Steve Lopez<\/p>\n
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.<\/p>\n
She won more singles and doubles championships at Wimbledon<\/a> than anyone before or since, and she was the No. 1 female tennis player in the world.<\/p>\n She\u2019s been carrying a flag, for decades, for gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights<\/a> in sports and society. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom<\/a> and the Congressional Gold Medal<\/a>.<\/p>\n Fifty million people tuned in on their televisions one evening in 1973 and watched her whip Bobby Riggs in a tennis challenge billed as \u201cThe Battle of the Sexes<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Bobby Riggs poses for Billie Jean King. King won 12 Grand Slam singles titles, including six at Wimbledon, but perhaps her most famous match came in 1973 when she beat Riggs, then 55, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 in the \u201cBattle of the Sexes.\u201d <\/p>\n (Associated Press)<\/p>\n But King\u2019s resume, which would stretch from one end of Wimbledon\u2019s Center Court to the other and keep going, is missing one thing, and that was bugging her. The omission came up last year in a conversation she was having with the staff of her New York-based consulting, investing and marketing company. (Yes, she still runs a business and a foundation <\/a>promoting education, leadership and activism.)<\/p>\n \u201cI hate not finishing,\u201d she recalls telling her colleagues.<\/p>\n They asked what she meant.<\/p>\n \u201cI haven\u2019t finished college,\u201d she told them. \u201cAnd, you know, I should finish.\u201d<\/p>\n Yeah, what a slacker.<\/p>\n In the spring this year, at the age of 81, Billie Jean King went back to school, chasing not a trophy, or a cup, or a medal, but a degree.<\/p>\n And there was no doubt in her mind about where she would enroll \u2014 at the very school where she began her college education in the \u201860s before going pro. The school that has a statue of her near the courts where she used to smack tennis balls around.<\/p>\n Cal State L.A.<\/p>\n (Would anyone be surprised if she went out for the tennis team?)<\/p>\n Lots of people start college and then take a pause.<\/p>\n King\u2019s lasted 60 years.<\/p>\n Billie Jean King speaks about sexual equality before the Senate Education subcommittee in Washington on Nov. 9, 1973. <\/p>\n (Associated Press)<\/p>\n The woman who keeps making history is now majoring in it. She\u2019s taken several courses this year and will soon begin the fall semester as a senior, on track to graduate in the spring with a bachelor\u2019s degree in history.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m having a great time,\u201d she told me Wednesday by video link from her home in New York.<\/p>\n King isn\u2019t strolling campus with a backpack and hanging with fellow students at the library and food court. Her business ventures keep her on the road and mostly on the East Coast, so she takes her classes remotely, usually one- on-one with professors who helped her craft a flexible schedule.<\/p>\n She\u2019s also earned course credit for her interaction with other CSULA students who have taken a somewhat circuitous route to a bachelor\u2019s degree \u2014 they\u2019re enrolled in Cal State L.A.\u2019s Prison Graduation Initiative<\/a> while serving time.<\/p>\n After I interviewed King, she spoke remotely with 32 inmate\/students at the maximum-security state prison in Lancaster and sent me an email when she was done.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have made a commitment to improving their lives through education,\u201d she said, and \u201cgetting their degree will be life-changing for them.\u201d<\/p>\n A few months ago, she did the same hookup with inmate\/students at the California Institute for Women in Chino. \u201cI wanted to know their stories,\u201d King told me, adding that she told them to work together toward shared goals. <\/p>\n She also asked them what they miss most while in prison. The answers, she said, were quite candid.<\/p>\n Billie Jean King implores Cal State L.A.\u2019s student-athletes to \u201cmake this world a better place\u201d during her speech at the unveiling of her bronze statue on campus.<\/p>\n (J. Emilio Flores \/ Cal State L.A.)<\/p>\n \u201cOne woman took total ownership. She said, \u2018I miss my children. I miss being free\u2026. I even miss the husband that I killed.\u201d<\/p>\n Yes, that does sound pretty candid.<\/p>\n King\u2019s fall classes will include U.S. and Latin American history. Her favorite spring semester class was historiography, a study of how historians research and interpret the past.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like the history of history,\u201d King said.<\/p>\n I felt like I wouldn\u2019t be doing my job if I didn\u2019t ask about her GPA.<\/p>\n King said she hasn\u2019t gotten a report card yet, but says she\u2019s taking no shortcuts on assignments, and the homework load is not exactly light.<\/p>\n \u201cI just read like crazy all the time,\u201d said King, who has turned her paper chase into something of a cause. In social media posts <\/a>extolling the value of continuing to engage, learn and grow \u2014 at any age \u2014 she sits next to a stack of assigned texts, including \u201cContested Histories in Public Space\u201d and \u201cFighting Over the Founders.\u201d<\/p>\n Billie Jean King speaks at a Women\u2019s History Month event honoring women athletes in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Title IX on March 9, 2022, on Capitol Hill. <\/p>\n (Jacquelyn Martin \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n She\u2019s also reading books on Title IX, the civil rights law that banned sexual discrimination in federally funded education programs. On that subject, King is more teacher than student<\/a>. She was an early and persistent advocate for Title IX, and testified before Congress.<\/p>\n \u201cThe thing they like,\u201d she said of her professors, \u201cis that I have lived some of these historical moments.\u201d<\/p>\n King said she hasn\u2019t been shy about pointing out what she considers errors in the telling of history she was a part of.<\/p>\n \u201cIt drives me crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n In that regard, and other obvious ways, King is not the prototypical Cal State L.A. student. \u201cIt\u2019s been 50 years of changing the world,\u201d communications studies department Chair David Olsen said of King\u2019s achievements.<\/p>\n But in other ways, she\u2019s typical.<\/p>\n I used to teach a class at CSULA, and most of my students were jugglers. They had jobs and families, and with so many other responsibilities and pursuits, they weren\u2019t in and out in four years. Some, like King, took a break but circled back.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, I guess I am like them,\u201d King said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s never too late to return, and it\u2019s never too late to finish,\u201d Olsen said. \u201cThe coming back, to me, is what\u2019s so important and inspiring\u201d \u2014 especially because finishing her education was an elective rather than a requirement.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be a lifelong learner \u2014 that\u2019s an important lesson,\u201d said Scott Wells, chair of the CSULA history department. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t need to do this for career reasons or economic reasons. It\u2019s a reminder that higher education is not merely getting technical skills or a piece of paper for a job opportunity…. When she posted on social media, \u2018Here are the books I\u2019m reading,\u2019 it\u2019s a way of saying that books are important and people should care about history.\u201d<\/p>\n I asked King, who\u2019s been at the forefront of so many social justice movements, what it\u2019s like to live through this moment in political and cultural history<\/a>, in which many of the gains she fought for are under threat, and in which our heritage is depicted on government websites as white, covered wagon pioneers<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cHow about slavery?\u201d King said. \u201cLook at athletes who tried to travel. Look at Jackie Robinson. Look at Althea Gibson. \u201cI learned white history as a kid, and then I realized … the people who were here first were our Indigenous people. \u201c<\/p>\n History repeats itself, King said, and \u201cit\u2019s repeating itself again now\u201d in disconcerting ways.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, we were fighting so hard … for Roe vs. Wade, and we got it through,\u201d she said of the landmark Supreme Court decision on women\u2019s reproductive rights in 1973. \u201cAnd now we\u2019re going backwards again.\u201d<\/p>\n Her job in her 80s, King said, is not to lead the resistance, but to ask the next generation what it wants and to offer guidance and support.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important to know history, because the more you know about history, the more you know about yourself,\u201d King said. \u201cBut more importantly, it helps you shape the future.\u201d<\/p>\n I had one last question for King. The graduation ceremony is a really big deal at Cal State L.A., I told her. Many of the grads are first-generation college students, and the achievement is celebrated by cheering extended families.<\/p>\n Will you walk the stage in the spring in cap and gown?<\/p>\n She smiled.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I can,\u201d she said, \u201cI will.\u201d<\/p>\n steve.lopez@latimes.com<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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