LOS ANGELES — Billie Jean King graduated from Cal State Los Angeles on Monday at age 82, completing the history degree she began in 1964. She returned to the university last year to finish the coursework she had started more than six decades earlier.

"It is a privilege for me to be here as a member of your graduating class," King said during the ceremony. "Yeah baby, only 61 years!"

King left college in 1964 and within a few years became the top-ranked tennis professional in the world. She won 39 championships during her playing career, along with a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a congressional Medal of Honor.

The daughter of a firefighter father and a homemaker mother, King grew up in a working-class family. She chose Cal State Los Angeles because the tennis coach, Scotty Deeds, trained men and women together, with Dr. Joan Johnson serving as the women's coach during her time at the school.

While enrolled in college, King won the Wimbledon doubles championship. She was 18 and her partner, Karen Hantze, was 17, making them the youngest team to win the title at the time.

King addressed her early awareness of discrimination, recalling that at age 12 she realized almost everyone at the tennis clubs where she trained was white. King founded the Women's Tennis Association in 1973 and successfully campaigned to have the US Open pay equal purses. That same year, she defeated Bobby Riggs in the match billed "The Battle of the Sexes," which was later dramatized in a Hollywood film starring Emma Stone and Steve Carell. King was also one of the first openly gay professional athletes.

"Like so many of my fellow graduates, I am the first member of my immediate family to graduate college, like many of you," King told the audience. "Have fun. Be fearless. And make history."