Dr. Hubert A. Eaton, Sr. was not just a tennis player, but also a physician, a coach, and a civil rights activist. At the age of 15, Eaton was the first Black player to win the North Carolina Interscholastic Tennis Championship, and in 1933 he won the American Tennis Association (ATA)’s national junior championship. His prowess at tennis earned him a scholarship to Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina. In 1936, he was declared the Colored Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) Singles Champion. He graduated in 1937 with a Bachelor of Science.

In 1942, Eaton continued to earn his medical degree at the University of Michigan. After graduating, he assumed the role as Althea Gibson’s coach in 1946, where he provided her guidance on his own home court.

From 1960 to 1970, Eaton served as the president of the ATA, and throughout his life he fought for integration in tennis and beyond. In North Carolina, he led efforts to desegregate Wilmington College, the YMCA, the Municipal Golf Course, the County Library System, and hospital patient wards, and even sued New Hanover County to provide equal funding for Black public schools. He served as the chairman for the Board of the Trustees at the University of Carolina in 1981 and was the first Black man to run for public office in New Hanover County since the 1898 Race Riots.

Eaton was inducted into the North Carolina Tennis Hall of Fame in 1984. In 1996, Eaton Elementary School in Wilmington, North Carolina was named after him. Eaton was posthumously inducted into the Black Tennis Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2019, Lenny Simpson’s non-profit organization, One Love: Lenny Simpson Tennis and Education Fund, began working on making Eaton’s home a historical site. Restoration of his backyard tennis court at 1406 Orange Street in Wilmington, North Carolina was completed in December 2020.