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“Althea and Angela,” a new play by Tennessee playwright, Todd Olson, will be performed by The WordPlayers of Knoxville on Saturday, Feb. 25 at 1 p.m.

The performance will be in the Judge William H. Inman Humanities Complex Theatre on the Walters State Morristown campus and is free and open to the public.

The story is set in 1955, Althea Gibson and Angela Buxton were world-ranked tennis players yet no one wanted to partner with them in women’s doubles.

In fact, few even wanted to talk with them.

Post-War America was still very segregated and the tennis world was still very anti-Semitic.

Eight years after Jackie Robinson had broken the color line in major league baseball, the tennis world lagged behind, clinging to its country club roots.

Althea, a black woman from Harlem, and Angela, a Jewish woman from Liverpool, were outcasts in two nations.

So they decided to join forces outside their own country. What happened then made history.

For more information, please contact the Morristown Task Force on Diversity, 423-277-2250.