Black History

COMMENTARY: Inspiring Tennis from Serena, Tiafoe, and Coco Gauff

The match that had people buzzing came last Friday, featuring Serena Williams, considered the best women’s player ever. Nearly 41-years old, a mother of a young child, Serena had announced her retirement. Friday would be her last match.

Published

1 year ago

September 11, 2022

Oakland Post

Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. See him at www.amok.com

By Emil Guillermo

Tennis, anyone? In my Mission District neighborhood growing up, we had courts. But us kids always chose the adjoining basketball court. And in the summer and fall, we chose the big patch of grass for baseball and football. They tried to get us to play tennis by giving us free rackets. But they were wooden, and we broke them at the handle easily. Besides, the famous players whose names graced the rackets were Rod Laver, Tony Trabert. White guys, not like any of us.

That was in my day. If only we had seen more people like us to encourage us to play in white spaces.

But imagine growing up now watching the U.S. Open.

This week an African American from Maryland, 24-year-old Frances Tiafoe, ranked No. 22 in the world beat the No.2 seed of the tournament, the Spaniard Rafael Nadal, and became the youngest American to advance to the U.S. Open quarterfinals since Andy Roddick in 2006.

Tiafoe played with such joy, indicative of a love instilled in him by his father, an immigrant from Sierra Leone, who worked as a maintenance man at a tennis development facility in the DC area. While his dad worked late nights tending to the clay courts, his mother, a nurse, worked nights. It made the young Tiafoe sleep at the facility during the week. That’s how you fall in love with the game. It becomes part of your dreams.

But Tiafoe is a young emerging phenom. The match that had people buzzing came last Friday, featuring Serena Williams, considered the best women’s player ever. Nearly 41-years old, a mother of a young child, Serena had announced her retirement. Friday would be her last match.

For her send off, Serena gave us plenty of fight and passion. After a second-round victory that stunned even her fans, Serena had people talking about her possibly winning the whole thing. In the third round match, she was down 5-1 in the final set. She’s overcome that kind of deficit before, but … would she? Could she? Now?

Serena fought off six match points before she meekly hit a final ball into the net that made her younger opponent Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia, the victor.

But we got what we needed. A life lesson. Serena in braids and a sparkly black tennis dress, showed the fire of never giving up. Six match points she battled. Commentator/former tennis champion Chris Evert described the Serena method as reaching for the stars, failing, then getting up to fight again.

The beauty of that process? Sometimes you’ll fail well enough to win. Over and over again.

That’s how Serena became such a dominant champion, winning 39 major titles — the most in history by man or woman in the open era. Among those laurels were 23 Grand Slam singles titles, 14 in women’s doubles, and two in mixed doubles.

And to think, Serena and her sister Venus, another great champion, all did it out of that tennis haven — Compton, Calif.

When I saw them both play, I was already too old to play competitively. But I wasn’t too old to be motivated to pick up a racket and hit some balls. That’s how inspiring both Williams sisters have been for more than two decades.

Now here comes a new generation of fresh stars half their age, Americans in the U.S. Open quarterfinals like the exuberantly physical Tiafoe and the screaming 18-year-old Coco Gauff.

There’s some diverse tennis role models now if you want to work on your forehand.

Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. See him at www.amok.com

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Black History

Remembering the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

The “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” brought an unprecedented throng to the National Mall on Aug. 28, 1963. From every corner of the U.S., marchers came to demand fair wages, economic justice, an end to segregation, voting rights and long overdue civil rights. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his incomparable “I Have a Dream” speech on that day.

Published

11 hours ago

September 27, 2023

Oakland Post

March on Washington, August 1963

By Gay Elizabeth Plair Cobb

Gay Plair Cobb

Editor’s note: The “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” brought an unprecedented throng to the National Mall on Aug. 28, 1963. From every corner of the U.S., marchers came to demand fair wages, economic justice, an end to segregation, voting rights and long overdue civil rights. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his incomparable “I Have a Dream” speech on that day. Below, Gay Plair Cobb shares her remembrance.

“Sleepy eyed, joining the early morning-chartered bus ride from New York City to Washington, DC … exhilarated, but not knowing what to expect in the late August heat

…. the yearning for justice, solidarity with others on the journey, the possibility of new legislation, and also the possibility of violence … We just did not know.

In the end, there were an amazing 250,000 of us, awed and inspired by Mahalia Jackson, John Lewis, Dorothy Height, James Farmer and, of course, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Dream that became our North Star is still our North Star 60 years later and into eternity. Grateful to have been a foot soldier then. Still grateful now.”

Poster for March on Washington.

Black History

Guy Bluford: First African American in Space

Following Sally Ride (America’s first female astronaut) by just two months, Guy Bluford’s spaceflight aboard Space Shuttle Challenger provided another visible moment when more young people could see and be inspired by people like themselves flying into space. Bluford served as a mission specialist on the STS-8 mission and his jobs were to deploy an Indian communications-weather satellite, perform biomedical experiments and test the orbiter’s 50-foot robotic arm.

Published

1 day ago

September 27, 2023

Oakland Post

Dr. Col. Guion Stewart Bluford Jr. Image courtesy of NASA.

By Jennifer Levasseur, Vickie Lindsey, and Amy Stamm

Forty years ago, on Aug. 30, 1983, Guy Bluford flew into history as the first Black American in space.

Despite launch delays totaling six weeks, the spectacular first night launch of a Space Shuttle brought full circle NASA’s promise of a more inclusive astronaut corps.

Following Sally Ride (America’s first female astronaut) by just two months, Bluford’s spaceflight aboard Space Shuttle Challenger provided another visible moment when more young people could see and be inspired by people like themselves flying into space.

Bluford served as a mission specialist on the STS-8 mission and his jobs were to deploy an Indian communications-weather satellite, perform biomedical experiments and test the orbiter’s 50-foot robotic arm.

Following that first mission, he flew three more times to space on STS-61A, STS-39, and STS-53. By the time of his retirement from NASA in 1993, Bluford had spent more than 28 days in space over the four missions.

At the time of his first mission, Bluford was a 40-year-old Air Force officer with a doctorate in aerospace engineering.

Reluctant to be in the spotlight, his goal was not to make history, but fly into space, do his job, and return safely.

Growing up in a middle-class household in the 1950s and 1960s with educated parents (his mother was a teacher, and his father was a mechanical engineer), Bluford was raised to believe that he could do anything he wanted despite racist social restrictions.

He enjoyed math and science, particularly in school. Ignoring the advice of his high school advisor to learn a trade or skill, Bluford went on to college to earn his undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering at Penn State University in 1964, also finishing as a distinguished Air Force ROTC graduate.

After his decades of service to the aerospace community in a variety of roles, having spoken dozens of times about his astronaut career and work in aviation, Dr. Guion Bluford was recently appointed by President Joseph Biden as a member of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Advisory Board.

Editor’s note: Jennifer Levasseur, Vickie Lindsey and Amy Stamm are writers for a NASA blog