|
Arthur Robert Ashe, Jr. (July 10, 1943 – February 6, 1993) was
a prominent African American tennis player who was born and raised in Richmond,
Virginia, USA. He is well remembered for his efforts to further social causes.
As a youngster, Ashe was small and not well-coordinated.
But by the time he entered high school, he starred in tennis, basketball,
and football. In tennis, he won the state championship, while in football,
he helped lead his team to the city championship as a speedy wide receiver.
Ashe began to attract the attention of tennis fans after
being awarded a tennis scholarship at UCLA in 1963. That same year, Ashe
was the first African American ever selected to the US Davis Cup team.
In 1965, Ashe won the individual NCAA championship. He was
also a chief contributor in UCLA's winning the team NCAA championship in
the same year. With this successful college career behind him, Ashe quickly
ascended to the upper echelon of tennis players worldwide after turning professional
in 1966.
By 1969, most people considered Ashe to be the best American
male tennis player. He had won the inaugural US Open in 1968, and had aided
the US Davis Cup team to victory that same year. Concerned that tennis pros
were not receiving winnings commensurate with the sport's growing popularity,
Ashe was one of the key figures behind the formation of the Association of
Tennis Professionals (ATP). That year would prove even more momentous for
Ashe, when he was denied a visa by the South African government, thereby
keeping him out of the South African Open. Ashe chose to use this denial
to publicize South Africa's apartheid policies. In the media, Ashe called
for South Africa to be expelled from the professional tennis circuit. In
1970, he added a second Grand Slam title to his resume by winning the Australian
Open.
In 1975, after several years of lower levels of success,
Ashe played his best season ever by winning Wimbledon, unexpectedly defeating
Jimmy Connors in the final. He remains the only black player ever to win
the men's singles at Wimbledon, the US Open, or Australian Open, and one
of only two black men to win a Grand Slam singles event (the other being
France's Yannick Noah, who won the French Open in 1983). Ashe would ultimately
obtain his career high ranking of World No. 2 the next year. He would play
for several more years, but after being slowed by heart surgery in 1979,
Ashe retired in 1980.
After his retirement, Ashe took on many new tasks, from writing
for Time magazine to commentating for ABC Sports, from founding the National
Junior Tennis League to serving as captain of the US Davis Cup team. In 1983,
Ashe underwent a second heart surgery. To no one's surprise, he was elected
to the Tennis Hall of Fame in 1985.
The story of Ashe's life turned from success to tragedy in
1988, however, when Ashe discovered he had contracted HIV during the blood
transfusions he had received during one of his two heart surgeries. He and
his wife kept his illness private until April 8, 1992, when rumors forced
him to make a public announcement that he had the disease. In the last year
of his life, Arthur Ashe did much to call attention to AIDS sufferers worldwide.
Two months before his death, he founded the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban
Health, to help address issues of inadequate health care delivery and was
named Sports Illustrated magazine's Sportsman of the Year. He also spent
much of the last years of his life writing his memoir Days of Grace, finishing
the manuscript less than a week before his death.
Ashe died of complications from AIDS on February 6, 1993.
The city of Richmond posthumously honored Ashe's life with
a statue on Monument Avenue, a place that was traditionally reserved for
statues of key figures of the Confederacy. This decision led to some controversy
in a city that was the capital of the Confederate States during the American
Civil War.
The main stadium at the USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing
Meadows Park, where the U.S. Open is played, is named Arthur Ashe Stadium
in his honor.
In 2005, the United States Postal Service announced the release
of an Arthur Ashe commemorative postal stamp, the first stamp ever to feature
the cover of a Sports Illustrated magazine.
|
