Growing up as a black girl in a white, male-dominated sport meant the odds were stacked against Serena Williams. She faced crippling racism, sexism, and body shaming but her talent and determination silenced critics.

With a record-breaking 23 Grand Slams and $95m in prize money, the four-time Olympic gold medalist is not only an icon of the sporting world but a role model and inspiration for athletes and women around the globe.

“Ladies, it can be done,” Williams said, accepting Sports Illustrated's Sportsperson of the Year award. "When I first started playing tennis, women weren't really encouraged to play sports, let alone excel in sports. So my hope, by winning this award, is that I can inspire many, many, many more women."

A true superhero emerges

Serena and her sister Venus Williams were born into a large family a year apart - Serena in 1981 and Venus in 1980. Their father, Richard, had at least nine children during his three marriages. Their mother, Oracene Price, had three daughters from a previous marriage, so the girls grew up in a crowded home in Compton, a city on the outskirts of LA.

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“I never ever, ever felt broke,” Serena told Essence magazine. “Looking back, I’m like, ‘Wow. We lived in a two-bedroom house with seven people.’ I don’t know how my parents were able to make me feel that way, but they did, and it was special.”

Their sisters were role models. “We were the youngest on the totem pole, so we just did everything that our sisters did,” Venus said. 

Richard Williams, the focus of the movie King Richard, grew up in poverty but was determined to prosper. When he discovered how profitable tennis could be as a profession, he learned the game and coached his children. He read books, watched videos, spoke to experts, and played in South Central Los Angeles before moving the family to a rough neighborhood in Compton, southern Los Angeles County.

“What led me to Compton was my belief that the greatest champions came out of the ghetto. I had studied sports successes like Muhammad Ali and great thinkers like Malcolm X. I saw where they came from,” he wrote in his autobiography Black and White: The Way I See It. 

Serena was just a toddler when she and Venus started training. The courts were riddled with potholes, and Compton was a magnet for gang violence, but the girls excelled. The courts were theirs. They could practice for hours every day.

Despite Serena’s raw talent, Venus seemed to be the emerging winner early on. But Serena went pro at 14 and by 17 Serena won the 1999 US Open - the family’s first Grand Slam - motivated, in part, she said, by sibling rivalry.

By the time the 2002 Wimbledon Championships rolled around, Serena Williams was routinely outpacing her sister, defeating Venus to win the Wimbledon singles title without dropping a set for the first time in her career.

Old-fashioned sibling rivalry had spurred Serena to victory once again: “I wanted to win at Wimbledon because Venus said she wanted to win Wimbledon, and then my dad yelled at me and was like 'Serena, stop copying Venus!’”
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Battling racism, sexism

Bigotry tarnished many of Serena’s hard-fought victories. During the 2001 BNP Paribas Open in California, Serena and Venus were subjected to booing and racist slurs. Venus was accused of match-fixing and the audience turned on their father.

"When Venus and I were walking down the stairs to our seats, people kept calling me 'nigger," her father and coach Richard Williams later told journalists. One man, he said, threatened, "'I wish it was '75; we'd skin you alive.'"

Serena boycotted the BNP Paribas tournament for the next 15 years.

The 2015 French Open should have been another moment of celebration for Serena Williams. She defeated Czech tennis star Lucie Šafářová and won her third French Open title. Instead, Vox reports, Williams was compared to an animal, likened to a man, and deemed frightening and unattractive.

Body shaming, misogynist comments, and sexism accompanied the slurs. In 2002, Williams competed at the US Open wearing a black spandex bodysuit, prompting to report: "On some women [the catsuit] might look good… On Serena, it only serves to accentuate a superstructure that is already bordering on the digitally enhanced and a rear end that I will attempt to sum up as discreetly as possible by simply referring to it as 'formidable.'

Serena hasn’t been afraid to call out sexism on and off the court. “People have looked past me because of the color of my skin,” she said during her 2015 acceptance speech for the Sports Illustrated Award. “I’ve had people overlook me because I was a woman.”

After a difficult childbirth and battle with postpartum depression, Serena encouraged black women to ‘get feisty’ and also call out racism in US health care: “Doctors aren’t listening to us, just to be quite frank,” she told the BBC in 2018. “We’re dying, three times more likely. And knowing that going in, some doctors not caring as much for us, it’s heartbreaking.”‍

Sometimes even true superheroes need a rest‍

Serena hasn’t always been so feisty. She took a much-needed break from tennis following injuries and the 2003 murder of her sister Yetunde Price in a Compton gang-related shooting. Serena was battling depression in 2005-2006 and fell to No. 140 in the world tennis rankings.

She reconnected with her faith as a Jehovah’s Witness, however, and took a break in West Africa which inspired her to return to the tennis court.

“Going to Africa changed her life. She came back a totally different person. That helped her to refocus on her life and her career. That really changed her attitude about being a black woman,” Serena’s mother, Oracene Price said.

Still, the memories of the shooting haunt her. “I think I cried the whole time,” Serena said in 2021 after watching the movie King Richard. “Whenever she [Yetunde] came on film, I just - personally, I just started, like - I mean, even still...” 

On 1 September 2017, Williams gave birth to Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr., her first child with her husband Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of social news platform Reddit. 

Unfortunately, childbirth was fraught with medical complications following an emergency C-section. Serena also faced horrendous body-shaming taunts, and experienced postpartum depression. Rather than hide away, she spoke openly on Instagram, hoping to change the conversation about the struggles of motherhood to help others cope with similar problems.

Making a difference 

It was while she was pregnant that Williams became an ambassador for Allstate Foundation Purple Purse, which helps domestic abuse survivors.

"I want to do things I feel like I can connect to,” Serena told ESPN. "I don't really know anyone personally that's been involved in domestic violence, but I feel like it's something we all face as a society. I do some things with violence through the Yetunde Price Resource Center [created in honor of her deceased sister] and I felt like it all clicked together." 

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She’s also donated prize winnings to help fight the devastation of Australian wildfires, provided 4m masks to schools to help combat Covid, and built schools in Jamaica, Uganda, and Kenya in addition to being a UNICEF ambassador.

With a record-breaking 23 Grand Slams to her name and a commitment to charity, Serena said she hopes to inspire others to succeed beyond their dreams.

“Every woman's success should be an inspiration to another. We're strongest when we cheer each other on."

Like one of her role models, tennis player Billie Jean King, Serena also aims to leave a legacy of equality for women: “Honestly, if I’m able to open the door for the next person, that means a lot to me too. And hopefully, they’ll be able to do better than me.”