Arthur Ashe

by Raymond Arsenault

  By the time Ashe arrived at the U.S. Open in early September, his confidence was at its lowest ebb in years. Seeded a disappointing seventh, he lost to Jan Kodes in the second round, his earliest exit in nine U.S. Opens. He won just nine points and one game in the first set, and the entire match lasted only fifty-one minutes. “It really wasn’t much of a match,” he conceded. “Jan played well, and I didn’t offer much resistance. I couldn’t keep the ball on the court. This summer has been a disaster for me. That’s life.” When asked if this was the worst he had ever played at the Open, he muttered disconsolately, “Don’t know. Don’t care. It’s over.”48

  Unfortunately, the slump was not over, and he played out the year without winning another tournament. While his overall match record for the year was a more than respectable 64–23, he could not seem to win when it really mattered. In late September, he made it to the finals of the Pacific Southwest Open in Los Angeles but lost badly to Gottfried in the championship match. Two weeks later, he managed to defeat Nastase in a tough semifinal match at Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, but with his foot situation worsening he was no match for Borg in the finals. In late October he eked out two early-round victories in Vienna, but a week later his foot injury forced him to withdraw from the Stockholm Indoor Open.

  Ashe would not play again competitively until December 17, when he represented the United States in a Davis Cup match against Roberto Chavez of Mexico. The Mexican team had upset the Americans the two previous years, but not this time, as Ashe and Tanner both won their singles matches and Smith and Lutz followed with a doubles victory that gave the U.S. an insurmountable 3–0 lead. In the second round of singles matches, Raúl Ramírez defeated Ashe in straight sets, depriving the Americans of a clean sweep. The U.S. squad would go on to face Argentina in the 1977 Davis Cup Americas Zone final, but Ashe, who underwent foot surgery in February 1977, would not be part of the team that lost to Guillermo Vilas and the Argentines 3–2 in May.

  By the time of the U.S.-Mexico match in December 1976, Ashe’s U.S. ranking had fallen from first to third, his only consolation being that for a record twelfth straight year he found himself ranked among the top five Americans. Even more disturbing, his world ranking, according to Tennis magazine, had slipped from first to twelfth in a single year. This rapid descent from the top of the rankings could be explained, in part, by his persistent foot problems, and consoling friends assured him there was no reason to panic. But, at age thirty-three, he feared his best performances on the court were behind him.49

  While Ashe did his best to maintain an optimistic frame of mind during this tough time, he was hampered by a series of setbacks off the court. Both during and immediately after the 1976 U.S. Open, the tennis world remained sharply divided over the concerted effort by the WTA to force the Wimbledon organizing committee to equalize the prize money for men and women. The U.S. Open had adopted an equal prize money policy in 1973, and many other tournaments had followed suit, but not Wimbledon. The issue troubled Ashe more than ever, and there were signs he had become conflicted over the matter. But as of September he still stood in public solidarity with his traditionalist male colleagues. “It’s a question of market value,” he told the press, insisting that among the women only Evert and Goolagong belonged in the same prize range as the men.50

  The state of tennis politics was bad enough, but in the broader political arena—an area of increasing interest to Ashe—nothing seemed to be going very well. President Nixon’s replacement, Gerald Ford, had proven to be a disappointment on matters of race and economics, and Ashe worried that four more years of Republican rule would undo many of the gains achieved during the 1960s. Mercifully, the Vietnam War was no longer a major distraction for progressive Americans interested in social change and racial justice, yet the civil rights community remained fragmented and ineffective. Indeed, racial liberalism appeared to be in decline, as battles over “forced busing” and affirmative action fueled a powerful white backlash.

  It was the Bicentennial year, and there was considerable fanfare and celebration commemorating the nation’s democratic origins. But the prospects for a true renewal of democratic values—one that advanced the civil rights agenda of racial justice and equal opportunity—seemed dim during the months leading up to the national election of 1976. In the early stages, Ashe enthusiastically embraced the liberal-minded presidential campaign of his friend Sargent Shriver, but he became discouraged after Shriver dropped out of the race in late March.

  Initially, the eventual Democratic nominee, Jimmy Carter, did not excite Ashe, largely because of the Georgian’s mixed record on matters of race. Only after Carter received Andrew Young’s endorsement did Ashe feel comfortable in the Carter camp. Ashe and Young had been friends since their first meeting in 1970, but their friendship deepened after spending time together at the Washington Star tournament in July 1974 and traveling to South Africa later in the year. Their mutual admiration was obvious and, following Carter’s inauguration in January 1977, Ashe was thrilled to be invited to the White House to attend Young’s swearing-in as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.51

  Carter’s victory over Ford in November 1976 gave Ashe some hope that the years of conservative Republican dominance and political backlash were over. But, in truth, his focus was not on the American political scene during that summer and fall. From mid-June on, South Africa, not the United States, dominated his thoughts and prayers. After the Bantu Education Department began enforcing a long-forgotten law requiring secondary education to be conducted in Afrikaans in the spring of 1976, black students engaged in a series of protests and strikes that brought a brutal response from white policemen. On June 16, in Soweto, where more than twenty thousand students had gathered for a protest march, the police fired indiscriminately into the crowd, killing several marchers. The protests soon spread to other black townships, prompting more police violence. Before the confrontations gave way to an uneasy peace in late June, an estimated 360 students were dead, and waves of outrage galvanized anti-apartheid forces across the world. A partially successful worldwide boycott of South African exports followed, but no one knew quite what the future held in the wake of the “Soweto uprising.”

  During his most recent visit to South Africa, in November 1975, Ashe had sensed that something like this might happen in the near future. Among South African whites there was a stubborn refusal to embrace meaningful change, he noted, and among blacks there was a new militancy and a growing determination to resist the worst excesses of apartheid. “You could not tell by looking around the streets,” he recalled six years later. “You had to talk to people. Black people were bolder about the things they didn’t like; they were more vocally open. . . . You could feel the tension underneath. The superficial changes in petty apartheid only whetted the appetites of black South Africans for more and faster change.”

  In early 1976, Ashe had warned his South African friends on the tour that the deadly combination of black protest and white repression could erupt at any moment, and as soon as the Soweto uprising appeared in the press, he called Ray Moore to say “I told you so.” Ashe and Moore monitored the soul-sickening spectacle from London, where they were awaiting the start of Wimbledon, and as the reports of escalating violence trickled in, both men trembled for the future of a nation that appeared to be spinning out of control.

  What worried Ashe most, aside from the savagery of the police, was the apparent isolation of South Africa’s black activists. Among the white liberals who professed to oppose apartheid there were few signs of support for the protesters and even fewer expressions of outrage directed at the government. The white liberals, it seemed, preferred order to freedom, and at this critical moment there was little evidence of interracial activism, a factor crucial to the success of the American civil rights movement in the 1960s.

  Ashe also observed there had been almost no black-on-white violence. As he recalled in 1981: “One startling, sobering statistic fascinated me: in all of the raci
al unrest, not even a handful of white South Africans were killed. The Africans talk in symbolic terms of destroying the system they hate, yet almost no white South Africans were killed. That wouldn’t happen in the United States under similar circumstances. South African blacks were punishing themselves more than anybody else. Even when they had those riots, nobody in the lines had any weapons; the people were all unarmed, with nothing more than sticks and stones.”

  At the time, Ashe didn’t know what to make of this restraint, and he neither criticized nor praised the black South Africans’ refusal to engage in all-out warfare. Years later, however, he looked back on the 1976 Soweto uprising as a major milestone in modern South African history. As he put it, “that one incident changed values within the country. . . . There was more unanimity of feeling about apartheid. The black reaction . . . showed that blacks were not going to settle for the life that white South Africa had been promising them.”

  The Soweto uprising also raised the international profile of the broader struggle against apartheid. “South Africa internationally could no longer hide from the problem as it tried to do in the past,” Ashe insisted. “Even the investment atmosphere changed. Outsiders like me had to change our approach. We could not rely on an occasional letter to a congressman or senator. We too had to raise our ante. I had to get bolder just to keep up.” He would indeed become bolder in the years to come as the anti-apartheid struggle evolved into a powerful worldwide movement. But in the early aftermath of the white crackdown in Soweto, the liberation of black South Africa seemed further away than ever.52

  NINETEEN

  AFFAIRS OF THE HEART

  SOUTH AFRICA’S PLIGHT AND other troubling public issues were not the only things disrupting Ashe’s peace of mind in 1976. His private life was also a source of anxiety and uncertainty. As long as he remained on the tour, the pattern of nonstop travel and the commitment to compete at the highest level would be the controlling influences in his life. But what would he do with himself when he retired? Though only a year removed from his greatest triumph, the precipitous decline in the quality of his tennis forced him to contemplate the second phase of his adult life. With hard work and a bit of luck, he might be able to extend his career for a year or two, but surely he would be off the court before the end of the decade.

  Perhaps more than any other touring pro, Ashe had prepared for this day, diversifying his interests and building social capital. He could, he reasoned, develop a second career in business, or television, or coaching, or writing and public speaking, or perhaps a combination of all of the above. Already financially secure, he had the luxury of reorganizing his life with more than money in mind. Yet this wide range of choices kept him up at night. For a man who had seen so much of his life determined by forces beyond his control—by his father, by Dr. J and Coach Morgan, and later by the dictates of the tour—this freedom to choose was a new experience.1

  Ironically, in another important area of his life, Ashe was troubled by the prospect of giving up his freedom. For fifteen years or more, he had enjoyed his bachelorhood. As his envious friends could attest, he had certainly made the most of it, dating dozens of talented and beautiful women, including his current girlfriend, Beverly Johnson. Along the way, he had survived one engagement and one near miss, but for the most part he had avoided entangling relationships. He attributed this blissful freedom to both good luck and careful planning. “Marriage and the idea of marriage were always rather frightening to me,” he once confessed. “What bothered me was not so much marriage as divorce. . . . I thought people in general got married for the wrong reasons and turned to divorce not because they couldn’t get along but because they didn’t try hard enough.”2

  Despite this fear, Ashe denied he was a confirmed bachelor. For him, it was primarily a matter of timing. “Keeping my promise to myself to stay single until I was thirty was easy enough,” he insisted. “I had plenty to do and there was much about life I wanted to enjoy.” But this all changed in 1973. “When I reached thirty,” he revealed, “I literally started to look for a wife. I was ready to open up—to share my life with someone. Before then, I would have resented the restraints, not with respect to other women but restraints on my time. This may seem to be a cold-blooded approach to marriage, but I wanted to take a logical and rational view of the institution and to make sure it would work for me.”3

  For three years, Ashe searched for the right woman to share the rest of his life. His dates were almost always beautiful, and many were talented and accomplished women, yet not one came close to being “THE ONE,” as he put it. By the fall of 1976, he had become discouraged and wondered if he would ever feel the emotional spark that would bond him to a woman for life. For the better part of a year, he had dated Beverly, and she had begun to broach the subject of marriage. But, despite their stimulating physical relationship, he did not feel quite the same way about her. As sexually exciting and beautiful as she was, Johnson had a history of drug abuse that gave him pause. As a practical matter, he also worried about the daunting challenge of simultaneously accommodating the demands and pressures of two high-powered careers. As one of the world’s most sought-after models, Beverly always seemed to by flying off to one photo shoot or another. How could they raise a family or have any kind of meaningful life together under such circumstances? The more he thought about it, the more he realized he just couldn’t see himself in a permanent relationship with her.

  Frustrated and disappointed, he had just about given up. Then, on October 16 and 17, he participated in a United Negro College Fund Pro-Celebrity tournament held at the Felt Forum in New York. Over the years he had taken part in dozens of similar benefit events, but this time donating a weekend to a worthy cause would change his life. One of the photographers assigned to cover the event and take his picture was a young woman wearing blue jeans and a beige sweater. There was something about her—the way she looked, the way she carried herself—that grabbed his attention. She was beautiful, to be sure. But there was something else about her, something magnetic that drew him in.

  As the shutters clicked, Arthur tried to initiate a conversation. His opening line, “Photographers are getting cuter these days,” drew a terse response. “Well, thank you,” the woman replied in a tone that let him know his lack of originality had failed to impress. Clearly, he had gotten off on the wrong foot, and a few seconds later, as the photographers scrambled for a good position, she literally stepped on his foot. Undaunted, he approached her later in the afternoon and managed to get her name. “Jeanne Moutoussamy,” she told him, slowly spelling out the last name when he looked puzzled. Moments earlier she had been in conversation with an acquaintance of Arthur’s, the famous African American photographer Gordon Parks, and Arthur feared they were a couple. But a later conversation with Parks in the men’s dressing room revealed there was no attachment other than friendship and a work connection with NBC.4

  That evening, at the post-tournament party, Arthur screwed up his courage and approached her again. This time they talked for several minutes, after which he asked her out on a dinner date. His open invitation referred to “some future date,” but she wanted to pin him down. “When?” she asked. “How about tomorrow?” he responded, and she agreed.

  The first date—a leisurely dinner filled with conversation—took place at Thursday’s restaurant on West 58th Street. They met in the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the building where Jeanne worked, and where Arthur started the evening with a flourish by presenting her with a single red rose. Since he hardly knew her at this point, he had no way of knowing how she would react to the rose or anything else he had to offer. But that evening, in a few short hours punctuated by laughter and knowing glances, he learned a great deal about Jeanne Moutoussamy.

  Most obviously, he found her to be extremely bright and articulate. Within minutes he discovered they had a number of common interests—literature, music, art, and Africa. He even discovered that their birthdays were only one day apart—hers on July
9 and his on July 10. It also didn’t take much time for him to realize she was an independent woman with strong opinions, some of which did not match his. Recalling their rambling chatter on a range of issues, he conceded she “more than held her own.” Cosmopolitan in her tastes and unusually poised, she proved to be charming even when making a disputable point. By the end of the evening, he was exhilarated and all but hooked.

  Soon thereafter, he called Beverly to break the news that he had met someone special. “I’m really sorry about this,” he told her, “but it’s pretty serious, so I can’t see you anymore.” Unaccustomed to being dumped, especially on the phone, she was, to put it mildly, floored. But even over the phone, she sensed almost immediately that nothing could change his mind. From the tone of his voice, nervous and embarrassed as he was, she could tell that something profound had happened to him.5

  Deeply in love for the first time in his life, Arthur was certain that Jeanne was the one for him. She had it all, from a breathtaking smile to a set of experiences and interests that drew him to her. Part of the attraction was her unusual background. Born in Chicago in 1951, she was the product of a multiethnic Roman Catholic family—part East Indian, part Caribbean, and part African American. Her father, John Warren Moutoussamy Sr., was a prominent Chicago-born architect who helped to design several notable buildings, including the skyscraper that housed the offices of the popular black magazines Ebony and Jet. His father, the son of an Indian couple from Pondicherry, was a native of Saint Francois, Guadaloupe, who had migrated to Louisiana as a young man in the 1920s before moving on to Chicago. Jeanne’s mother, Elizabeth Hunt Moutoussamy, was an interior designer born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, of mixed racial background ranging from African American to Cherokee. Raised as a Baptist, Elizabeth converted to Catholicism during her engagement and later became a strict follower of her husband’s lifelong faith. Together, John and Elizabeth raised three children—Johnny, Claude, and Jeanne.