🎾0️⃣3️⃣1️⃣ Helen Hull Jacobs
Meet Helen Hull Jacobs, a U.S. tennis player, three-time French Championship finalist, and on-court fashion pioneer who, through the “Battle of the Helens,” helped forge one of the sport’s first fierce rivalries.
🎾0️⃣2️⃣5️⃣ Suzanne Lenglen
Meet Suzanne Lenglen, the trailblazing albeit at times controversial tennis player who as one of the first international sports stars helped revolutionize the game and sporting fashions in Europe and the United States in the 1920s and 1930s.
🎾0️⃣2️⃣2️⃣ Mary K. Browne
Meet Mary Kendall Browne, a pioneering professional tennis player nicknamed “Brownie,” who in 1926 became the first American woman to contest the French women’s championship title–today’s Roland Garros tournament.
🎾🎩0️⃣0️⃣4️⃣ JJ Jusserand
Meet JJ Jusserand, the French Ambassador to the United States who strengthened Franco-American relations as part of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt’s famed “Tennis Cabinet” in the early 20th century.
🎾0️⃣0️⃣3️⃣ Helen Wills
Meet Helen Wills, a groundbreaking tennis champion who famously “let my racquet do the talking” as she smashed records to become the first internationally-known American female sports celebrity in the 1920s.
Mapping the Connections
The connections highlighted by #FranceAndUS Voices over time.
Blue = From the United States to France. Red = From France to the United States.