Arthur Ashe

by Raymond Arsenault

  During the past decade, Arthur had created extremely high standards for achieving a fulfilling and meaningful life, and so far, in his view, he had failed to meet them. It was as simple as that. “Who knows what force gnaws at us,” he quipped in 1992, “telling us that our accomplishments, no matter how sensational, are not enough, that we need to do more?” What he did know was that his sense of dissatisfaction in 1980 had little or nothing to do with failing to accomplish all that he had hoped for on the tennis court. Instead, his lament was that he had not done nearly enough off the court, that his belated commitment to public service had been a case of too little too late. Denying that his dissatisfaction was rooted in an ego-driven “rage for immortality,” he insisted he just “wanted to be taken seriously.”25

  Being taken seriously, in his view, meant he would be allowed to transcend the professional athlete’s traditional role as an entertainer. As he put it, “professional athletes were the modern counterpart to minstrels or jongleurs in the Middle Ages. All we needed, I sometimes believed, was the pointed hats and the curved shoes tipped by little balls to be complete fools. From start to finish we were entertainers, with essentially clownish roles assigned to us.” While he loved the game of tennis and sports in general, he could not accept or endorse the intellectual and political impotence that characterized most of the sporting world’s top figures.26

  He admired the few athletes who had broken out of this mold—most notably Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson, Bill White, Curt Flood, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jim Brown, Bill Bradley, Billie Jean King, Tommie Smith, John Carlos. The courage to stand up for their beliefs even at the risk of damaging their careers, was, to his mind, cause for celebration and emulation. Looking back a quarter century, he recalled the stalwart defiance of Smith and Carlos, “the somber, black-gloved athlete-protestors,” who, in his words, “turned the victory stand at the Olympics in Mexico City in 1968 into a sacrificial altar, as they surrendered their victory to the greater good of downtrodden black people.” For Arthur, who was not one to endorse Black Power or radical politics, the heroism of these athletes had less to do with the content of their political ideology than with their willingness to be engaged citizens. “Although I did not always agree with everything these men had said and done,” he declared, “I respected the way they had stood tall against the sky and had insisted on being heard on matters other than boxing or track and field, on weighty matters of civil rights and social responsibility and the destiny of black Americans in the modern world.”27

  Doubting his own status as an activist, he sought both clarity and moral renewal by conducting an exhaustive examination of his first thirty-seven years. He started small, jotting down a few notes during his early convalescence. But with Ashe nothing ever remained small, and before long his exercise in memory and reflection led inexorably to an ambitious book project. By late spring he was working away on a memoir—not a standard memoir, he hoped, but rather an autobiographical and philosophical exploration of identity, race, ethics, and public policy.

  He had already produced two books of personal and collaborative narrative—Advantage Ashe with Cliff Gewecke Jr. in 1967, and Portrait in Motion with Frank Deford in 1974. Both books, in his view, had served a useful if limited purpose in providing him with opportunities to speak his mind. But he wanted his third book to reach beyond the pleasantries and banalities of life on the tennis tour.

  The manuscript began as a solitary project, but following the pattern of his first two books, it soon became a collaborative work. Feeling he needed someone to serve as both a sounding board and a writing coach, he hired Joel Dreyfuss, a thirty-five-year-old Haitian-born journalist who had written for The Washington Post, the New York Post, and Black Enterprise magazine. Dreyfuss had just completed a book on affirmative action, The Bakke Case: The Politics of Inequality, coauthored with Charles Lawrence III, a law professor at the University of San Francisco. A talented writer with a passionate interest in African American history, Dreyfuss appeared to be an ideal collaborator for Arthur, and for a time their work went smoothly. Eventually, however, Arthur began to worry that Dreyfuss’s editorial work was undercutting the manuscript’s autobiographical voice. Dreyfuss had strong opinions on a host of matters, and they did not always coincide with his views. After a few months of work, the two men parted company, leaving Arthur to search for a new collaborator who could bring the project to completion with Arthur’s voice.

  This time he chose the New York Times tennis writer Neil Amdur, a journalist he had long admired. An unobtrusive partner, Amdur had a light but effective editorial touch that ensured the final product would bear the marks of Ashe’s distinctive style and character. Together, they produced a surprisingly candid and wide-ranging book that became one of the most influential tennis autobiographies of the Open era. Aptly titled Off the Court, the 230-page memoir appeared in bookstores in September 1981. Several favorable reviews followed, but for Arthur the primary reward was the self-knowledge he had gained from a year of research and writing. While he was still searching for just the right balance between personal and public concerns—and he would continue to do so for the rest of his life—writing Off the Court led to a new awareness of what was really important to him.28

  Years later he revealed that another book had also proved essential to his midlife transformation. In the fall of 1978, Jeanne gave him The Seasons of a Man’s Life, a sophisticated study of life’s transitions written by Daniel J. Levinson and four other members of the psychiatry faculty at Yale’s School of Medicine. Sensing her husband was having great difficulty facing the inevitable transition to midlife, she hoped he would absorb Levinson’s declaration that a fulfilling life does not have to decline after the age of forty. To her delight he took Levinson’s message to heart, especially the dictum: “Each phase in the life cycle has its own virtues and limitations.” As Arthur read and reread the book, it became a kind of secular bible in the Ashe household.

  One of Levinson’s key insights was the significance of a “culminating event” as a perceived capstone experience. In the mind of someone approaching old age, Levinson suggested, this event “carries the ultimate message of his affirmation by society.” Arthur regarded this truth as an unsettling challenge. “My ‘culminating event,’ ” he wrote tellingly in 1992, “could never be physical, never something athletic. My ‘culminating event’ had to be less personal and materialistic, more humanitarian and inclusive. As I approached forty, I could think of nothing important that I had ever achieved of that sort. I had been a professional athlete, strictly defined and recognized as such.”29

  Arthur worried he might never experience “that truly satisfying” culminating event. But while he was mulling over this sad prospect, he took several important steps toward adding new meaning to his life. On a personal level, he had much more time to spend with Jeanne. With their life as a couple replacing tennis as the primary arbiter of their daily activities, they grew closer and more interdependent. As Jeanne later commented, they now shared “a healthy dependency.” She still had her work as a freelance photographer and had begun work on a book, Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers, which would be published in 1986. And they each had their own circle of close friends. But increasingly they shared a connection with their neighborhood and the broader New York community. While travel was still part of their lives, Arthur no longer spent half of his life on a plane. Now they were together in a way that had been all but impossible when the demands of competitive tennis had dominated his life.

  Arthur still devoted much of his time to the off-court activities that he had developed over the past decade: personal appearances related to endorsements of Aetna Life Insurance, American Airlines, Head rackets, and the French sportswear company Le Coq Sportif; periodic broadcasting assignments for ABC Sports; board meetings of the Council of International Tennis Professionals and the ATP; and fund-raising for the United Negro College Fund, the NJTL, and other philanthropic organizations. He even s
pent some of his post-retirement time on a tennis court conducting holiday clinics at Doral—though most of his days in Florida were now devoted to golf, the only competitive sport his doctors would allow him to play. “There, in the sun, I worked at my tennis responsibilities for the resort, and on my golf game for myself,” he would later write. “With my heart condition, golf had superseded tennis as my main sport; with every year I had become more and more entranced by the fairways and the greens.”30

  At the same time, intellectual pursuits began to play a larger role in his life. In addition to undertaking a serious regimen of French lessons, he doubled the time he spent reading. He had always been a bibliophile, but now he became an avid collector of first editions. His daily reading—mostly works of nonfiction dealing with public affairs and history—deepened his interest in the state of the world and nourished his passion for writing and public commentary. “I have always been in love with the English language and the power of the pen,” he insisted in the final chapter of Off the Court; and now he had the time to indulge this passion.

  He had been writing opinion pieces for The Washington Post since June 1977, but in 1979 and 1980 he both stepped up the pace and widened the scope of his columns. During this two-year period, he contributed twenty-three articles to the Post. All dealt with sports in some fashion, but they also touched upon such diverse topics as South African apartheid, parental pressure on young athletes, racial quotas in the NBA, the proper role of sports agents, Title IX and gender equity, sports gambling, Olympic boycotts, and the rights and responsibilities of student-athletes. In addition to his semiregular columns in the Post, he also penned occasional pieces for a wide variety of newspapers and magazines ranging from The New York Times and the Cape Town Times to People and the London Observer. Tennis magazine hired him to write instructional articles, a number of which later appeared in two collections aimed at young readers, Getting Started in Tennis (1979) and Arthur Ashe’s Tennis Clinic (1981).

  “I’ll continue to write,” he predicted in 1981. “I’m not sure what but I enjoy writing. My Washington Post bi-weekly column has forced me to learn how to say concisely what I’m thinking. I feel fortunate to have a forum like the Post in which to air my views. There are several more books in me. I learned from John McPhee and Frank Deford that writing is an art. If you know how to do it and can do so with passion and conviction you can write and write and write. I would never run out of subjects because my life and experiences are always changing.”

  He also ramped up his speaking schedule. Hardly a week went by without at least one speaking engagement, often at an inner-city venue where he thought he could exert some influence on behalf of education and personal responsibility. He also maintained a presence on the college lecture circuit, offering his views on everything from South Africa to chronic unemployment and economic inequality. In many instances, he was speaking as a recruiting consultant for Aetna, and in that capacity alone he spoke to thousands of college students. Often finding himself in front of predominantly black audiences, he mixed the rhetoric of empowerment with blunt words of advice. Refusing to pull his punches, he tried to be honest and prescriptive without being preachy. After nearly twenty years in the spotlight, the shy little boy from Richmond had become an enthusiastic and assertive public speaker.31

  Another sign of his renewed dedication to public service was his increasing involvement in partisan politics. For several years he had toyed with the idea of running for public office only to draw back each time after calculating the inevitable impact on his career. Now he had more latitude to throw his hat into the ring, perhaps in a race for a congressional seat. But two primary factors kept him on the sidelines—the uncertainty of his health and Jeanne’s reluctance. Unlike his close friend Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, he ultimately decided to limit his political activity to endorsements, fund-raising, and an occasional campaign appearance. This decision was also based in part on his growing frustration with the rise of image-dominated and money-oriented politics. “Candidates are now packaged rather than being allowed to be themselves,” he explained in 1981. “They take a poll, find out what the people are thinking, and then change their views to suit the results. . . . I don’t really have the temperament for all that now.”

  Despite his disillusionment, he became increasingly active and vocal in a number of political campaigns: for Ted Kennedy during the 1980 Democratic presidential primaries; for Jimmy Carter during his unsuccessful reelection battle with Ronald Reagan; for David Dinkins in several races for Manhattan borough president; for the reelection of two of the nation’s most prominent black mayors, Tom Bradley of Los Angeles and Wilson Goode of Philadelphia; for Charles Robb in the 1982 Virginia senatorial race; and for Bill Bradley in his 1984 reelection campaign.

  During these years, Ashe’s support for the Democratic Party was firm and consistent, especially when highly qualified black candidates were involved. Though discouraged by what he viewed as the backlash politics of Reagan Republicanism on the national level, he took heart from the progressive turn in local politics in cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. There were even hopeful signs in his home state of Virginia, where his friend, the Richmond attorney Douglas Wilder, had overcome the power of the Byrd machine to become an influential state senator. Elected to the Senate in 1970, Wilder moved up to lieutenant governor in 1985, the first African American elected to statewide office in Virginia. Four years later, with Arthur’s help, he would become the first black governor in American electoral history. As Arthur later wrote, “I never dreamed that one of the older boys who came to play at Brook Field on the courts my father tended could become governor of our state. But Doug Wilder did so.”

  The content and tone of Arthur’s political views underwent little change during these years. His ties to the Kennedy clan, originally forged during his political awakening of 1968, were stronger than ever—especially with Ted Kennedy and Robert Kennedy’s widow, Ethel. In February 1982, he would even serve as one of the official hosts for Ted Kennedy’s fiftieth birthday party. His close relationship with the Kennedys went well beyond politics, as did his cherished connection with Andrew Young.

  He did not, however, become an ideological or partisan gadfly. When it came to staking out a position on individual issues, he always insisted on making up his own mind. As the journalist Peter Bodo once observed, “he was an inquisitive, open-minded, practical thinker—a keen social observer rather than a mere partisan.” This resistance to orthodoxy sometimes had its downside, but he didn’t seem to care. “There are a great number of people who don’t like me,” he declared in 1981, “who feel that I haven’t done enough for certain causes or that I’ve chosen the wrong ones to support.” A case in point was his continuing support for the 1978 Bakke decision, an unpopular position in liberal Democratic circles. Refusing to adopt a standard position, either pro or con, on affirmative action, he was determined to find a middle way that balanced meritocratic goals with the historical reality of racial discrimination.

  A second issue separating Arthur from his liberal friends and allies was minimum-wage legislation. While he supported the basic principle of a government-mandated living wage, he had serious misgivings about the Carter administration’s effort to raise the minimum hourly wage to $3.50 and beyond. “I fully believe that the minimum-wage law works to the detriment of the inner city,” he declared. “My father, who is always attuned to the street, tells me that $3.30 an hour is keeping a lot of blacks out of work. Some people want to hire kids, black or white, but can’t afford $3.30, he says. He is right. . . . I know all about the argument of the lower tier putting semiskilled adults out of work, but it’s time to try something different.”32

  Sometimes Ashe took positions to the right of the Democratic lodestar, and sometimes to the left. Dialogue and deliberation were his watchwords, especially on matters of deep concern such as South Africa. Since 1977 he had undertaken a searching reconsideration of his constructive engagem
ent approach to South African liberation. Influenced by TransAfrica and the noticeable tightening of apartheid following the Soweto uprising of 1976, he had moved slowly but surely toward a liberation policy of isolation and exclusion. Taking advantage of white South Africans’ obsession with demonstrating their prowess in international sports competition, he joined the widening movement to deprive them of this nationalistic outlet. “Not only did I play a major role in having South Africa banned from Davis Cup play,” he declared with a measure of pride, “I also worked hard to convince individuals not to play there.”

  For a time, under the influence of Young, the Carter administration appeared to be headed in the same direction in developing more assertive policies toward South Africa. But to Ashe’s dismay, this hopeful trend all but disappeared after Young’s resignation in August 1979. Young’s behind-the-scenes efforts to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization—he met secretly with a PLO representative in Manhattan on August 2—were exposed by the Israeli security force Mossad, and an embarrassed President Carter had no choice but to ask for Young’s resignation. In the wake of what came to be known as “The Andy Young Affair,” Carter administration officials paid little attention to South Africa, though they did provide Ashe and other anti-apartheid activists with some hope by giving support and formal recognition to the newly independent nation of Zimbabwe (formerly Southern Rhodesia) in April 1980. If majority rule could be instituted in Zimbabwe, where a racial “bush war” had raged for several years, perhaps the same kind of transformation was possible in neighboring South Africa.