As a committed chess player from a very young age, I’ve been fascinated by the current blockbuster mini-series, “The Queen’s Gambit,” as well as the book upon which it’s based, (by Walter Tevis. In response to a New York Times article, “How the Queen’s Gambit Started a New Debate About Sexism in Chess,” by Dylan Loeb McClain (Nov. 10 2020), I wrote a letter to the Times that remains unpublished. I’d like to share it here.
I learned to play chess at age seven, taught by my grandmother Mimi, the Southeastern Women’s Champion for several years in the 1950's and 1960's. (She played Bobby Fisher at a simultaneous in New Orleans and could have forced a draw had her stamina been even greater.)
In short order I became obsessed with the game, devoting untold hours to chess books from which I absorbed an assortment of openings together with tactics, strategies, and analyses while playing entire games. At age twelve I took on the entire University of Alabama chess team in a 1965 regional tournament and easily won. The team refused to acknowledge my victory. Hence, I was never officially recognized as the winner, nor was I allowed to participate in the regional tournament at the next level, taking place in Florida. An article in the Tuscaloosa News reported this story at the time. Refusing to be 'silenced,' I continued playing competitive chess for a few years, until the harassment I encountered at every turn finally drove me away from tournament play. Would a similar fate await a young girl winning against a university team today? More likely than not…despite advances women have made in the game over the last half-century.