As fans walked into the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on Wednesday afternoon, they were greeted by drummers clad in royal blue and white uniforms from the Marching Force of Hampton University, a historically Black university in Virginia.
The band got some of its biggest cheers from participants of Brooklyn United, a music and arts program in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, where several of the college drummers had previously sharpened their skills.
The Marching Force was part of H.B.C.U. Live at the U.S. Open, a cultural and educational event that brings music, dance and other elements to the tennis party in Queens.
“This is really us bringing a very Black thing to a non-Black space,” said Lauren Grove, the chief experience architect of The Grant Access, an event planning company that helped put the event together. “The goal is to make everybody feel included but also give a little bit of education.”
H.B.C.U. Live celebrates historically Black colleges and universities and also Black people in tennis, Grove said. Panels attached to trees had facts about Althea Gibson, the first Black person to win Wimbledon. Gibson attended Florida A&M University, an H.B.C.U.
Inside the tennis center, the Marching Force’s dancers, donning sparkling silver body suits and white sneakers, twirled and bounced to music in a plaza near Arthur Ashe Stadium, where Coco Gauff won on Wednesday and where Serena Williams is the main draw of the night session.
“Our biggest opportunity is in the tennis naïve population,” said Kamau Murray, who was Sloane Stephens’s coach when she won the U.S. Open in 2017. “And historically, minorities, Blacks and Hispanics have been sort of unable to afford it or sort of shut out of the game.”
He said the sport was better when everyone could participate. He said a number of Black professional tennis players, including Venus and Serena Williams, Sloane Stephens, Madison Keys, Coco Gauff, Taylor Townsend, and Francis Tiafoe had a huge impact on “the growth of the game, the growth of the marketing, the growth of the revenue.”
“This is the time to capitalize on growing the game with Black people because we have all this Black talent that’s relevant, that is culturally conscious, marketable, and unafraid to speak up and acknowledge their ethnicity,” said Murray, who is now an analyst for Tennis Channel.
Khali Jones, 31, who played on the tennis team at Tuskegee University, an H.B.C.U., was among those admiring the dancers on Wednesday afternoon. Jones, who started playing tennis at 6 years old, walked onto the team her sophomore year. She said her favorite players growing up were the Williams sisters.
“It’s definitely emotional because we’ve all been on that ride with her from day one,” said Jones of Serena Williams’s retirement. “I’m just excited to be here and be in this moment while this is happening.”
Not far from all of the action were two sisters, Quintella Thorn, 68, and Cara Monroe, 72. The women traveled to the tournament from Columbus, Georgia, and Shreveport, Louisiana, respectively. They had tickets for Williams’s 7 p.m. match against the No. 2 seed, Anett Kontaveit, which they had bought in June, before Williams’s announcement that she would be moving on from tennis sometime soon.
“I think she has brought so many people of color into the game,” said Thorn, who has been to the U.S. Open nine times including this year.
“It’s just been great to see her because she changed the game of tennis,” she said, adding that “Before Serena, the game was a very, very mild and simple game, but she brought power.”
Monroe, who has been to the U.S. Open six times, including this year, said she picked up tennis at age 60 because of Williams.
“You can do what you see, if you don’t see it, you don’t have an idea of what you can accomplish,” Monroe said.
