All In

Billie Jean King's autobiography, written with Johnette Howard and Maryanne Vollers, traces her life from a working-class childhood in Long Beach, California, through her tennis career and decades of activism for gender equity, racial justice, and LGBTQ+ rights. The book is also the story of King's private struggle to live as her authentic self, a battle she describes as the hardest challenge of her life.

King was born in 1943 and raised in Long Beach by her father, Bill Moffitt, a firefighter, and her mother, Betty, a homemaker. Both parents carried scars from unstable childhoods and were determined to create stability for their children. Bill was loving yet unpredictable in his temper; Betty grew silent when uncomfortable. King learned early to compartmentalize her emotions, becoming hypervigilant and attuned to others' feelings.

In 1954, a classmate introduced 10-year-old King to tennis. She saved $8.29 from odd jobs to buy her first racket and began taking free lessons from Clyde Walker, a coach at Long Beach's public parks. Her childhood unfolded against rigid gender expectations: Her mother once pulled her from a touch-football game, insisting she "be a lady at all times" (17). Her father once said he would have hit a man who propositioned him during military service, a remark King could not forget as she later questioned her own sexuality. At a 1955 tournament, King noticed that all the players and spectators were white and resolved to spend her life fighting for equal rights, using tennis as her platform.

King's junior career accelerated through key mentors. Alice Marble, a former world No. 1 who had helped Althea Gibson break tennis's color barrier, coached King on weekends, sharpening her concentration and technique. In 1961, 17-year-old King and doubles partner Karen Hantze became the youngest pair to win Wimbledon's ladies' doubles title.

That same year, King enrolled at Los Angeles State College, working as a locker room attendant while male players at other universities received full athletic scholarships. A teammate introduced her to Larry King, a freshman biochemistry major who told King she was treated as a second-class citizen because of her gender, a conversation she credits with making her a feminist. During a road trip, a teacher's husband groped King; she punched him but told no one for decades. Frustrated by repeated Grand Slam losses to Australian champion Margaret Smith (later Margaret Court), King dropped out of college to train full-time in Australia with coach Mervyn Rose. She and Larry married on September 17, 1965.

King won her first Wimbledon singles title in 1966 and swept the singles, doubles, and mixed doubles at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Championships in 1967, yet received only a £45 gift voucher at Wimbledon. She publicly criticized the amateur system, calling it "fifty years behind the times" (150). The Open Era officially began in March 1968 after Wimbledon announced it would welcome professionals. Pay disparities appeared immediately, with women receiving a fraction of the men's purses.

King's marriage deteriorated under constant separation. She confided to Larry that she had been involved with someone on the road and was confused about her attraction to both women and men. She asked for a divorce during the 1969 Wimbledon fortnight; he refused.

By 1970, the situation for women players was dire. Promoter Jack Kramer offered $65,000 for men versus $7,500 for women at his Pacific Southwest Championships. King, publisher Gladys Heldman, and seven other players organized a breakaway tournament in Houston, defying threats of indefinite suspension from the United States Lawn Tennis Association. The nine players signed $1 contracts binding them to Heldman's World Tennis magazine, becoming the Original 9, the founders of the first women's professional tennis circuit. Philip Morris sponsored the tour through its Virginia Slims brand.

The Virginia Slims tour launched in January 1971. King won 17 of 31 singles titles and became the first woman athlete to earn $100,000 in a single year. She also negotiated with U.S. Open officials to equalize prize money by 1973, making it the first major tournament to pay women and men the same.

During a sabbatical in late 1972, King began a relationship with Marilyn Barnett, a Beverly Hills hairstylist. She introduced Barnett as her friend or personal assistant while paying her $600 a month. The secrecy tormented King, who was building her public reputation as a truth-teller while concealing her authentic self.

In June 1973, King convened 65 women players in London and pushed through a vote to form the Women's Tennis Association (WTA). When Bobby Riggs, the 1939 Wimbledon champion turned self-described chauvinist, defeated Margaret Court 6-2, 6-1 in the nationally televised "Mother's Day Massacre," King agreed to face him. On September 20, 1973, before 30,472 spectators in the Houston Astrodome and an estimated 90 million television viewers, King won 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 in the match dubbed the Battle of the Sexes. Riggs jumped the net and told her, "You're too good. I underestimated you" (257).

The victory propelled King into broader activism. She testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee on women's educational equity and founded the Women's Sports Foundation in 1974 to protect Title IX, the 1972 federal law mandating equal opportunities for women and girls at federally funded institutions. She and Larry launched World TeamTennis, a co-ed professional league, and womenSports, the first mass-circulation sports magazine devoted entirely to women. King won a sixth Wimbledon singles title in 1975 but faced mounting financial pressures from business setbacks.

In a 1975 Playboy interview, King denied being a lesbian, a response she later called a cop-out. In 1979, she began a relationship with Ilana Kloss, a South African player. Her past with Barnett soon caught up with her. On April 28, 1981, Barnett filed suit demanding King's Malibu beach house, lifetime support, and half her earnings, applying the "palimony" legal precedent to a same-sex relationship for the first time. Against her lawyer's advice, King held a press conference admitting the affair. Larry stood beside her and introduced her as "the person I love dearly" (354). King lost at least $500,000 in endorsements within two months. The court ruled in her favor, finding that Barnett "did not have clean hands" (368). Barnett died by suicide in 1997.

King retired from competitive singles in December 1983 with 39 Grand Slam titles, including a record 20 at Wimbledon. She divorced Larry in 1987 after Ilana insisted she choose. By the mid-1990s, King's weight had reached 200 pounds. In 1995, she checked into the Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders in Philadelphia for residential treatment. Through therapy, she discovered that her eating disorder masked decades of suppressed emotions: fear of her father's anger, the burden of concealing her sexuality, and the trauma of being outed. Her therapist asked: "Do you realize you've given all your power away to your parents?" (391).

In 2009, King received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama, the first female athlete so honored. She and Ilana co-founded the Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative in 2014 to promote workplace diversity and inclusion. The International Tennis Federation renamed the Fed Cup, the international women's team tennis championship, the Billie Jean King Cup in 2020. On October 19, 2018, King and Ilana secretly married; King reveals the marriage publicly for the first time in this book.

King closes with a declaration of hard-won freedom, urging LGBTQ+ youth to find safety and allies: "Once I began living truthfully I felt like I could breathe again," she writes. "I no longer have to lie or hide. I can be my authentic self . . . I am free" (448).