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Billie Jean King: The Struggle For Women's Rights

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On November 22, 1943 many people say that a miracle of women’s was born. This miracle was born in Long Beach, California. The ever so called pure tennis talent was given the name Billie Jean Moffitt, later known as Billie Jean King. Billie Jean King had many different difficulties and obstacles she had to overcome while all of this creating lots of controversy. While fighting against the viewpoints of society and creating lots of controversy, Billie Jean King overcame this and is now considered one of the best women tennis players of all time, as well as one of the first prominent U.S. athletes to announce that she was a lesbian, and a huge defender of women’s equal rights.
While being considered one of the best women’s tennis players of all …show more content…

Many things fueled her fight for equal rights, but mainly her fight was fueled from a tennis tournament that Billie Jean King was in when she was around twelve. Billie Jean King saw that everything was white, from the players to the clothes, and she wondered where all the colored people were (Naify). Billie Jean King fought for women’s rights throughout the 1970s seeing as everything being sexist and unfair for women (Naify). She especially fought for women’s getting equal wages saying that it was not fair compared to the wages that all of the men received (California University Press 1).
Before the Battle of the Sexes between BIllie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, Billie Jean King felt very compelled to not only play but defeat Bobby Riggs in order to prove to the world that tennis was not just a white male dominated sport. With Billie Jean King doing this, it fueled her fight for women’s equal rights even more (Naify). And for Billie Jean King’s fight for women’s equal rights she received a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama on August 12, 2009 …show more content…

“Bill” Moffitt and his wife Betty Moffitt (Johnson). Tennis wasn’t the first sport that Billie Jean King played in her life. Billie Jean played softball when she was just a kid (Johnson). She played tennis when ever the people at her father’s fire department wanted her to play with them on their softball league team (Johnson). Billie Jean King finally realized that softball was not for her (Johnson). So, then her parents suggest to Billie Jean King that she should take up the sport of tennis (Johnson). Then she was enrolled in the city’s tennis program at the age of eleven (Johnson). Billie Jean King then earned money with jobs she had to buy herself her own tennis racket (Johnson). Then she would spend hours upon hours hitting the tennis balls with her new racket trying her very best to improve her performance (Johnson). Whenever she was entered into the Southern California tennis tournament, she defeated a University of Southern California junior in the finals to win the whole tournament (Johnson). Billie Jean King was so inexperienced at that time that she didn’t even know that a tennis match consisted of winning two sets to win the match

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