Althea Gibson's place in sports history is secure.

Ms Gibson, who died earlier this week, was the first black winner of Wimbledon and what is now the US Open and thus was rightly remembered as a trailblazer for blacks and women around the world.

What is less well known in Bermuda and elsewhere was the brief, but enormously important part she played in Bermuda's desegregation campaign.

Before the theatre boycott and before the movement for universal adult suffrage truly got underway, Ms Gibson came to the Island on holiday in 1955 and was invited to play tennis at the then-Tennis Stadium, which had a colour bar.

She and her hosts, also black, booked a court and played their match, in spite of the complaints of the then-manager.

That match sparked the late W.E.R. Joell and others to petition the House of Assembly to desegregate the Tennis Stadium - one of the first successful desegregation actions in Bermuda.

The Stadium is now named after Mr. Joell. But there should be special place set aside for Althea Gibson at the Stadium and in Bermuda's history books remembering her role in the campaign to make Bermuda a land of equals.