Nehemiah Atkinson

Nehemiah Atkinson (1918–2003) was a professional tennis player and tennis coach in New Orleans, Louisiana USA.

He managed public tennis facilities in New Orleans and played competitive tennis into old age.

He was particularly noted for teaching young African-Americans, especially the underprivileged, to play the sport of tennis.

Atkinson was born in 1918 in Biloxi, Mississippi, to parents C.C. Atkinson and Josephine Atkinson.

He was the first of ten children in the family.

Atkinson's family moved to New Orleans just before the Great Depression as his father became bishop of the Christ Holiness Church there.

Atkinson attended New Orleans Public Schools, including two years of high school.

He began playing tennis at age nine, learning without the benefit of professional instruction, being attracted to the sport despite its dominance by white people.

During World War II, Atkinson served in the United States Army's Black Corps of Engineers, which was responsible for building airstrips in Washington state, Alaska, and various locations in the south Pacific Ocean.

He returned to New Orleans after his tour of military duty in December 1945.

At that time, he studied offset printing at the Louisiana Industrial Training School in Farmerville, Louisiana.

Atkinson subsequently returned to New Orleans, where he obtained employment with the Dryades Street branch of the YMCA.

Here he organized various activities, especially for young people.

He established and taught tennis clinics for young people.

During this time, he gained the attention of the local Coca-Cola Bottling Company which was a sponsor of the Dryades Street YMCA and gave Atkinson employment as a night supervisor.

In 1947, as part of his experience with the Dryades Street YMCA, Atkinson co-founded the New Orleans Hard Court Tennis Club, which provided opportunities for African-Americans to play competitive tennis in the segregated society of the time.

This included organizing tennis tournaments, often taking place at Xavier University, a historically black university.

In his early years of teaching tennis, due to limited resources, Atkinson sometimes used parking lots with a modified volleyball net instead of a tennis net as makeshift tennis courts.

He taught youngsters the sport of tennis regardless of their ethnic background.

Atkinson participated in many tournaments sponsored by the American Tennis Association, and he also supported them by doing volunteer work on behalf of the association.

This was before the time that the United States Tennis Association accepted African-American players, while the American Tennis Association promoted African-American participation in the sport.

As a player, Atkinson won various regional tennis tournaments throughout the southern United States, winning approximately 15 tournament titles.

In the 1960s, local tennis player Harry Anisgard sponsored Atkinson for membership in the formerly all-white New Orleans City Park Tennis Club.

In reprisal, Anisgard was dismissed from the club.

The club had regrets soon afterward, and re-admitted Anisgard to the club, ironically with Atkinson's sponsorship.

Following the 1974 relocation of the New Orleans Lawn Tennis Club, the former location became the Stern Tennis Center, a part of the New Orleans Recreation Department.

This facility, on South Saratoga Street in New Orleans, welcomed African-Americans to play tennis.

Atkinson became the manager of the facility, a position he held until his retirement in 1995.

At the time of his retirement, Lloyd Dillon became manager of the facility, whom Atkinson has mentored for the position.

Atkinson's notable tennis students included Chanda Rubin and Sharon Pettis, who later became the tennis coach at Marquette University.

He also helped Pettis obtain a scholarship from the Southern University men's tennis team, an indication that he broke boundaries in both race and gender relations.

Pettis later worked as a tennis instructor for the New Orleans Recreation Department as did Atkinson.

Atkinson wrote a column for the Louisiana Weekly newspaper, with a readership of mostly African-American tennis players, entitled "Hard Court Tennis Notes".

Much of Atkinson's career coincided with the era of the Jim Crow South, and he frequently was taunted at integrated tennis tournaments in which he participated.

He had urine-filled tennis balls and other objects thrown at him.

He received inappropriate foot-fault calls and sometimes was verbally abused by tournament officials.

After segregation in the Deep South subsided, Atkinson became a member of the New Orleans Lawn Tennis Club, from which he had previously been excluded for racial reasons.

This was the most prestigious tennis facility in New Orleans at the time.

Atkinson's role was as a medical corpsman for the 97th Engineer Regiment.

As of 2019, the New Orleans Lawn Tennis Club was also the oldest tennis club in the United States (founded in 1876), and it had become racially integrated only in 1986.