Ladies & Gentlemen . . .

Negroes have played in the National Indoor tennis championships, but they have never been invited to set foot on the outdoor courts of Forest Hills, the sanctum of U.S. tennis. In a blistering guest editorial in the current issue of the American Lawn Tennis magazine, onetime national Women's Champion Alice Marble notified the U.S.L.T.A. committee that it was high time tennis' color line was rubbed out.

The case in point was 22-year-old, South Carolina-born Althea Gibson, three times national Negro champion, who last March became the first Negro to reach the final round of the U.S.L.T.A. indoor championships (TIME, April 3). On a recent lecture tour, wrote Alice Marble, more people had asked her about Althea's admission to Forest Hills than about "Gussie's panties." So she had investigated.

A U.S.L.T.A. committee member, she steamed, had not said right out that Althea would not be accepted. But, he had said, she would have to make a strong showing in major eastern tournaments preceding the "big do at Forest Hills," and most of those tournaments were by invitation. Wrote indignant Miss Marble: "If she is not invited to participate in them, as my committeeman freely predicts, then she obviously will be unable to prove anything at all, and it will be the reluctant duty of the committee to reject her entry at Forest Hills."

Said Alice Marble : "If tennis is a game for ladies and gentlemen, it's also time we acted a little more like gentlepeople and less like sanctimonious hypocrites."

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