I can’t remember the first time I stepped onto a tennis court. I just remember always being there. A racquet has been in my hands for as long as I can recall. My father, an avid player himself, put one in my grip as soon as he could get away with it. My earliest memory is being pulled from a beginner group lesson and moved up to an advanced court because I could already hit a forehand. I must have been five, maybe six. What I do remember—more than my age—was the squeak of tennis shoes from the older kids, the rhythmic thwack of balls being hit, and the elation that bubbled up every time I set foot on the court. Tennis felt like home from the beginning.

I never knew a “Black elite” existed in the late 19th century.

I put Black elite in quotes because the Black elite would not have considered themselves the Black elite. Just as the robber barons of the time period of what we now know as the Gilded Age would not have referred to the era as the Gilded Age. We know these terms emerged decades later as authors and historians dissected the era in their research and work.

America has defined itself as a country based on a race-based hierarchy that, through almost every structure, law, ordinance, and standard set by elite white men, is reinforced by class, education, land ownership, gender, and even beauty. Desperate to maintain the supremacy of whiteness, (specifically male-dominated whiteness), America provided handouts to white men, restricted access to everyone else, and told the lie that the success the white men experienced was solely based on meritocracy.