The Politics of Public Art
Immediately following the proposal to place the Ashe monument within the historic district, opponents of the new location voiced their disapproval. As reported in the Washington Post article covering the City Council’s vote, “opponents included an oil-and-water mix of whites who considered it nothing short of heresy to the Lost Cause and blacks who considered it nothing short of heresy to Ashe.”50
The division over adding Ashe to Monument Avenue did not simply fall along race lines. Arrelius D. Pleasant, a forty-nine-year-old resident of Church Hill, said in an interview that “Arthur Ashe doesn't belong with those racists. What Monument Avenue needs is a bulldozer.”
In an interview with the Richmond Times, Mayor Young relayed that of African Americans who contacted the city about the Ashe statue, 80 percent opposed the Monument Avenue site and whites were evenly divided offer the location. 51 Looking at the numbers of those who contacted the Mayor’s office, it is clear that Pleasant was one of many in her community who felt the Avenue was an inappropriate location for a black hero.
The argument that Arthur Ashe was simply incongruous reverberated throughout the community. Some community members strongly opposed to the addition of Ashe’s monument felt that it was not the place for a tennis player, and should remain what is was, an avenue dedicated to valorizing heroes who fought in for the Confederacy. During the public hearing, some would even push for adding black Confederate soldiers who fought for Virginia.52
Monument’s strong identity as a sacred place for Confederate heroes caused much of Richmond’s black community to dispute the Ashe’s statue’s placement on that boulevard. One childhood friend of Arthur Ashe, Eugene Price, argued that the monument should be placed in the neighborhood where Ashe grew up and where it could inspire youth like them, instead of a location so disconnected from Ashe’s life.53 In his memoir, Days of Grace, Ashe wrote the following about Monument Avenue:
“Every Sunday morning I could see and hear on television Dr. Theodore F. Adams, minister of the huge white First Baptist Church. That church confirmed its domination and its strict racial identity by its presence on Richmond’s Monument Avenue, the avenue of Confederate heroes, with is statues of Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis, J.E.B. Stuart, and Robert E. Lee. Didn’t we in the black churches read the same Bible as whites in First Baptist? Didn’t the whites know how Jesus felt about equality of human beings, about justice, and about the meek inheriting the earth?”54
While many felt that there were better locations in Richmond to honor Ashe than Monument Avenue, others argued that placing Ashe on Monument would challenge the narrative of “the avenue of Confederates.” Douglas Wilder first brought forward the idea of placing Ashe alongside the Confederates on the Avenue. He worked hard to rally interest and, as reported by the Washington Post, Wilder broadcasted his daily radio show live from the proposed location of Monument and Roseneath.55 In response to those opposing the addition of Ashe on Monument Avenue, the Post reports Wilder saying on his broadcast, "Every time we think we've crossed the bridge, we see that there's more water than we ever thought."
Like Wilder, proponents of Ashe on Monument saw this as an opportunity to challenge Richmond’s symbolic segregation. Placing Ashe on Monument would serve as reconciliation.56 Councilman Tim Kaine captured the sentiment of the debate, as recorded in Robert Hodder’s article, when Kaine said, “ The hearing gets at the heart of lot things by which this community defines itself: race, history, notions of progress [and] our relations to one another.”57 During the hearing, Councilman Chuck Richardson, who is black, brought forth the unspoken conversation of race when he said, "Everybody's dancing around the question, which is, `Do we put a black man on Monument Avenue?' " In the article covering the hearing, the Richmond Times Dispatch then reports Robison saying, "The hand-me-down ideals those individuals represent is the very thing that chased Arthur out of this city. The Civil War is part of our history. Now we have another part -- civil rights.”58
Arthur Ashe’s little brother, Johnnie Ashe, spoke on behalf of the family and supported the site on Monument Avenue because he knew there the monument would be well maintained. They also supported the site because the meaning in placing Arthur Ashe on Monument Avenue would honor his brother as not just an athlete, but a hero as well. In an interview with Richmond Times Dispatch, Johnnie noted, "It was Arthur Ashe Jr. who brought the system of Apartheid in South Africa to light in the United States…I don't think any of our Confederate generals could touch that.”59
After a seven-hour council meeting where hundreds of Richmond residents spoke out on the issue, the seven council members overwhelmingly voted in favor of the Monument location. Even Mayor Leonidas, who strongly felt that the Ashe monument would be better suited at Byrd Park where Ashe could not play tennis because of his race, conceded. Richmond Times Dispatch reporter Peter Baker covered the hearing and reported Mayor Leonidas saying, “I think this is our finest hour because it shows that we have grown. It is painful to grow, but if you do not grow, if you do not experience the pain, you will not become everything you can become.”60 Baker notes that the appearance of Ashe’s family strongly influenced the committee, and at 1:15 a.m. when the council took the final vote, seven members voted in favor of the location and one abstained.
With the final vote, however, the conversation did not end. Six months after the decision, the Richmond Times Dispatch ran a letter from Arthur Ashe’s wife, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe. During the debate over the monument, Matthew Barbee writes that Moutoussamy-Ashe made no public appearances or comments in regards to the setting of the Ashe monument. Ashe’s cousin Randy had served as the family spokesman during the debate, and Moutoussamy-Ashe deep seated disapproval did not enter the conversation until her letter on January 1, 1996.61 She wrote, “I have always felt that in all this controversy, the spirit of Arthur Ashe on Monument Avenue honors Richmond, Virginia, more than it does its son, his legacy, or his life’s work.” Moutoussamy-Ashe wanted the statue to regain its original purpose as part of the hall of fame.
Between this letter and the creation of the well-funded group called Citizens for the Excellence of Public Art (CEPA) which claimed that DiPasquale’s monument lacked artistic merit, the city would once again stall its plan while CEPA funded a competition for a new statue and Moutoussamy-Ashe worked with her associates on the proposed hall of fame. Despite CEPA’s confidence in raising the necessary funds for the new monument, the City Council ultimately criticized CEPA for its lack of diversity—the group of 29 members included only one African-American—and decided that they would only permit a new statue if they city acquired the $20 million needed for creating Ashe’s hall of fame.
Unable to raise the funds for the hall of fame, the statue would remain on the historic boulevard. On July 10, 1996, in front of 2,000 spectators present for the unveiling, Douglas Wilder proclaimed, “‘Today is not just any day in Richmond. Monument Avenue is now an avenue for all people.’”62 In this moment, however, the former governor did not know that less than a decade later he would post on Twitter his utter disappointment with how the city seemingly overlooked the upkeep of a monument meant to bring together a divided city.
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