Arthur Ashe

The Ashes lived in the caretaker's cottage inside Brookfield park, 18 acres of ball fields, a pool, basketball and four tennis courts, and the largest playground in Richmond that Black children were permitted to use. Arthur Ashe Sr. kept the grounds. His wife Mattie died in March 1950 of a toxemic pregnancy, aged 27, when Arthur was six. His father forbade football because the boy was slight and called him Bones. He started tennis at seven on the courts outside his own door. Ron Charity, the best Black player in the city, taught him the strokes and handed him to Dr. Robert Walter Johnson, who had coached Althea Gibson and who drilled him to return every ball landing within two inches of a line and never to argue a call.

Richmond closed its indoor courts to him, so he spent his senior year in St. Louis with a teacher named Richard Hudlin and came home with a serve-and-volley game. UCLA gave him a scholarship in 1963, and the Davis Cup team took him that same year, the first Black player it ever selected. In 1968 he won the US Open as an amateur, serving 26 aces past Tom Okker in five sets and collecting 20 dollars a day in expenses while Okker took the 14,000-dollar first prize. His brother Johnnie had volunteered for a second Vietnam tour so that Arthur would not be sent. Australia came in 1970. At Wimbledon in 1975, seeded sixth and days short of 32, he beat the defending champion Jimmy Connors in four sets of almost perfect tactical tennis.

His mother had cardiovascular disease when she died at 27, and his father had a first heart attack at 55 and a second a week before Arthur's own. In July 1979, at 36 and in the condition of a working professional athlete, Ashe had a heart attack while running a clinic in New York. Catheterization found one artery closed, another 95 percent closed and a third half-closed in two places. He had a quadruple bypass on December 13, 1979 and a second operation in 1983. In September 1988 his right arm went dead. Exploratory brain surgery found toxoplasmosis, and the test that followed found HIV, contracted from the transfusions during the 1983 surgery. He told nobody outside the family. A reporter at USA Today, not Ashe, decided when the country would learn it.

He finished Days of Grace less than a week before he died of AIDS-related pneumonia at New York Hospital on February 6, 1993, at 49. More than 5,000 people filed past his casket at the Virginia governor's mansion, in the city that had locked him out of its tournaments. He is buried beside his mother at Woodland Cemetery in Richmond. In 1996 the city put a statue of him on Monument Avenue, a boulevard built for Confederate generals, and the placement was fought over at the time. The Confederates came down in 2020 and 2021, pedestals and all. Ashe's is now the only statue left on the avenue. The main court at the US Open carries his name.

Arthur Ashe's life against the full span of the corpus.

• US Open singles title other
  The first champion of the Open era, won while still an amateur 1968
• Australian Open singles title other
  The first non-Australian winner since 1959 1970
• Wimbledon singles title other
  He remains the only Black man to have won it 1975
• Artists and Athletes Against Apartheid company
  Founded with Harry Belafonte to press a cultural boycott of South Africa 1982
• A Hard Road to Glory: A History of the African-American Athlete book
  Three volumes and six years of research — he called it more important than the titles 1988
• Days of Grace book
  Finished less than a week before he died 1993

• March 1950 aged 6 His mother dies at 27 of a toxemic pregnancy He was six. His father raised him and his brother in the park caretaker's cottage.
• 1960 aged ~17 Moves to St. Louis for his senior year to escape Richmond's segregated courts
• 1963 aged ~20 Takes a UCLA scholarship and becomes the first Black player picked for the Davis Cup team
• September 1968 aged 25 Wins the US Open as an amateur 26 aces past Tom Okker in five sets, and 20 dollars a day in expenses.
• July 5, 1975 aged 31 Beats Jimmy Connors to win Wimbledon He had never beaten Connors before. Connors had not dropped a set all fortnight.
• July 1979 aged 35 Has a heart attack at 36 while running a clinic in New York A quadruple bypass followed on December 13 and ended his playing career.
• January 11, 1985 aged 41 Arrested outside the South African embassy in Washington He was arrested again on September 18, 1992, protesting Haitian refugee policy at the White House.
• September 1988 aged 45 Brain surgery reveals toxoplasmosis, and the follow-up test reveals HIV From transfusions during his 1983 heart surgery.
• April 8, 1992 aged 48 Announces he is HIV-positive to preempt USA Today Readers wrote to the paper by the hundreds to object to its forcing his hand.

• Althea Gibson 1927–2003
  Tennis champion who broke the sport's color barrier and became the first Black player to win major singles titles. shared a coach in Robert Walter Johnson
• Jackie Robinson 1919–1972
  First African American to play in Major League Baseball in the modern era, breaking the color barrier. predecessor in integrating a sport
• Magic Johnson b. 1959
  Lakers legend whose Showtime era and HIV advocacy transformed basketball and public health conversations. made the same disclosure a year earlier
• Billie Jean King b. 1943
  Tennis champion and advocate for gender equality who defeated Bobby Riggs in the famous Battle of the Sexes. ally in the players' union fight
• Muhammad Ali 1942–2016
  Boxing legend and cultural icon known for his athletic brilliance and principled stance against the Vietnam War draft. the other model of the athlete as dissenter