E-mail a friendBillie Jean King
airdate August 10, 2006
Life magazine named Billie Jean King one of the 100 most important Americans of the 20th century. With a long list of firsts, she forged new inroads for women, in and out of sports, during her legendary career. King bought her first tennis racquet at age 11 and learned to play the sport on the public courts of her native Long Beach, CA. She serves on numerous boards and is the founder of the Women's Sports Foundation. King is the subject of a new HBO documentary, Portrait of a Pioneer.
Billie Jean King
Tavis: When people talk about these 20 titles and all that you have accomplished, how does that make you feel?
Billie Jean King: I get embarrassed, actually.
Tavis: You get embarrassed?
King: I do. I really care about what I've done off the court more than on the court. And as a child, when I was about 12 years old, I had only been in tennis one year, and you could already see the discrimination. And a lot of things were bubbling up in me. But at 12, I had this epiphany that I thought, if I could ever be number one, I wanted to be number one at 11.
My first tennis lesson, I decided I wanted to be the number one tennis player in the world. I found my destiny. And of course, my parents are going, oh yeah, right. (Laugh) So, I was a public park kid in Long Beach, California, and I just promised if I could ever be really great, and if people would listen.
Of course, I knew that people didn't listen to girls as much as men by then, even. I knew that already, at 12. And so if I could be number one, maybe I could do some good works in this world before I'm out of here, and change things. I wanted to make tennis a team sport. I wanted to - I noticed there were no people of color.
Tavis: At 12, you realized all of this.
King: Yes. I was very clear on that.
Tavis: I'm particularly fascinated, Billie, at what happened at the age of 12 that allowed you to see so clearly then that women were not being respected in the way that men were in this genre.
King: Well, I grew up in team sports as a child. My younger brother, Randy Moffat, played for the San Francisco Giants most of his career as a relief pitcher, a righty. And basketball's my first love as a sport, and I love team sports. I prefer team sports over individual sports. I like collaboration. I like just helping each other.
Girls like relationships anyway. (Laugh) I went to a baseball game on Mother's Day when I was about nine with my younger brother and my mom and dad, and it was at Wrigley Field, triple A, a Pacific coast league. Hollywood stars, they used to wear Bermuda shorts. It was hysterical. (Laugh)
Anyway, it dawned on me that day that girls couldn't play baseball. And already, things were starting to build up. And then when I got into tennis, it was so obvious. You had to wear all white, which I thought was boring as heck, 'cause I grew up in other team sports. We kind of had color.
Or maybe just wear cut off shorts, just play. Just play, be hospitable. Arthur Ashe and I talked about this ad nauseum when we both worked for HBO together, when we used to do Wimbledon. And we used to always talk about what was missing in our sport, and we always said it's the hospitality. I wasn't allowed to be in a photo in my first sanctioned tournament.
That's how you start getting rankings? Because I had shorts on. Well, I'd never seen a tennis dress until that day. What's the big deal? The kids out here, the kids trying to play, let the children have fun. Make them believe in themselves, help them out. All I got was just negative comments. And I thought, this is not right.
So just little things. And then I got to see Althea Gibson when I was 13, the great African American tennis player. There wouldn't have been Arthur Ashe without Althea Gibson. And she was the first person of color to win Wimbledon and win the French Open. And they didn't allow people of color in a sanctioned tournament until 1950.
So these were the things, and I love history, so I read all the history of tennis. And I kept a scrapbook of all the great players and articles. I didn't keep a scrapbook on me; I kept a scrapbook, everybody goes, didn't you do it on yourself? I go no, no, no, no, no. I kept - it was men and women, I did both genders. It just, oh, it was great. So, then, of course, I got to meet Althea later, and she was such a she-ro of mine, such a hero of mine.
Tavis: What do you recall about, again, you can't do justice to your career in a 15 minute conversation, so I'm just trying to hit it as much as I can. What do you recall about being the first woman on the cover of Sports Illustrated?
King: That was a real honor. That was a huge breakthrough. I was with John Wooden, but the door was ajar. And it was such a privilege. Of course, I love John Wooden.
Tavis: Who doesn't, yeah.
King: How can you not love him? Everything he said; he loves poetry; he loves everything. And I thought it was such a great way. And I knew this was a nice way for them to do it, too. It would be hard for them just to put a woman on there by themselves, but it was such a privilege to be with him, I don't think they'd ever had two people on the cover, if my recollection is correct.
Tavis: For all the doors that you kicked down and walked through for women, on the court, off the court, do you think - I wanna phrase this the right way. Are you happy, content, with the progress?
King: Never. (Laugh)
Tavis: Yeah, okay.
King: No, I'm not...
Tavis: You cut that question off, go ahead. (Laugh)
King: I'm not content, because I always wanna do better.
Tavis: Go ahead, yeah.
King: But it's really about fighting for equal opportunity for boys and girls. But girls are so underserved. Like, I started the Women's Sports Foundation in 1974 because we are so underserved. Women's organizations only get seven percent of charitable dollars. If you ask deeper questions, like if you say, I'm just gonna use this hypothetically.
Let's say it's a girls and boys club. But then you go one question deeper, do you have as many athletic programs or exercise or fitness, it's not just about sports. When I say sports, we have a Go Go Girl program, for instance, that we started in Atlanta and Chicago, and we're gonna be expanding to San Antonio and other cities.
We're really fighting obesity, self esteem, leadership for girls, all these things for them. But it's amazing how underserved we are. And the Go Go Girl program serves, 80 percent are girls of color, because we know we're underserved. We get seven percent of charitable dollars, girls and women's charitable organizations.
It used to be 10 to one charitable dollars would go to boys versus girls. And if we would ever get the gender card straightened out, we would get a lot of other cards, like the race card, all these other cards really helped. And I don't think people realize. It's just not in the brain yet how underserved women are in health, research, all, you just keep going.
So when we started this Women's Sports Foundation, it was really to change attitudes, but it's really about the health of a woman. Now, what I'd really like to start would have been a sports foundation. But until we're equal and have equal opportunities, it's gonna stay Women's Sports Foundation. But it's for girls, really, basically, and women. But it's amazing how people don't think about it enough.
Tavis: That's our show for tonight. Catch me on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International. Check your local listings. See you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from L.A., thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith.
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