King distinguished herself as a tennis champ at Cal State Los Angeles, winning Wimbledon doubles while enrolled
But King told the crowd that her true motivation since childhood had been to fight discrimination, a calling she first remembered feeling at age 12, when she realized that virtually everyone at the tennis clubs where she trained was white.
“I asked myself, where is everybody else?” King said. “From that day forward, I committed my life to equality and inclusion for all. Tennis is a global sport and it became my platform, but equality was my dream – to make the world a better place.”
She added: “We can never understand inclusion unless we’ve been excluded.”
King, one of the first openly gay professional athletes, founded the Women’s Tennis Association in 1973 and successfully campaigned to get the US Open to pay equal purses at the US Open. That same year, she defeated Bobby Riggs in a historic match billed “The Battle of the Sexes” – a feat later dramatized in a Hollywood film staring Emma Stone and Steve Carell.
King ended her speech with words of advice for her fellow graduates.
“Have fun,” King said. “Be fearless. And make history.”
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