Ashe, Arthur Robert

(b. 10 July 1943 in Richmond, Virginia; d. 6 February 1993 in New York City), tennis player who was the first black male to win major championships; he used his athletic celebrity to serve his international political beliefs.

Ashe could trace his American ancestry back to 1735, when his slave forebear was brought to Yorktown, Virginia— nearly a half-century before, as Ashe would wryly point out, the colonies would gain their freedom from England in that same place. The family members were enslaved in the North Carolina and Virginia Piedmont, with Ashe’s grandfather moving to Richmond sometime early in the twentieth century.

His father, Arthur Ashe, Sr., was a sturdy, inscrutable disciplinarian who kept a tight rein on his two sons—and on life in general. Ashe remembered little of his mother, the former Mattie Cunningham, a homemaker who died when he was six years old. His father remarried five years later to Lorraine Kimbrough, and Ashe grew up in a home full of love and security, even amid a city of racial segregation.

The Ashe home was located in Brook Field, a playground for the black youth of Richmond. Arthur Sr., a man of many talents, served as a watchman and a maintenance man for Brook Field. The facilities included a tennis court, so young Ashe took up the game and soon began to develop a reputation within the small African-American tennis community.

The summer when he turned ten years old, Ashe was sent to Lynchburg, in western Virginia, where a black physician, R. Walter Johnson, had built a clay court next to his house. It was a rare opportunity for a black player to learn the game, facing good competition. Ashe, skinny but eminently coachable, thrived. Although Ashe was a person of charm and humor, under Johnson’s tutelage he developed a cool athletic disposition, wearing a placid mask on court. Johnson told Ashe that when the chance came to play white boys, he must show neither displeasure in defeat nor delight in victory.

Although Ashe’s promise was obvious, his future was circumscribed by segregation, and so for his senior year he moved to St. Louis, where he boarded with a white tennis family and attended Sumner High School. Ashe then moved on to the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) on a tennis scholarship in 1961, prospering there as an athlete as well as a student, and as a member of the ROTC also. Even more, he patiently endured the discomfort of being a curiosity. Althea Gibson, an African-American woman, had won Grand Slam tennis titles in the late 1950s, but Ashe was the first black male player of consequence anywhere in the world. As he moved up into the rankings, entering the U.S. top ten at number six in 1963, an apposition was invariably attached to every first mention of his name: “Arthur Ashe, the first Negro tennis player to …”

Ashe graduated from UCLA in 1966 as the intercollegiate champion, ranked second in the United States, and shortly thereafter entered the army as a second lieutenant, reaching the rank of first lieutenant before his discharge in 1968. He had delicately walked a tightrope between the black world that idolized its tennis pioneer and the white country club society where most tournaments were still played by amateur men and women. But now, in 1968, the roiling, rebellious times began to press onto him. Black leaders urged Ashe to support other prominent African-American athletes in a boycott of the Mexico City Olympics. When Ashe refused, maintaining his independence, he began, for the first time, to hear whispers that he was an Uncle Tom, afraid to unsettle the white tennis establishment.

Incredibly, in the midst of anguish and controversy, Ashe’s game suddenly blossomed. As the lead singles player on the U.S. Davis Cup team, he won eleven straight matches. In August 1968 Ashe took the U.S. Amateur championship in Boston. Later in the year came the U.S. Open, which had at last joined all the other major sports in allowing professionals as well as amateurs to compete in the major championships. Ashe himself remained an amateur, seeded fifth, but his hot streak continued, and in the finals, where he faced Tom Okker of the Netherlands, he won 14–12, 5–7, 6–3, 3–6, 6–3, his first Grand Slam. The victory made front-page news, and at a time when athletes were growing impertinent, Ashe—demonstrably bright, polite, and engaging—became a popular hero for blacks and whites alike.

Ashe, who lived in New York City for most of his adult life, closed out 1968 by leading the U.S. team to its first Davis Cup victory in five years, and then headed successful Cup defenses over Romania and West Germany in the next two years. In 1970 he also won his second Grand Slam title, taking the Australian Open. He had by now turned professional and was instrumental in organizing the players’ union, the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). He was also growing more critical in his public comments about South Africa’s system of apartheid, or racial separation, and on domestic racial issues as well. For the rest of his playing career, in fact, Ashe would be as well known for his opinions as for his strokes.

In 1973 he led the ATP in its boycott of Wimbledon, and that same year, he personally negotiated an invitation to enter South Africa, where he broke the athletic color line, playing in that nation’s Open. Ashe lost to Jimmy Connors in the singles, but he won the doubles. Notwithstanding how well he played, his appearance in South Africa was an event of significance and controversy. In fact, some prominent black figures pleaded with him not to go, arguing that Ashe’s deal with the government served only to validate apartheid. Ashe replied: “Of course, I know they’re using me, but I’m using them too.” He also contended that if change were ever to come, then sports was a logical, symbolic starting place.

Blacks in South Africa thronged to see him—especially on the tennis court, where Ashe’s demands had been met so that all races were allowed seating in all parts of the stadium. He also traveled throughout South Africa, and most memorably, publicly debated a professor of anthropology at Stellenbosch, the country’s leading university. The trip was, altogether, a success and served to establish Ashe as the rare athlete who was a serious international figure.

On the tennis side, however, Ashe allowed his outside interests to divert him from his game, and while he would make the world top ten for eleven years running (and twelve years overall), he began to drift down the ladder. So when Ashe reached the Wimbledon final against Jimmy Connors in 1975, just before his thirty-second birthday, it was viewed as a pleasant consolation for the popular veteran. Connors, rampant upon the court, was a heavy favorite to win. Ashe’s style had always been suited to fast courts, especially grass. The keystone of his game was his powerful serve, which he managed to unleash more with coordination than with strength. He remained rail-thin all his life, rarely carrying more than 155 pounds on his six-foot, one-inch frame. He did possess a classic backhand, but Ashe could not win with ground strokes; he needed to attack the net. Thus, no one was prepared, least of all Connors, when Ashe completely adjusted his game for the Wimbledon final. He served off-speed, hitting slices and chops, forcing Connors to come to the net, taking him out of his usual game. Ashe won 6–1, 6–1, 5–7, 6–4. It was not only the cap to his career but the most brilliantly orchestrated match ever played in the sport.

Ashe married Jeanne-Marie Moutoussamy, a photographer, on 20 February 1977; they had one child. His tennis career came to an abrupt end in July 1979 when, although only thirty-six years old, he suffered a serious heart attack. Then, in 1983, after heart-bypass surgery, he was given a blood transfusion. The blood was tainted with the HIV virus, and he was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988.

Ashe did serve, however, as the captain of the Davis Cup team from 1981 to 1985, winning the Cup twice. Most of his time, though, was devoted to charity and to writing. His most comprehensive project was A Hard Road To Glory (1993), a three-volume history of the African-American athlete. He won an Emmy for writing the television adaptation and also worked as a network sports commentator. He contributed columns and essays, most often to the Washington Post, and spoke out forcefully on the issues that engaged him. Only months before he died, in fact, frail and failing, he was arrested and imprisoned in Washington, D.C., in a protest on behalf of Haitian democracy. Ashe also concentrated his efforts on bringing more minority urban youth into tennis. As far back as 1968, he had co-founded the National Junior Tennis League, and he was elected chairman of the Black Tennis and Sports Foundation. When Ashe was first diagnosed with AIDS, he chose to keep the illness a secret, knowing that once his condition was revealed, he would be forced to constantly deal publicly with the disease—becoming, as he described it, “a professional patient.” It was a tribute to the esteem in which he was held in that, even as the word began to leak out, many journalists kept his secret. Finally, USA Today forced his hand in April 1992, and he revealed his condition. Immediately, Ashe began to assist the cause of combating AIDS, most prominently working to set up the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health in Brooklyn, New York. He found himself showered with the most extraordinary affection. In a way, Ashe was able to read his eulogies while he was still alive. Sports Illustrated, for example, named him Sportsman of the Year for 1982. It was the only time that the award had been given to a former athlete. In 1985 he was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

Ashe died on 6 February 1993 at age forty-nine. He is buried in Woodland Cemetery in Richmond. He was praised for his humanity, nobility, and principles more than for his tennis championships. In 1997 the center court at the U.S. Open site in New York City was named the Arthur Ashe Stadium. After sustained public debate, in 1997 a statue of Ashe—holding a tennis racket and a book—was erected on Monument Avenue in Richmond, only blocks from statues of three Confederate generals—Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and J. E. B. Stuart—and the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis.

Ashe was, in fact, that rare athlete whose goodness transcended his greatness, and he stands—with the likes of Jackie Robinson, Billie Jean King, and Muhammed Ali— as a sports figure of cultural significance.

Ashe wrote Portrait in Motion (1975), a diary of one tennis year. It is especially valuable inasmuch as it covers in detail the period of his first trip to South Africa. He was also the author of an autobiography, Off the Court (1981). Ashe’s memoir, Days Of Grace (1993), written in collaboration with Arnold Rampersad, was published posthumously. It is conspicuous for its candor and lack of self-pity. For tennis facts and a summary of his career, the best source is Bud Collins’ Tennis Encyclopedia (3d ed., 1997). “The Sportsman of the Year: The Eternal Example,” by Kenny Moore in Sports Illustrated (21 Dec. 1992), is the most complete post-AIDS tribute. Some Ashe memorabilia may be found at the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island. There is an obituary in the New York Times (7 Feb. 1993). An HBO documentary, Arthur Ashe: Citizen of the World (1995), concentrates, as the title suggests, more on the man than on the player.

Frank Deford