There was a tribute missing at this year's Wimbledon Tennis Championships.

Black sports pioneers and barrier breakers like Jackie Robinson, Arthur Ashe, Tiger Woods have deservedly received recognition, but one name doesn't come up nearly enough. If there ever was a year to remember Althea Gibson, then it's this year.

Wimbledon 2007 marked the 50th anniversary of Gibson's historic singles win at the All-England Club, when she became the first black player to bring home tennis' most prestigious title. So why did the Wimbledon brass not honour Gibson? They found time to be outraged by Tatiana Golovin's red underpants. And throughout a rain-filled fortnight, the topic of the weather created much dialogue about Wimbledon being moved to avoid the drab conditons.

Well it’s good to know the priorities are intact.

Althea Gibson deserves much more recognition for the path she blazed.The sad part is, Gibson, who died in 2003, was used to being ignored.

"Some people think Arthur Ashe was the first one to make inroads, but it was Althea Gibson," said Yanick Lamb, a journalism teacher at Howard University in the USA who co-wrote the book, Born to Win: The Authorized Biography of Althea Gibson.

There are plans to honour Gibson at the U.S. Open, but why wait until then? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to honour Gibson in the same place where she made history?

It can be argued that Gibson's place in sports history is just as important as Jackie Robinson's, who ended approximately eighty years of segregation in Major League baseball, by becoming the first African-American professional baseball player of the modern era in 1947.

After all, Gibson broke not just one colour barrier, but two. Not only was she the first African-American to integrate tennis, she also was the first black woman on the LPGA Tour. She also faced incredible discrimination, because she carried the dual burden of race and gender.

According to Lamb's book, tournaments were sometimes cancelled if Gibson entered them. During the first match she played in the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association, which pre-dated open tennis and the WTA, people in the crowd yelled "Beat the n*****!" Gibson commonly heard outbursts like that when she played.

But racism couldn’t stop Gibson, from being a two-time Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year. Or from winning 11 Grand Slam titles, including two U.S. Opens and three consecutive doubles titles at the French Open.

Because a pro tennis tour was non-existent back then, Gibson eventually turned to professional golf. She was nowhere near as dominant in golf as she was in tennis, but when she joined the LPGA another door was opened.

The latter stages of Gibson's life were also full of hardship. She nearly went bankrupt before close friends, including tennis legend Billie Jean King and former New York City Mayor David Dinkins, began raising money on her behalf. Her health deteriorated rapidly. She had a stroke and a heart attack before eventually dying of respiratory failure in 2003 at age 76.

The least that can happen is make sure no one forgets Althea Gibson.