Billie Jean King

Billie Jean King was one of the greatest tennis players of her era and the most important advocate for women's sports in American history. A winner of 39 Grand Slam titles, she used her fame to fight for the recognition and pay that women athletes had long been denied.

In 1973 she played Bobby Riggs, a former champion who claimed a man could beat any top woman, in a nationally televised match billed as the "Battle of the Sexes." King won decisively before a television audience of tens of millions, a victory that carried weight far beyond tennis in the year after Title IX became law.

King's activism was institutional as well as symbolic. She helped found the Women's Tennis Association and threatened to boycott until the U.S. Open offered equal prize money, which it became the first major to do in 1973. She also later became one of the most prominent openly gay athletes of her generation.

King turned athletic stardom into a lever for equality, linking sport to the women's movement and the broader fight for civil rights. Her career helped make women's professional sports viable and reshaped what the public expected an athlete to stand for.