In 2017 the notable American tennis player Serena Williams (the younger of the two sisters) wrote an article in the well-known Fortune magazine expressing, "Cycles of poverty, discrimination and sexism are much harder to break than the record of Grand Slam titles."
In those words she summed up a struggle to break gender and racial inequality.
Adding: in the United States black women earn 37% less than men and 17% less than white women, which means that for every dollar earned by a man, black women earn only 63 cents".
In the face of such a definition, commentary is unnecessary.
And she concludes, "Women of color have to work an average of eight months longer to earn the same as men in a year. It's not about me. It's about the other 24 million black women in the United States, and if I had never picked up a tennis racket, I would be one of them. There is no need to be afraid. You have to demand equal pay. Every time they do it, they make things easier for a woman coming up behind."
An absolute domain.
With an absolute dominance over their rivals on the women's circuit, Venus and Serena have dominated the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) rankings for years, alternating respectively, with total legitimacy.
And they have demonstrated it with the aggressive tennis that characterizes them, managing to monopolize the public with their charisma and sympathy.
There is an anecdote in the tennis circuits that points out that when they were little and were just beginning to take their first steps in the so-called "white sport", their father had developed a system to make their emotional defenses invulnerable: on the sidelines of the court while they were training, he insulted them from head to toe with epithets such as "blacks of..." and all the insults that the popular imagination can decipher when a person with dark skin entered a stronghold of pure and exclusive white dominion for years.
Arthur Ashe had suffered it before, but he was a man. More tempered.
But the verdadera precursor había sido lthea Gibson quien marked a hito with el título de Roland Garros in 1956.
Those who have witnessed those trainings say that the little girls cried at the beginning and asked their father for explanations. He never told them the truth. As time went by, in the end they smiled every time they heard the father's expletives.
They say that once Venus, the eldest, in the middle of a barrage of insults for a mistake made, turned around and smilingly said to her father: "That's it, Dad, there's no more need for that". Strategy over. The father smiled and never insulted them again.
As time and tournaments went by, the Williams sisters became more and more dominant over their rivals, until they became two (almost) unbeatable players.
The novelty was not when they won. That was a given. The real news was when they lost.
The beginnings.
Venus decided to become a tennis player at the age of 10.
She made her big break on the professional circuit in 1997 when she was invited to play in the Indian Wells Open.
At that time she was ranked 211th in the world and defeated the Croatian Iva Majoli, who at that time was 9th in the ranking.
There were a total of five sisters. With the previous three (the largest) the father had not managed to crown his dream of transforming them into great tennis players.
With Venus and Serena the last card of him was played.
The consecration.
Months later she reached the final of the U.S. Open, losing to Hingis. A new star was born in the firmament of world women's tennis.
Serena appeared a little later, perhaps overshadowed by the fame of her sister, although she had no problems when facing the big stars and defeating them playing a tennis almost identical to Venus': strength, grit, power, conviction in victory.
In 1999 she won the US Open at the age of 19, setting a new record that broke a barrier of 41 seasons without triumphs by black women in Grand Slam tournaments.
She was so aggressive in her game that after winning the U.S. Open she stated that the women's tennis played up to that time was boring and that she would like to participate in some men's competition. Obviously the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) forbade her to do so.