11 Facts About Ora Washington

In 1908, Laura Ora Washington died in childbirth adding further strain to the family's finances.

Ora Washington traveled to Germantown in the mid-1910s, and may have attended high school there.

Shortly after her older sister, Georgia, died of tuberculosis, Ora Washington found a home away from home at the YWCA that had opened in 1918 to serve black members of the Germantown neighborhood.

Ora Washington began playing tennis on the courts there in the early 1920s.

Ora Washington won her first national title in 1925 with Lula Ballard at national doubles tournament of the all-Black American Tennis Association, which she would continue to win for the next eleven years.

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Further, Ora Washington never played the top white tennis player of the time, Helen Wills Moody, because Moody refused to schedule a match.

Ora Washington retired completely from sport in the mid-1940s, after she and partner George Stewart defeated Walter Johnson and upcoming superstar Althea Gibson to win the 1947 ATA mixed doubles title.

The following year, Ora Washington led the Hornets to thirty-three consecutive victories.

Ora Washington played for the Tribunes in a three-game event against Bennett College in 1934.

In 2009, Ora Washington was elected to the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, located in Knoxville, Tennessee.

On July 31,2019, a statue inspired by Ora Washington, titled "MVP", was added to Smith Playground in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park.