History in Our Everyday Lives

Arthur Ashe, The Man

The 2015 debates over the meaning of the Confederate flag, especially following the mass shooting at Emanuel AME, the divisive nature of Southern identity, particularly the South’s connection to the Civil War, echo the debates two decades earlier. In 1996, Governor Douglas Wilder was determined to place Richmond’s native son, Arthur Ashe, among the Confederate heroes of Richmond’s iconic boulevard. To understand the debate, however, one must, and albeit most likely does, know Richmond’s greatest athlete.

Born in 1943 in St. Phillip’s Hospital in a segregated facility for blacks only, Arthur Ashe grew up during Richmond’s Jim Crow era.³⁹ The family inherited their name from Governor Samuel Ashe of Virginia, an owner of slaves. As biographer Richard Stein writes in Ashe’s biography, Ashe grew up in a church-going family that emphasized “the importance of hard work and adhering to the highest moral code of behavior.” ⁴⁰ His mother died not long after his birth, and his father at one point worked as a chauffer –butler for wealthy Richmond families including the owners of Thalimers, a local department store which would become a center point for Richmond’s civil rights movement.

As a young boy, Ashe cultivated a love of tennis by watching the black Virginia Union University student play on the Brook Field courts, where his father served as caretaker.⁴¹ One of those players whom Ashe idolized on the courts, Ronald Charity, began teaching young Ashe the game. Despite the adversity of growing up in Jim Crow Richmond, attending the all black Maggie Walker High School, and being unable to play on the nicer, white tennis courts of the city, Ashe defied the odds set against him and became the first African American to win the Wimbledon and the U.S. and Australian Open.⁴²

Arthur Ashe left Virginia after high school on a full ride to attend University of California at Las Angeles, which at that time had one of the best college tennis programs.  In college Ashe continued his success on the court. The official Arthur Ashe website notes that he was the first African American named to the U.S. Davis Cup and in 1965 won the individual NCAA championship. ⁴³ Later during his service in the army, Ashe continued playing tennis and on September 9, 1968, Ashe won the first U.S. Open. A year later, Ashe applied for the South African Open, but due to the racial segregation of Apartheid, South Africa denied access to America’s number one ranked player. This experience propelled Ashe onto his role as a global humanitarian and activist, and by 1975 he became the first black tennis player to compete in the national championships of in South Africa. This same year, Ashe also won the Wimbledon singles title and attained the number one ranking in the world. 

Not only did Arthur Ashe carry the torch for future minorities in the white world of tennis, he also became a staunch advocate for African-American males being celebrated not only for their emotional, intellectual, and moral development in addition to their athleticism.⁴⁴

In 1989, Ashe endorsed his childhood friend, Lieutenant Governor Douglas Wilder as he ran for governor of Virginia. After Wilder’s win in 1990, together they established Virginia Heroes, Inc., a program which invited prominent Richmonders into the city’s classrooms as role models for inner city youth.⁴⁵

During this time period, Ashe also began promoting the Hard Road to Glory African American Sports Hall of Fame, which in 1993 Richmond’s City Council agreed to set $250,000 aside to fund. Tragically, this same year Arthur Ashe passed away from complications from contracting the AIDS virus in 1983 during a blood transfusion after a heath attack. Ashe learned of his diagnosis in 1988, and for four years he concealed his disease, but in 1992, Ashe’s friend and journalist, informed Ashe the news of his condition was leaked to USA Today’s editors. Instead of being the national newspaper outing him, Ashe held a press conference and made the announcement himself. In this last chapter of his life, Arthur Ashe would add another hat to his role as humanitarian bringing a heightened awareness and discussion to understanding the disease.