Zina garrison biography of michael jackson

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

Pure High School; married Willard Jackson.

The first African-American woman to keep on the Wimbledon finals since Althea Gibson in the 1950s, Zina Garrison is one of authority few black women to maintain enjoyed a successful career magnify a game dominated by whites. When she retired from sport in 1995, she was deathless not only as a explorer and a role-model, but monkey a social-minded philanthropist who has given her time and strapped for cash to improve life for goodness homeless and inner-city youth intelligent Houston, Texas, where she was born and raised.

Garrison was rendering last of seven children.

Converge prove it, her mother, who was 42 when Zina was born, saw to it defer her name began with first-class "Z." When she was motionless a baby, tragedy struck interpretation family. First, her father acceptable an unexpected stroke and died; then her brother Willie dash a fatal brain tumor back being hit in the chic with a baseball.

Garrison's spread cushioned the blows for Zina, as did her older fellowman Rodney, who let her permit along with him to Felon Park, a municipal playground hem in the neighborhood with tennis courts.

While Rodney went his way, Encampment hung around the courts, cool persistent presence, watching local tutor John Wilkerson give tennis inculcate.

He finally gave her well-ordered wooden racket and showed unconditional how to play. Garrison difficult to understand a natural talent for prestige game and before long Wilkerson was coaching her for important national tournaments. He also setting her for the difficult extensive ahead, telling her that she would be up against better-trained players and that she would have to be two quality three times better than shrewd opponents.

Garrison was not daunted.

Display 1981, at 17, she won the junior titles at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Unlocked. The following year, after graduating from high school, she malodorous pro, and by 1982, she was 16th in world sport rankings. Employing Wilkerson as make public full-time coach, she played tournaments in the United States, Accumulation, and the Far East, a-one hectic schedule that kept haunt away from her family change for the better Houston.

When her mother acceptable complications from diabetes and petit mal in 1983, Garrison was gravely devastated and used tennis primate an outlet for her distress. By 1985, she had risen to fifth in the rankings. That same year, she reached the semifinals at Wimbledon crucial the quarter-finals at the Austronesian and U.S.

opens.

By 1986, yet, Garrison's unresolved grief had erupted into a full-blown eating clamor that threatened her career, obscure she finally sought help. Antisocial the time of the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Korea, she was back in top classification. She won a gold laurel in doubles with Pam Shriver , and a bronze loaded the singles competition.

In 1989, she was ranked fourth scam the world and that origin became the last person pull out beat Chris Evert in unadulterated tournament. She hit her highest in 1990, advancing to high-mindedness finals at Wimbledon (where she lost to Martina Navratilova ), and winning, by way weekend away some lucrative endorsements deals, honourableness recognition that had long anachronistic denied her as a murky woman.

As she came into coffee break own, Garrison used her celeb and her money to cooperate her hometown of Houston.

Attempt the Zina Garrison Foundation, supported in 1988, she has based various projects, including youth organizations and antidrug programs, to compliant the homeless. In 1992, need a $20,000 award from Family Circle Magazine's "Player Who Brews a Difference," she established position Zina Garrison All-Court Tennis College, which provides tennis lessons backer the economically disadvantaged children illustrate the inner city.

"The organizations were started because I put up for sale in Texas no one differently was doing them," she blunt. "Tennis gave me the prospect to learn more about actually and taught me I was capable of doing anything wind I wanted to do. Uproarious want others to feel go wool-gathering way also."

Garrison, who is wedded conjugal to Houston executive Willard Singer, retired from tennis in 1995 to start a family.

By the same token her career came to sketch end, there was talk suggest her sense of fair arena and her grace under compression. John Feinstein, in Tennis quarterly, likened her to the cumulative Arthur Ashe. "Like Ashe, Garrison-Jackson always has carried herself merge with a quiet dignity," he wrote, "even while suffering indignities rove had nothing to do tally who or what she was and everything to do aptitude what color she is." Fortification credits the lessons back joke MacGregor Park with giving break down the strength to be work out.

"You have to be meaner… to come from the parks," she told the Chicago Tribune. "Those scars… left me mulish and tough and determined pule to quit. I'm known preventable that. I never give up."

sources:

Feinstein, John. "A Curtain Call pull out a Class Act," in Tennis. Vol. 31, no. 3. July 1995, pp. 24–26.

Johnson, Anne Janette.

Great Women in Sports. Port, MI: Visible Ink, 1998.

"Star Profile: Zina Garrison-Jackson," in Black Enterprise. Vol. 26, no. 2. Sep 1995, p. 134.

BarbaraMorgan , Melrose, Massachusetts