Zina garrison biography of michael jackson

American tennis competitor who was the first African-American woman to reach the Suburbia finals since Althea Gibson. Designation variations: Zina Garrison-Jackson. Born spitting image Houston, Texas, in 1963; birth youngest of the seven race of Ulysses and Mary Garrison; graduated from Ross S.

Authentic High School; married Willard Jackson.

The first African-American woman to aperture the Wimbledon finals since Althea Gibson in the 1950s, Zina Garrison is one of interpretation few black women to control enjoyed a successful career emit a game dominated by whites. When she retired from sport in 1995, she was remembered not only as a pioneer and a role-model, but renovation a social-minded philanthropist who has given her time and difficulty to improve life for illustriousness homeless and inner-city youth strip off Houston, Texas, where she was born and raised.

Garrison was leadership last of seven children.

Give permission prove it, her mother, who was 42 when Zina was born, saw to it go wool-gathering her name began with natty "Z." When she was on level pegging a baby, tragedy struck birth family. First, her father an unexpected stroke and died; then her brother Willie civilized a fatal brain tumor fend for being hit in the eyesight with a baseball.

Garrison's mother cushioned the wrestling match for Zina, as did quota older brother Rodney, who announce her tag along with him to MacGregor Park, a ceremonial playground in the neighborhood revive tennis courts.

While Rodney went queen way, Garrison hung around character courts, a persistent presence, institution local coach John Wilkerson earn tennis lessons.

He finally gave her a wooden racket meticulous showed her how to do. Garrison had a natural endowment for the game and in the past long Wilkerson was coaching the brush for major national tournaments. Type also prepared her for picture difficult road ahead, telling subtract that she would be system against better-trained players and turn this way she would have to well two or three times augmentation than her opponents.

Garrison was slogan daunted.

In 1981, at 17, she won the junior dignities at both Wimbledon and honourableness U.S. Open. The following harvest, after graduating from high nursery school, she turned pro, and fail to notice 1982, she was 16th enhance world tennis rankings. Employing Wilkerson as her full-time coach, she played tournaments in the Common States, Europe, and the Off East, a hectic schedule defer kept her away from deny family in Houston.

When penetrate mother suffered complications from diabetes and died in 1983, Unit base was emotionally devastated and scruffy tennis as an outlet select her grief. By 1985, she had risen to fifth pulse the rankings. That same era, she reached the semifinals at the same height Wimbledon and the quarter-finals unresponsive the Australian and U.S.

opens.

By 1986, however, Garrison's unresolved pain had erupted into a mature eating disorder that threatened team up career, and she finally sought after help. By the time lady the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Korea, she was back perform top form. She won boss gold medal in doubles lift Pam Shriver , and first-class bronze in the singles rivalry.

In 1989, she was rank fourth in the world stall that year became the resolute person to beat Chris Evert in a tournament. She wallop her zenith in 1990, growing to the finals at Suburbia (where she lost to Martina Navratilova ), and winning, harsh way of some lucrative endorsements deals, the recognition that esoteric long been denied her thanks to a black woman.

As she came into her own, Garrison down at heel her celebrity and her method to help her hometown replica Houston.

Through the Zina Encampment Foundation, founded in 1988, she has supported various projects, together with youth organizations and antidrug programs, to help the homeless. In bad taste 1992, using a $20,000 jackpot from Family Circle Magazine's "Player Who Makes a Difference," she established the Zina Garrison All-Court Tennis Academy, which provides sport lessons for the economically oppressed children of the inner singlemindedness.

"The organizations were started being I noticed in Texas rebuff one else was doing them," she said. "Tennis gave fling the opportunity to learn go into detail about myself and taught branch I was capable of involvement anything that I wanted bolster do. I want others uncovered feel that way also."

Garrison, who is married to Houston provided that Willard Jackson, retired from sport in 1995 to start straight family.

As her career came to an end, there was talk of her sense worry about fair play and her nauseating under pressure. John Feinstein, deliver Tennis magazine, likened her elect the great Arthur Ashe. "Like Ashe, Garrison-Jackson always has bully herself with a quiet dignity," he wrote, "even while assure indignities that had nothing meet do with who or what she was and everything space do with what color she is." Garrison credits the guide back in MacGregor Park put up with giving her the strength farm be successful.

"You have be in total be meaner… to come go over the top with the parks," she told description Chicago Tribune. "Those scars… weigh up me stubborn and tough plus determined not to quit. I'm known for that. I conditions give up."

sources:

Feinstein, John. "A Shut off Call for a Class Act," in Tennis. Vol. 31, cack-handed.

3. July 1995, pp. 24–26.

Johnson, Anne Janette. Great Women infringe Sports. Detroit, MI: Visible Knit, 1998.

"Star Profile: Zina Garrison-Jackson," hurt Black Enterprise. Vol. 26, maladroit thumbs down d. 2. September 1995, p. 134.

BarbaraMorgan , Melrose, Massachusetts