Arthur Ashe

by Raymond Arsenault

  In a closing press conference at the Johannesburg airport on April 9, he expressed his profound disappointment. In view of what he had seen, it was no longer advisable for him to play tennis in South Africa. Yet he refused to give up on the nation that had become his second home. He promised that following his return to New York he would solicit contributions from American corporations with economic interests in South Africa—contributions that would fund “a million-dollar tennis stadium to be built in Soweto.” He also promised to press those same corporations to make good on their pledges of “equal opportunity in employment.”

  What he was not willing to do was to support the all-out sports boycott of South Africa advocated by several black African nations. “I know the Africans would kill me for saying this, and probably the militant blacks at home as well,” he acknowledged, “but I know I’m right in saying that if you isolate them completely, the progress will come to a stop, a dead stop. Isolation can be effective, but it has to be selectively used.” Constructive engagement was still his preferred path, and he vowed to return to South Africa on a regular basis. “I’ve become emotionally involved with South Africa and its problems,” he insisted. “I guess I’ll just keep coming back here until blacks have the vote.”21

  Ashe was correct when he speculated that his refusal to endorse the all-out boycott would lead to sharp criticism in some quarters. A few weeks after his return, he was shouted down during a speech at Howard University. Early in the speech two South African exchange students standing in the back of the hall began to yell: “Uncle Tom! Uncle Tom! Arthur Ashe is an Uncle Tom and a traitor! You betrayed us in South Africa! You betrayed your black brothers! Shame on you, Arthur Ashe! Sit down and shut up!”

  When the shouting continued, Ashe stopped in mid-sentence and allowed the protesters to speak. But their words offered nothing he hadn’t heard before, and his shock soon turned to anger. “Will you answer just two questions for me?” he demanded. “Just two questions? Why don’t you tell everybody in this hall tonight why, if you are so brave and militant, you are hiding away in school in the United States and not confronting apartheid in South Africa, which is your homeland?” When they failed to answer, he continued his retaliation: “And also tell us how you as radicals expect to win international support for your cause when you give vent to your anger and rage as you have done here tonight in disrupting my speech. What do you expect to achieve when you give in to passion and invective and surrender the high moral ground that alone can bring you victory?” Once again there was silence in the back of the hall, and he was able to finish his speech without further interruption.22

  Nevertheless, he had to face the reality that public pressure for a boycott banning South African athletes from international competition was on the rise. In late May, a coalition of fifteen organizations, including the SCLC and Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH, founded the American Coordinating Committee for Equality in Sport and Society (ACCESS). The new organization’s plan was to “hammer away at the issue of apartheid,” primarily through an escalating boycott strategy. The coalition had the support of Ambassador Young, who during a recent visit to Johannesburg had urged black South Africans to mount “an economic boycott against apartheid.” Where all of this left Ashe and his strategy of constructive engagement was unclear, but the growing impatience with the white South African government was forcing everyone, including him, to rethink their positions.23

  From July 1976 on, Ashe’s activities on behalf of South African liberation were entwined with a new organization known as TransAfrica. Conceived a year earlier at a conference on the African diaspora sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus, TransAfrica advocated a human rights–oriented American foreign policy that would promote justice and liberation in Africa and the Caribbean.

  The guiding force behind the organization’s activities was its first director, Randall Robinson, a boyhood friend of Ashe’s. In the 1950s, Robinson’s father had been black Richmond’s most celebrated baseball coach and “a fixture at Brook Field.” As young boys Robinson and Ashe played baseball together, and they later kept in touch. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1970, Robinson spent five years as a Boston-based civil rights attorney before stints as an assistant to two black congressmen, Bill Clay of Pennsylvania and Charles Diggs of Detroit, in 1975 and 1976. During these years, he worked to cement the relationship between the Black Caucus and anti-apartheid activists, including Ashe. The subsequent collaboration between the two men, based on a close personal and political bond, was essential to TransAfrica’s growing visibility and influence, and Ashe eventually helped Robinson to establish the TransAfrica Forum, the fund-raising arm of the organization.24

  For Ashe, the liberation of South Africa—and TransAfrica’s lobbying efforts—would become consuming interests. But in June 1977, he temporarily refocused his attention on a matter of growing concern within the ATP. Tension between American players and their European, South American, and Australian colleagues had arisen over an imbalanced schedule that seemed to favor American tournaments. Since the United States was the source for most of the prize money and corporate sponsorships, and a large majority of the television coverage, there were frequent complaints about the “Americanization of Pro Tennis.” Representing the American members of the ATP, Ashe acknowledged the problem but countered with the claim that sometimes the geographic imbalance worked to the detriment of Americans. “Some American players, particularly guys in college,” he pointed out, “have been complaining about Europeans coming over to the United States and taking spots in our satellite tournaments.” Even so, he added: “you can’t have a protection policy.”25

  Resuming an active role as an ATP leader gave him a sense of satisfaction, but more than anything else he wanted to get back on the court. In late June, his doctors finally gave him the go-ahead, albeit a bit reluctantly, to return to competition. It was too late to enter the draw at Wimbledon, where he had to confine himself to the role of television commentator. But at least he was there for the dramatic men’s single final that saw Borg defeat Connors to win a second straight Wimbledon title. Ashe admired the Swede’s skill as well as his sportsmanship, which stood in sharp contrast to Connors’s notorious gamesmanship, and he could not conceal his delight after Borg’s victory. Watching Borg at his best stirred Ashe’s competitive impulses, making him more eager than ever to get back on the court.26

  In early July, he was not quite tournament ready, and he gave up his spot in the WCT Tournament of Champions to Alexander. But a week later, he decided to enter both the singles and doubles competition at the Washington Star tournament. As soon as he took the court for a few minutes of practice prior to the first round, he knew he had made a mistake. Withdrawing just before the match started, he let Dell, the tournament co-chairman, deliver the bad news to the press. “Arthur tried to play today,” Dell reported, “but the swelling in his foot forced him to stop. The heel doesn’t seem to be responding to treatment.” Ashe valiantly promised to see if his heel would allow him to remain in the doubles competition with his partner Stan Smith. But even that proved to be too much for his ailing body.27

  A week later, he tried again, and this time he did a little better. Playing at a WCT event in Louisville, he won his first-round match against Sashi Menon, a lightly regarded pro from India. In the second round, however, he lost a close match to thirty-eight-year-old Irion Tiriac. Ashe hated losing to someone even older than he was, but at least his heel had proven steady enough for serious play. Encouraged, he entered the Volvo International Tournament in late July, and once again he managed to win his first-round match, against Jai DiLouie, an eighteen-year-old Texan. He played even better in the following rounds, but in the round of sixteen he lost to fifth-seeded Harold Solomon. Limping noticeably after the match, he knew he had pushed himself too far.28

  The next time he took the court was at the Robert F. Kennedy Pro-Celebrity benefit in late August. The heel still hurt, but he felt comfortable enough
to try his luck at the U.S. Open the following week. Realizing this would be his last opportunity to play at Forest Hills—the Open was scheduled to move to a new facility in Flushing Meadows in 1978—he registered for the singles draw. Unseeded, he drew an unheralded first-round opponent, twenty-seven-year-old Zan Guerry of Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. He was anxious to play Guerry, but it didn’t happen. On August 27, the disappointed former champion was forced to withdraw from the tournament after a brisk but painful practice session. “I think I tried to do too much too soon,” he explained. “My left heel acted up again and now I will have to postpone my comeback until 1978.”29

  He was also suffering from a lingering eye infection, but that did not stop him from serving as a commentator for ABC television. To his delight, Jeanne—who had quit her job at NBC—would also be working at the Open as a photographer for several sports magazines. As a New York Times headline put it, “Ashe Is Back at Forest Hills—With a Wife but Without a Racquet.”30

  As it turned out, Arthur didn’t need a racquet to exert an impact on the tournament. At the end of the first week of play, he was drawn into an ugly controversy surrounding the racially insensitive remarks of William J. McCullough, a retired New York police officer who presided over the West Side Tennis Club’s officials. When the Open moved to Flushing Meadows in 1978—a move that the West Side club was hoping to stop—McCullough predicted the majority-black population of the Flushing neighborhood would create serious problems. “Now let’s talk about moving from a friendly, cooperative environment and going to an unknown,” he suggested. “I say this: that when they move from here to a park, they are going to find that they will not only have trouble in making the tennis fans come but in getting the community to work with them.” As the West Side club’s only black member, Arthur was asked to comment on McCullough’s statement, and he responded without hesitation: “My first impression is that what he said sounds institutionally racist. It sounds like a racial slur if I ever heard one.”31

  Without setting foot on the grass courts of Forest Hills, Arthur was seemingly everywhere at the 1977 Open. On Friday, September 9, he was one of three figures honored at a Waldorf-Astoria luncheon “marking the merger of the National Tennis Foundation and the International Tennis Hall of Fame.” During his remarks to the assembled leaders of the tennis world, he couldn’t resist scolding them after a year of nearly constant organizational squabbling. “We should hermetically seal them in here,” he declared, motioning across the ballroom, “until they solve their problems.” While he still yearned to get back out on the court, he was clearly enjoying the role of a plain-speaking tennis graybeard.32

  That evening, he assumed an even more public role when he appeared in an hour-long CBS special titled Super Night at Forest Hills. Billed as an “all-star entertainment salute,” the comedy-variety show pushed tennis to the background as Ashe, Billie Jean King, and Ilie Nastase shared the stage with Sammy Davis Jr., Andy Williams, Alan King, Minnie Pearl, Kelly the Chimp, and others. One television commentator complained the show took “the word ‘super’ ” to “still another dimension of meaninglessness,” but Ashe, who hadn’t had much to smile about in recent weeks, enjoyed a much needed night of fun cavorting with the comics and other celebrities.33

  Two days later, just minutes before the Sunday afternoon championship match between Vilas and Connors, he took part in a much more serious affair. Switching from celebrity to activist, he became a willing though somewhat conflicted participant in a protest organized by ACCESS. Outside the entrance to the West Side club, approximately two hundred protesters passed out leaflets either condemning South African apartheid or challenging the right of South African players to participate in the Open. Ashe, who supported the first position but not the second, decided to address the crowd anyway. Amid chants of “Sports, yes; apartheid, no: tennis with South Africa’s got to go!” he endorsed the protest, saying, “I just wish there were 10,000 people out here.” Prior to speaking, he held an impromptu news briefing in which he called for South Africa’s banishment from Davis Cup competition. With so many withdrawals by countries unwilling to play South Africa, the nation of apartheid had “made the competition ridiculous.”34

  Ashe and his ACCESS allies served warning at Forest Hills that the tennis establishment could not turn a blind eye to the South African situation without incurring public embarrassment. But Ashe himself was the first to admit that the way forward was murky at best. In early October, he contributed an opinion piece to The New York Times focusing on the question “South Africa’s ‘New’ Interracial Sports Policy: Is It a Fraud?” Recalling his recent visit to South Africa, he cited several experiences that confirmed his worst fears. “The one ‘mixed’ soccer game we went to film,” he reported, “turned out to be an all-black team playing an all-white team.” The government’s determination to maintain “separate development” and an uncompromising “homeland policy,” he insisted, made a mockery of its professed policy of racial equity in sports. “I was even refused tickets when I tried to buy five for South African kids who recognized me,” he recalled. “It seems I stumbled by mistake upon the ‘white’ ticket window.”

  The obviously fraudulent nature of the South African government’s new policy left Ashe in a quandary. On the one hand, the fraud seemed to justify continuing the boycott of South African athletes imposed in 1976 by the SCSA, the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa, the primary organization representing black Africans. Yet the boycott left Ashe’s philosophy of engagement and dialogue through sports in shambles. “The great pity,” he concluded, “is that the most powerful and visible vehicle for peaceful change in South Africa is sport. Not ‘playing ball’ with South Africa may needlessly prolong the system the world is trying to dismantle.”35

  Ashe’s interest in South African liberation and other social issues remained strong in the closing months of 1977, but many of his fans were more interested in his private life with his beautiful bride. The newlyweds did their best to retain a modicum of privacy, but in September, during the first week of the Open, they agreed to a New York Times interview. Much of the article described the inevitable adjustments that Jeanne had experienced. “Since the marriage,” the Times reporter observed, “she has traveled a lot more than usual.” Even with her husband’s injury, they had hardly spent a weekend at home. As Jeanne reported: “We’ve been to London, Paris—if you ever have to see Paris in five hours, do it with Arthur—Colorado, Miami three times, Richmond twice, and then South Africa.”

  The trips to South Africa and London were especially eye-opening for a woman unaccustomed to the glare of publicity or the life of a celebrity. After one young woman jumped on Arthur’s back during an attempt to get an autograph at Wimbledon, Jeanne confessed: “I’ve never seen people like that before. It’s a madhouse. Just like what you see in the old Beatles movies. You know, the screaming girls, they just go bananas.”

  Despite such scenes, she insisted life with her new husband was manageable. “I’m not overwhelmed by his world. I pretty much create my own world in his world,” she explained. “When I get itchy and want to come back to New York, when there’s something I’ve got to get done, I just say ‘see you later.’ ” When they were in New York together, their favorite pastimes were riding bicycles, catching a movie, or visiting museums and art galleries. Jeanne’s passion—frequenting the New York fine art scene—was new for Arthur. Even so, “she doesn’t have to drag me,” he insisted. “I go along,” he said. “I have a layman’s interest in art—particularly black Africa art. I even find myself going to these places when she doesn’t go.”

  Compromise, they had already discovered, was the secret to a happy marriage. Both of them loved music, for example, but favored different styles. He did his best to accommodate her love of jazz, developing his own passion for Chick Corea and Miles Davis, and she returned the favor by embracing his love of rock idols such as the Beatles, Eric Clapton, and the Moody Blues. Another minor source of tension was Jea
nne’s aversion to cooking; she preferred to eat out, something Arthur had experienced more than he cared to remember. During the interview, after she exclaimed, “I love going out,” her husband countered with a wistful reference to “homemade sweet potato pies.” “We have little wars when she wants to go out,” he explained. “Sometimes we get food from the Chinese restaurant across the street. It’s one way to compromise. You’re eating out but eating in.” On many of the most important matters, there was no need for compromise. Both of them, for example, expressed the desire to have children, though early in the marriage Jeanne resented the familial pressure from members of the Ashe clan urging the young couple to have a baby as soon as possible.36

  Some compromises took more than a little effort to reach. One serious strain on their relationship during the first year or two of their marriage was Jeanne’s fiercely independent nature. She did not want to be treated as “Mrs. Arthur Ashe,” a label she formally rejected at the outset of the marriage. In an increasingly common gesture among young feminists, she had decided to retain her maiden name after marriage, a decision Arthur accepted but didn’t like very much. As he recalled in his 1981 memoir, “ ‘Fine,’ I said, ‘Don’t change your name.’ But at social functions or tennis matches, people would still come up and say, ‘Oh, hello, Mrs. Ashe,’ and Jeanne would do a slow burn.” After much discussion, she finally settled on the hyphenated “Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe.”37

  Beyond the name problem was her determination to advance professionally without any help from her husband. “She felt uncomfortable with me trying to do things for her career; she wanted to do things on her own, not as Mrs. Arthur Ashe,” he recalled. “She realized that I could pull a string here and there to help her career along a little faster. But she did not want her contemporaries in photography to feel that she had gotten this assistance without merit.” Nothing infuriated her more than a meeting with a photo editor who showed more interest in her famous husband than in her portfolio. “You have to be a very secure, mature person to handle that properly,” she later conceded. “At twenty-five, and not being fully established and totally secure in my work, that was very difficult for me to deal with. And I had gone from making $22,000 a year at NBC to absolutely nothing. I had quit my job and become a wife, and it was traumatic.”38