Billie Jean King

The Moffitts of Long Beach all played something — a firefighter father who ran track, a mother who swam, a younger brother, Randy, who pitched 12 years in the major leagues. Billie Jean played shortstop at 10 on a team of girls four and five years older and won a city softball championship with them. Her parents pushed her at 11 toward something more ladylike. She saved eight dollars of her own for a racket and took free lessons on Long Beach's public courts from a city employee named Clyde Walker. The minister at her church was Bob Richards, twice an Olympic pole-vault champion. He asked her what she meant to do with her life. She said she was going to be the best tennis player in the world.

Twelve major singles titles, 16 in women's doubles, 11 in mixed — 39 in all, and 20 at Wimbledon alone. The players' union she founded and led in 1973, the fight over prize money, the night at the Astrodome in front of 30,492 people and a television audience of about 50 million: that ground is BriefHistory's. This page is about the eight years afterward, when the visibility that had made the victory useful was turned around and aimed back at her.

By 1968 she knew she was attracted to women. In 1971 she began a relationship with her secretary, Marilyn Barnett, who was living rent-free in the Kings' Malibu house. When they asked her to leave in 1979 she refused and threatened to release the letters and receipts she had kept. In May 1981, after a suicide attempt off the balcony that left her paraplegic, Barnett sued for half the Kings' income and the house. King acknowledged the relationship within days, the first prominent American woman athlete to do it, and then, feeling she could not say more, called it a fling and a mistake. It cost her an estimated two million dollars in endorsements and kept her on tour to pay the lawyers. In March 1983 a storm destroyed the house they had fought over.

The rehabilitation took 20 years and then arrived all at once. The Hall of Fame in 1987. The national tennis center in Queens renamed for her in 2006. The Presidential Medal of Freedom on August 12, 2009, the first for a woman athlete. The Federation Cup renamed the Billie Jean King Cup in 2020. A Congressional Gold Medal in September 2024, the first to an individual woman athlete. Emma Stone played her. Oxford gave her an honorary degree in 2026. And she went back to the college she had walked away from in 1964 to play tennis — Cal State LA, which never offered her a scholarship — and collected a history degree in May 2026, at 82.

Billie Jean King's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Women's Tennis Association company
  She founded the players' union and served as its first president 1973
• World TeamTennis company
  Co-founded with Larry King. She was commissioner from 1982 and an owner from 1984. 1974
• Women's Sports Foundation company
  The advocacy body that outlasted every organization she played for 1974
• womenSports magazine company
  Founded with Larry King and Jim Jorgensen 1974
• Pressure Is a Privilege book
  Written with Christine Brennan on the Riggs match and what followed 2008
• All In: An Autobiography book
  The account she had not been able to give in 1981 2021

• 1955 aged ~12 Barred from a tournament group photograph for wearing shorts Her mother had sewn them. The other girls were in white dresses.
• 1961 aged ~18 Graduates from Long Beach Poly and enrolls at Los Angeles State College There was no athletic scholarship available to her.
• 1966 aged ~23 Wins Wimbledon at 22 on her 14th try at a major singles title
• 1971 aged ~28 First woman in tennis to earn 100,000 dollars in a season Richard Nixon telephoned to congratulate her. She also had an abortion that year, made public in Ms. magazine.
• September 20, 1973 aged 29 Beats Bobby Riggs at the Astrodome, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 Winner take all, 100,000 dollars, 30,492 in the building.
• May 1981 aged 37 Marilyn Barnett sues for half the Kings' income King acknowledged the relationship days later and lost an estimated two million dollars in endorsements.
• August 12, 2009 aged 65 Receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom The first woman athlete to be given it.
• September 2024 aged 80 Becomes the first individual woman athlete awarded a Congressional Gold Medal
• May 2026 aged 82 Finishes her history degree at Cal State LA at 82 She had left the school in 1964 to play tennis.

• Patsy Mink 1927–2002
  First woman of color elected to Congress and a principal author and defender of Title IX. wrote the law that carried the work
• Gloria Steinem b. 1934
  Writer and organizer who became one of the most visible leaders of second-wave feminism. allied through the women's movement
• Serena Williams b. 1981
  Tennis champion with 23 Grand Slam singles titles, widely considered one of the greatest athletes ever. inherited the equal-money argument
• Richard Nixon 1913–1994
  37th President whose foreign policy achievements were overshadowed by the Watergate scandal. telephoned her in 1971
• Shirley Chisholm 1924–2005
  First Black woman elected to Congress and first woman to run for a major party's presidential nomination. contemporary in the same fight