Long before Venus and Serena Williams began dominating the world of women’s tennis, the road for African-American female tennis players was being paved by Zina Garrison. Garrison was ranked as high as #4 in the world among women back in 1989, and in 1990 she became the first African-American woman to reach the Wimbledon finals in 1990 where she was defeated by the 1,342nd lesbian to reach the Wimbledon final, Martina Navratilova.

Since she retired in 1996 Zina has spent her time working with the United States Tennis Association (USTA) as a coach in the Fed Cup, and then as captain of the Fed Cup team since 2004. She also coached the U.S. Women’s tennis team in the 2004 and 2008 Olympics. Well, she was recently let go by the USTA as Fed Cup captain and Zina isn’t quite sure what she’d done to be let go from the job aside from being black, so now she’s suing the USTA.

From the SPORTS BUSINESS JOURNAL:

Zina Garrison, the first African-American woman in the professional tennis era to reach the finals of Wimbledon, plans as early as this week to sue the U.S. Tennis Association for racial discrimination after settlement talks broke down over her claims that she was wrongly dismissed as the captain of the American team for Fed Cup, the international women’s team competition.

Her lawyer, Debra Katz, a partner in Katz, Marshall & Banks, which specializes in employer discrimination matters, said Garrison has been in unsuccessful settlement talks with the USTA since last month. Later, in an e-mail correspondence, Katz wrote that a lawsuit would be filed this week. Garrison is seeking millions of dollars in back pay and damages, sources said.

A USTA spokesman, Chris Widmaier, responded, “I will not comment specifically on threatened litigation. But I would like to point out that over the years, Ms. Garrison has been asked by the USTA to serve in any number of capacities, including as a USTA board member, a USTA committee member and as captain of the USA Fed Cup team. So what I will say in looking at that history is we would be puzzled by any allegation that Ms. Garrison has been discriminated against, and we would vigorously defend such an allegation.”

Now I have no idea what’s really going on here, but from an outside perspective, I really don’t see how race is a factor here. After all, I’m pretty sure Zina was black when the USTA hired her as a Fed Cup coach back in 1996, and she was probably still black when they promoted her to captain in 2004. So unless they had just never seen her before and just noticed the color of her skin right before firing her, I really don’t think race has anything to do with it.

That being said, this isn’t the first time the USTA will be going to court for this type of matter. They’re currently being sued by Marvin Dent who says Whitney Kraft got promoted to Director of the National Tennis Center instead of him because he’s black, and then there were other similar lawsuits back in 2006 and 2005.

Still, I’m pretty sure this case will be thrown out of court soon enough because racism doesn’t exist anymore now that Barack Obama has been elected President. That’s how it works, right?