The Black Athletes Hall of Fame held its annual ceremony at a fancy New York hotel.
The host gave a speech about the newest member of the Hall of Fame. She probably won't be known by you.
She was a champion but prejudice stopped her from competing for the biggest prizes of the day. She had a sporting career that spanned three decades in the United States.
Washington stopped playing sports in the 1940s. A new generation was digging into her story in the 70s. The gathering took place in New York.
They apologized as the host introduced Washington to the crowd.
Washington was not present. There was a chair on the stage for her to sit in. The host apologized, but they had not been able to locate her.
The New York Times reported that the items were returned to the Hall of Fame offices in New York. The location of Miss Washington remains a mystery.
Washington had died for five years.
Washington's life has been the subject of a series on the radio. Here, you can listen to episodes.
She wanted to get her story out there so it wasn't forgotten.
The story of Washington is important. She was an extraordinary Black female athlete. She is the first black female to dominate a sport.
There are a lot of things we don't know about Washington, but we do know that she received homophobic abuse and that racism and white supremacy denied her both an opportunity and recognition.
Washington's life was full of obstacles. She took on the same type of injustice that is still being fought today.
Washington was born in 1898 or 1899. She spent her formative years in a small farming community.
Her family owned a farm. By the standards of the day, they had built up some economic independence. Washington was the fifth child of nine children and was discovered by historian Pamela Grundy some years ago.
The nephew of Washington was tracked down by Grundy.
He told her that they grew all sorts of vegetables. Tobacco was the main cause of the strike. They sell tobacco in the winter and always have some for Christmas. They made a living like that.
My family is close to its roots. My mom's grandma was born in West Virginia after Washington. She was raised under the Jim Crow laws as a child.
The Washingtons lived in Virginia under legislation that ensured they would remain second-class citizens at every stage of their lives.
When Washington first appeared in the US census in 1900, Virginia passed a law requiring railroads to provide separate cars for black and white riders. There was a law that did the same thing. However, schools were not equal.
Families tell stories about those times in the South. The law doesn't go as deep as it goes. We're talking about a culture of fear that touches everything. There is fear of violence.
Ten years have passed since the last census man visited the farm. The person is listed as 12 years old. Her mother isn't on the list. Her dad is no longer alive.
When I think of that little girl growing up, living with her dad and grandma and her brothers and sisters, I know they had to struggle.
What happens next makes a lot of sense because of that.
There is a mass movement happening in the US. There was a movement that changed the country.
In the first quarter of the 20th century, Black Americans were leaving the South and heading for the cities and jobs of the North: New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and many others. Historians call it the great migration.
Sometime in the 1910s a teenage Washington packed her bags and left her family's farm in the South for good.
She took the train to Philadelphia to join her aunt, who had never been to the big city before. The world she was entering was full of opportunities that previous generations of women never had.
Washington was the younger of two servants working in a wealthy white home in the Philadelphia suburbs when she appeared on the US census in 1920.
Her introduction to tennis may have happened in the same area where new arrivals to the city - Italian, Irish, Black American - made their homes. She took lessons in the game at a branch of the YWCA that was set up to help girls and women of colour.
There is very little detail on the ground. We don't have any surviving letters, and the few people who interviewed her didn't publish anything about her personal life.
The Philadelphia Tribune is the oldest newspaper in the US and still publishes today.
According to one article, Washington first started competing in national Black women's tournaments in 1923 after picking up a racquet. One account describes her unique way of holding the racquet, which is halfway up the handle.
She was a natural from the start. She was going to take the sport to a whole new level.
The American Tennis Association (ATA), a Black national tennis organisation founded in 1916, organised a national tennis championship in 1925 and Washington won it.
She started to evolve as a player. She moved from being seen as a successful athlete to a once-in-a- generation talent.
Washington won her first tennis ATA doubles title the same year she won her first tennis match. Up to 1936, she won that title every year. She won the women's trophy from 1929 to 1935. It has been seven years since I won the title at the top.
This was still pre-war America, even though Washington was a main player in sports media. Helen Wills, the white player who won her seventh national title in 1931, was allowed to succeed only in isolation. Wills dominated the US Championships until 1950, which is when the US Open was held.
There wouldn't be merchandising deals from international sportswear brands. She will not lead to global fame or wealth.
It's shown in the next US census. Washington worked as a hotel maid in Chicago in the 1930s.
Her name was beginning to appear on lists of Black women's basketball teams around the time of Washington's big tennis breakthrough.
At a time when she was the best black female tennis player in the US, at the end of the 1920s she was competing almost as much in basketball as she was in tennis.
The YWCA Hornets were one of the first basketball teams Washington played for, because they were only for black players.
As the team grew, she became a star. There were reports of long shots that carried her side to victory. The Hornets won the National Girls Basketball Title on 9 April 1931, defeating the Rankin Femmes from Pittsburgh.
Washington was the kind of basketball player people looked forward to watching on the court.
A team was sponsored by the Philadelphia Tribune. Joseph Rainey was the first Black person to serve in the United States House of Representatives and was the coach of the Philadelphia Tribunes.
The Tribunes were more than just an advertising agency, they were also about collecting trophies.
Dr Amira Rose Davis is an assistant professor of history and African American studies at Penn State University.
It was a place that many Black civic and political leaders saw as an opportunity to demonstrate how Black people were good citizens.
Washington was appointed captain of the Tribunes. She was held up as the star of the team that won 11 consecutive titles by the Tribune.
At a time when sporting celebrities were emerging, there was never any coverage of her private life. The focus fell on other female athletes only in a specific way. Washington was not in line with that template.
Dr Rose Davis said there was policing of their sexuality.
Think of an African American baseball player. They decided to feature her in a dress because they wanted to show that she was still domestic.
They took a picture of her without her shirt on, laying down, and rubbed her husband's face to show she was still heterosexual.
From this distance, it's not possible to know whether Washington saw herself as a male or female. Some Bennett College teammates of Washington's shared memories of her when she was interviewed by Rita Liberti in the early 2000s.
From what they said, Washington was seen as different - as less feminine than the other players.
For the first time in her life, Washington began to make a living from sport. She wasn't paid enough to give up her job.
She continued to work in domestic service after her sporting career ended. She did not bow out quietly when the time came.
Washington lost her title in 1936. She won it again the following year. It was a good time to take a break. She said she was going to retire from tennis singles.
She told the Baltimore African-American that it was not worth it to be a national champion.
The struggle to be one that matters. Everybody wants to take it away from you when you arrive.
There was a new force that emerged in the 1930's, and it was a young player who talked about a feud with Washington.
In 1939 Washington came out of retirement just to beat Lomax at a tournament in Buffalo, a remarkable final effort.
Washington played doubles tennis until she was 50 years old.
The mixed doubles title was her last one. Althea was on the other side of the net at the time.
In a photo of the pairs posing together, Washington wears long trousers and glasses while the young star stands a few metres away and on the verge of landmark success. He was the first black player at the US nationals. She won her first Grand Slam singles title at the French Open six years later.
The last basketball game played by Washington was in 1942. This part of her story shows a different type of decline.
The women's game was the same as the men's when she began playing. It was fast and competitive.
By the mid-1930s, many of the college teams that formed the women's basketball landscape both in Black and in white sports were moving towards what's known as 'participation play', instead of competitive action.
Around a third of the sports pages in the Philadelphia Tribune were devoted to women's basketball. When Washington left the game at the age of 43 or 44, it was a trickle. The Tribune's women's team folded.
Washington was sharing an apartment in Philadelphia with her brother. She worked in domestic service.
Washington was close to her family. In later life, family becomes even more important to her. She co-owns the apartment with her sister, a cousin and her nephew lived in the same building.
He told Pamela that his aunt was dating a woman. Washington's sexuality is an important part of her story and we will hear from another of her relatives soon.
There are times of great celebration and joy that are remembered by two other family members, Washington's great nephew Gregory Price and her great niece.
She lost her rightful place in sporting history and the public consciousness. When the Black Athletes Hall of Fame wanted to honor her, they didn't know she had died.
Two years before Washington's death, she was interviewed for a story by the Philadelphia Tribune. The YWCA is where it all began for her. He had never heard of her.
He says he was floored when he met her.
It's hard to imagine this when you see people like Serena Williams who make millions and have a name for themselves. She didn't have anything. There's nothing.
She was getting old and she was not in great health but to learn that she was possibly the best female athlete in the country in the first half of the 20th century.
She did not say she was angry. She was sad. What should have been should have been.
She did not want to be recognised for her skills.
Gregory Price has a different perspective. He doesn't think she's sad.
We are the last living members of our families who had personal contact with her. He says that they are the last of that group.
She seemed bigger than life. She was tall and slim and had a nice voice. You could see that she was sincere when she spoke.
We had no problem with my aunt's sexuality, but she was secretive because of it. The black community and the white community both refused because of racism.
They didn't acknowledge her because of her sexuality, even though they loved her as a player. She would be proud to say that she's gay if she were alive today.
The story is a hidden one. A person who played two sports at the highest level was a champion in both of them. None of those guys can talk about that. Nobody has done anything in sports history.
They will only know her through our stories. I feel like I need to do something.
The facts will speak for themselves if the story is told correctly.
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