Ora Washington
(1897-1971)
Hall of Fame Induction: 2018
Card Shown:
Photo
Position: Center
Height: 5’7″
bb
bb
Ora Washington (sometimes known as Ora Mae Washington) was one of the top black female athletes in the early 1900s. She was a two-sport star, dominating the competition in both tennis and basketball. Washington was pioneer for today’s African-American female athletes, blazing a trail that would help lead to the opportunities that are available for women today.
Playing in the all-black American Tennis Association (ATA), Ora won eight national women’s singles titles between 1929 and 1937. She also won a number of doubles and mixed doubles titles during her career. As a basketball player, Washington was the top player on the most accomplished women’s basketball team of her era, the Philadelphia Tribune, which was sponsored by the local African-American newspaper of the same name.
Awards and Honors
- Ora led the Germantown Hornets, her local African-American YWCA team, to the national title for colored women in 1931.
- Washington then joined her early rivals, the Philadelphia Tribune, and they went on to win eleven straight Colored Women’s Basketball World Championships in basketball during the 1930s and 1940s.
- Ora was inducted into the Black Athletes Hall of Fame in 1976. At the ceremony her seat remained unoccupied. The promoters of the event did not realize that Ora had died five years earlier.
- She was also enshrined into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009.
Points of Interest
- Ora began her basketball career with the Germantown Hornets, a team formed at her local African-American YWCA in Pennsylvania.
- From 1924-1936, Ora enjoyed twelve consecutive years of undefeated play in the American Tennis Association (ATA).
- In her eighteen-year basketball career with the Philadelphia Tribune, Washington’s teams lost only six games and those were all to men’s teams.
- In the 1930s and 1940s Ora was considered one of the top colored players in the world and became “the first black female sports superstar.”
- After her athletic careers ended Ora provided for herself by finding employment as a housekeeper.