The First Black Man at Wimbledon Was One of Ours

The First Black Man at Wimbledon

Was One of Ours

Ask anyone who the first black player at Wimbledon was and they will likely say Arthur Ashe without skipping a beat. They would be wrong by more than half a century. The correct answer is a Jamaica College man.

BERTRAND MILBOURNE CLARK — known across Jamaica simply as B.M. Clark, was born in Kingston on 29 April 1894, the second son of Clementina Louise née Sanguinetti and Enos Edgar Clark, a prominent Kingston dentist. He was educated first at Kingston High School, and then at Jamaica College (JC). In 1910 he represented JC in the high jump at the very first Inter-Secondary Schools Championship Sports, held at Sabina Park. He did not merely participate. He came first. Clark was a sporting polymath.

It was only the beginning. Over the following decade, BM Clark established himself as the finest golfer on the island, a formidable cricketer with Melbourne Cricket Club, and a tennis player of extraordinary range and dominance. In seven consecutive years he was the All Jamaica tennis champion, accumulating seven singles titles, seven doubles titles and five mixed doubles crowns. In 1920 he crossed to the United States and unseated the reigning Black American national champion, Tally Holmes, to claim the American Tennis Association title. He was, by any reckoning, at the absolute peak of his game.

In 1924, BM Clark walked onto the grass at the All England Club at Wimbledon. He was the first black player in the history of the tournament ever to do so. He would return to SW19 in 1930. The Wimbledon archives, consulted decades later, drew a blank. They had simply never thought to look. When his family brought the records to light, the Club's own archivists were astonished. "They had no idea," his researcher reported, "there was a black player that early at Wimbledon."

A ROYAL ENDORSEMENT

His legend was not confined to the courts. In 1927, during a royal tour of the British Empire, Prince Albert, Duke of York, visited Jamaica. The man who would become King George VI was himself a keen tennis player, and he took to the courts at King's House. As the reigning Jamaican champion, Bertrand Clark was naturally invited. Prince Albert chose Clark as his doubles partner. The match was noted at the time as a rare and remarkable display of equality across racial lines, and it was recorded for posterity in William Shawcross's official biography of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.

THE COMPLETE MAN

Clark worked throughout his life as a civil servant, retiring as medical secretary of the Island Medical Office. He served as Secretary of the Jamaica Golf Association from 1941 to 1951. He co-authored books on cricket alongside his brother, and wrote on golf and tennis as well. He appeared in the 1946 edition of the Jamaican Who's Who. Time Magazine cited him as the first black player at Wimbledon. He was married twice, had no children, travelled the world extensively and often in first class, and carried himself throughout his life with the quiet authority of a man who knew exactly what he had achieved.

When he died on 30 March 1958, the Sunday Gleaner published an obituary that placed him among the immortals of Jamaican sport. The world beyond the island largely failed to notice. That oversight is ours to correct.

He was educated at Jamaica College. He was True Blue. He was, long before the world gave him his due, ours.