first tennis instruction. At the end of the day, King ran home and told her mother that she found what she wanted to do with her life.

  King first learned tennis in the late 1950s on the public courts of her hometown in Long Beach, California. She worked two jobs to pay her way through college. At that time, sports scholarships were not offered to women. It was not until 1972 that Congress enacted the federal civil rights statute known as Title IX of the Education Amendments. This amendment allowed for equality in sports in the United States. Before Title IX, women and girls were not given the same benefits as men and boys in terms of educational opportunities, participation, and federal financial assistance.

  What this meant was that any federal funds given to a high school, college, or university, either public or private, had to be given equally to boys and girls. Before Title IX, young women could not get an athletic scholarship in the States. The amendment enabled women to receive sports scholarships. That changed everything. It allowed female athletes the same financial opportunities as male athletes to attend school and focus fully on sports without having to work extra jobs to afford an education, as King did. This meant that women now had the same opportunities as men, and it created equality in education and sports activities. Female athletes could now play team sports in a way they could not before.

  Despite the good that Title IX did for female athletes, King believed that you could have a law, but until you changed hearts and minds nothing had really changed at all. She wanted to start that change. King worked hard on her game, perfecting her hard-charging style and aggressive play. By twenty-three she was the top-ranked women’s tennis player in the world, having won both the US Open and Wimbledon. King has said many times that she doesn’t like tennis, she loves it, and that when she plays she feels like she can do anything. She feels freedom, the freedom to do or be whatever she wants.

  However, tennis, her love for the game, and her outspokenness for women’s rights and equality took her farther than I think even she could have imagined. By the end of the 1960s, King was speaking out against a long-standing—and growing—disparity in the pay and prize money awarded to men and women. In 1968 women won prize money in competitions, but King never thought women would get less prize money than their male counterparts. At Wimbledon that year, women made less than ha
lf the prize money that men did. Before King took on the male-dominated tennis establishment, women players made $14.00 a day.

  When the male players formed their own union, the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), King saw an opportunity. She suggested that the organization also include women, but it rejected her suggestion. She would not be put off. In true King style, she decided that if female tennis players could not be a part of the men’s association, she would start an association for women. In 1970, she founded the Women’s Tennis Association to unite all of women’s tennis in one tour and create tournaments to play for prize money. She started the WTA by getting nine players (the Original Nine) to sign one-dollar contracts to compete in a new women’s tour, the Virginia Slims Series. Her dream in creating the association was for every girl, from all over the world, to know that “if she were good enough that there would be a place for them to play, to actually compete and to make a living.”

  The Battle of the Sexes

  There was a lot of skepticism about the women’s association and tour. The main argument was that no one would want to pay to watch women play. In 1973, in the midst of King’s fight for equal pay and prize money, Bobby Riggs, a former number one player who had won the Triple Crown at Wimbledon (and also a self-proclaimed male chauvinist), issued a challenge to the top female tennis players to try to beat him in a match. Sitting next to King during a news conference, he proclaimed, “There’s no way a woman can play tennis with a good man tennis player. This is a battle of the sexes!”

  The fifty-year-old Riggs had set his sights on King, but when she declined his challenge, he went after the Australian Margaret Court, the top women’s player. At that time, Court, a Grand Slam winner, had three Wimbledon wins and three women’s singles wins. When Court accepted, Riggs destroyed her on the court in the first, less publicized Battle of the Sexes match, played on Mother’s Day in 1973 and later known as the Mother’s Day Massacre. Riggs easily defeated Court from start to finish, leading her two games to love in the first set, and Court never recovered. After that, King felt she had to play Riggs to vindicate female athletes. After she accepted, their match took on a life all its own.

  Riggs’s challenge, that he could outplay any woman at the time, had started out more as a publicity stunt, but it got King thinking about society and what a match like this could mean to young girls and women. King knew that she had to play him and she knew that she had to win, especially after the loss Court suffered. Unlike Court, who didn’t consider herself a women’s libber and was playing for herself against Riggs, King, a staunch advocate of women’s rights, felt that she was playing for all women. And she knew if she won she would put women’s tennis on the map. For King it was about much more than tennis; it was about social change, and it fit in perfectly with what was going on in the world at that time, with the women’s liberation and feminist movements. News of Riggs and King’s match took off in the media like a rocket. The winner would not only take home $100,000 in prize money but would also claim bragging rights in the age-old argument of men versus women. But not only did King have to win, she knew she would have to win big. She would have to run him into the ground.

  So she took up the gauntlet, and with the world watching they met across the net on September 20, 1973, in the Houston Astrodome for the highly anticipated and much publicized Battle of the Sexes match. King was determined to win the match that would ultimately define her career. To King, she had to win because not only would it be a win for her, it would be a win for women everywhere. It would be a win for any young girl or woman who was told to believe that she was the weaker sex. It would be a win for any young girl or woman who had been told that she did not have what it took to be a real competitor, and compete on the same level as men. King thought that women were on their way to achieving equality, and she wanted it to continue. But she worried that another loss by a woman to the trash-talking Riggs—who liked to say that King “plays well, for a woman”—could set women back fifty years.

  The match started off on a gorgeous sunny day with so much pomp and pageantry that it looked more like a coronation than a tennis match. Cheerleaders in skimpy outfits kicked up their heels as a band played and thousands of fans filed into the stadium. Ninety million people watched the match internationally and fifty million Americans watched at home. Often called colorful and controversial, Bobby Riggs was wheeled into the stadium in a rickshaw surrounded by beautiful women while King entered in a chariot of brightly colored ostrich feathers, pulled by men from the Rice University track team. And although there was a carnival atmosphere in the stadium, underneath it all was a sense of a real battle to prove who was the better sex, men or women.

  King, a crusader for women’s rights, carried the weight of all the women watching. She felt an overwhelming sense of responsibility, and many media pundits predicted that she would buckle under the pressure. She proved them wrong. Once the pomp and circumstance was over and the tennis began, King methodically took Riggs apart in what was undeniably an explosive match from beginning to end. King matched Riggs stroke for stroke, even as he hammered her backhand with shot after shot. When King won spectacularly in straight sets, 6–4, 6–3, 6–3, Riggs hopped over the net, shook her hand, and said, “I underestimated you.” It was an indescribable moment for King because her father had always told her, “Respect your opponent, never underestimate them.”

  In a match that captivated the world, played in a packed stadium, King defeated Riggs, and the men and women in the audience rose to their feet in appreciation of her victory. The next day the headlines heralded: “Mrs. King Defeats Riggs. King Wins Battle of the Sexes.”

  King’s victory was twofold. It was a victory for women’s rights, and it sparked social change. In that beautiful moment when she beat Riggs, she silenced all the naysayers and doubters who believed that women were not as good as men, or could not compete on the same level. At the same time, she also gave women and young girls across the world the confidence to believe in themselves and to fight for their rights. When she trounced Riggs she started a women’s revolution in sports and placed sports squarely at the center of a national debate about gender equality. She gave women confidence and empowerment. But she wasn’t finished.

  In addition to the WTA, King cofounded World Team Tennis in 1974 with her husband, Larry King. The WTT is a pioneering co-ed tennis league, featuring matches of different configurations of men’s and women’s single and mixed-doubles teams. Since its inception, the league has drawn top players including King, Bjorn Borg, Chris Evert, John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova, Evonne Goolagong, Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, Venus and Serena Williams, Lindsay Davenport, and Martina Hingis, to name only a few of the exceptional tennis players who participated. I have been a part of WTT since 1999 and I competed last in 2016.

  The mixed-gender format not only highlights the interplay of the phenomenal men and women on the teams but also unifies them as a team instead of separating them by gender. This was something King has fought for her entire professional career. King became commissioner and major owner of the league in 1984, following her retirement from the professional tennis circuit.

  King has always said that champions adjust and that pressure is a privilege, which is also the title of her memoir. To her it was a pleasure to have pressure. It meant you were really doing something. Pressure came with the game, and to her it was what you did with it that mattered. She reminded herself over and over that pressure was a privilege the night before her match with Riggs.

  King gained all the lessons she needed in life from the tennis court. She called them lessons in life from the court. Every ball that came toward her meant she had to make a decision, she had to be nimble, she had to adjust per volley, she had to think, she had to strategize. Every single decision she made on the court had consequences. King used this same approach in life. She was equal parts emotion and strategy. When she wanted something emotionally, she strategized a way to make it happen. When she wanted women
to be a part of the men’s tennis organization, and she was denied, she created her own association. When she wanted to play professionally, but women were not offered sports scholarships in the sixties, she worked two jobs to earn enough money to make it a reality.

  Years later, in 2009, when President Obama bestowed on King the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, he told her that he saw her historic match against Riggs when he was twelve years old and it made such a difference in him, in how he perceived women and what they were capable of, that it changed the way he would raise his daughters. This is truly an amazing statement that shows the impact an activist can have not only in the moment but also on future generations. No president would ever make such a monumental change, such as how he decided to raise his daughters, based solely on a tennis game. What affected him was that King was fighting for social change, as it affected women.

  Coming Out on Her Own Terms

  In a life rife with personal and career struggles, King cites being outed in 1981 in a palimony suit by her former secretary Marilyn Barnett, who was suing her for support, as one of the biggest struggles of her life. The suit forced her out of the closet, making her the first prominent lesbian in sports history. She decided to have a press conference and come out to the world. With her husband, Larry King, and her parents, Betty and Bill Moffitt, sitting next to her, she announced that she had indeed had an affair with Marilyn Barnett.

  King’s coming out was unprecedented. Public figures, sports figures, actors, and politicians simply did not come out as gay in the 1980s. King did not realize she was gay until 1968 at twenty-five, after she had already married her college sweetheart, Larry King, whom she divorced in 1987. When she made her announcement that day in front of a phalanx of cameras and journalists, there was a collective gasp. She thought that the truth would finally set her free. But the backlash was immediate. She lost all her endorsement money within twenty-four hours of the announcement. This did not keep King from continuing to use her global platform to speak out for women’s rights, gay rights, and eventually marriage equality.