Arthur Ashe

by Raymond Arsenault

  The Ashe statue, for all its critics and complications, soon became a major tourist attraction and a symbol of pride and hope for many Richmond residents, especially in the black community. Ultimately producing more racial healing than resistance, it has stood as a testament to the emergence of a more united and tolerant city. But its location still inspires controversy. Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, for one, has never reconciled the Monument Avenue site with the original goal of paying tribute to Arthur’s life with a statue placed in front of the proposed African American Sports Hall of Fame.29

  Much more important than placing the statue on Monument Avenue, in Jeanne’s view, was the USTA’s decision to put Arthur’s name on the new stadium being built at the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows. The decision came after a display of resistance by the USTA board of directors, who voted unanimously to use the name USTA Stadium as a starting point for a lucrative corporate naming opportunity down the line. The board reversed its decision in February 1997, bowing to a pro-Ashe petition campaign initiated by Inside Tennis editor Bill Simons and supported by Bud Collins, Nick Bollettieri, and key members of the USTA staff and sectional presidents, among others. Seven months after the dedication ceremony in Richmond, USTA president Harry Marmion, with Jeanne standing by his side, held a news conference to announce the organization’s intention to honor Arthur’s legacy. “We are naming our new stadium in his honor because Arthur Ashe was the finest human being the sport has ever known,” Marmion declared. Though no one knew it at the time, Arthur’s name would eventually be linked to his cherished friend Billie Jean King, for whom the National Tennis Center was renamed in 2006.

  The new stadium—which had been in the works since March 1995, when the USTA began a major upgrade of the National Tennis Center—was not just any stadium. With more than 23,000 seats, it was the largest tennis venue in the world when it opened in late August 1997. Replacing the 18,000-seat Louis Armstrong Stadium—the primary venue for the U.S. Open since the center’s founding in 1978—Arthur Ashe Stadium was constructed at a cost of $254 million, part of which paid for a DecoTurf cushioned acrylic surface and all manner of state-of-the-art sound and broadcast technology. It had everything but a retractable roof, which would be added with great fanfare in 2016. Fittingly, the stadium was built on the former site of the Corona Ash Dumps, immortalized in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby as the “Valley of Ashes.” At the stadium’s opening ceremony, held just before the first round of the 1997 Open, USTA officials showered praise on tennis’s one-and-only Ashe.

  On the eve of the 2000 Open, the USTA honored him further with the placing of the Arthur Ashe Commemorative Garden on the approach to the stadium. Featuring Soul in Flight, a striking bronze statue depicting a nude figure reaching up to serve a tennis ball, the garden included a marble base inscribed with one of Arthur’s favorite sayings: “From what we get, we make a living; what we give, however, makes a life.” For a time, the anatomically correct figure designed by Eric Fischl sparked considerable controversy, but eventually the statue became an accepted fixture of the National Tennis Center.30

  Of course, the most significant element of Arthur’s legacy—more important than any stadium or statue—has been the continuing relevance of his ideals and life story to new generations of athletes, especially among young inner-city and African American tennis players. Through the efforts of the NJTL and other youth tennis programs that use Arthur as a model, hundreds of thousands of young boys and girls have been inspired to make more of their lives than they might otherwise have done. Many have aspired to follow his lead as a tennis champion, but the example that often mattered most was his capacity to combine athletic excellence with sportsmanship, education, and social responsibility.

  For a quarter century, the challenge to be like Arthur Ashe has reverberated through countless inner-city tennis workshops, the annual Arthur Ashe Kids Day activities at the U.S. Open, and the ESPN Arthur Ashe Courage Award presented at the nationally televised ESPY Awards show each summer. Given to individuals whose influence “transcends sports,” the Courage Award has honored recipients as varied as Muhammad Ali, Billie Jean King, Nelson Mandela, and Caitlyn Jenner. While some of the selections have been controversial, no one has ever challenged the appropriateness of naming the award for Ashe, who continues to be one of the most revered figures in sports history.31

  While the tennis world is still waiting for “the next Arthur Ashe” to rule inside the lines, the game and the nation at large have already benefited greatly from his acolytes’ achievements outside the lines. Many of those fortunate enough to experience his mentorship have felt a need to give back to society in some meaningful way, and the long list of philanthropic foundations established by his most successful protégés is unique in the world of sports.

  The ongoing activities of foundations initiated by black tennis stars such as Yannick Noah, Zina Garrison, Lori McNeil, Leslie Allen, Mal Washington, and James Blake testify not only to personal altruism, but also to the power of Ashe’s exemplary generosity. While Arthur also influenced many white players, the black commitment to extending his legacy has often carried a special force. Rooted in shared experience, this devotion represents a collective debt to a racial pioneer who labored long and hard not only to desegregate competitive tennis but also to open up economic and social opportunities for blacks in the broader community.32

  Race has not defined Ashe’s legacy, however, and during the past two decades whites as well as blacks have both followed and fostered his model, especially among children. The materials distributed by the Arthur Ashe Center for Learning, and the workshops and camps run by the NJTL, the SPF, the USTA, and a miscellany of Arthur Ashe urban tennis centers have reached a diverse population of youngsters who never had the opportunity to see him play or to witness his acts of moral courage and responsible citizenship.

  Perhaps the most prominent and influential Ashe surrogate is Katrina Adams, a Northwestern graduate once ranked as high as #67 in the world. A mainstay of the Harlem Junior Tennis and Education Program for more than a decade, she eventually found her true métier in the upper levels of national tennis administration. In 2015, she became the first African American to serve as president of the USTA, the most powerful position in American tennis. Passionately devoted to Ashe and his legacy, she has worked to expand the USTA’s connections to a diverse set of constituents and communities, a goal that has eluded the organization throughout most of its history.33

  There are, of course, many other Ashe surrogates whose names are all but unknown outside of tennis circles. Willis Thomas, Bobby Davis, Lenny Simpson, Sherry Snyder, Jean Desdunes, Kim Sands, Skip Hartman, D. A. Abram, Kevin Dowdell, Chris Beck, Traci Green, John Wilkerson, Rodney Harmon, Bryan Shelton, Mal Washington, Benny Sims, and Karin Buchholz—just to name a few—have devoted much of their lives to spreading the Ashe “gospel.” Like the man who inspired them, they have tried to persuade young and old, black and white, male and female, that athletic excellence should be viewed more as a means than an end in itself. Without the accompanying virtues of education and social conscience, they argue, success on the court—or any other playing field—can become an unhealthy diversion from the important things in life.

  A quarter century after his death, the proponents of Ashe’s legacy now find themselves in an era prone to crass commercialism, overblown media images, and winning at any cost. While the world of athletics in the twenty-first century still produces many moments of unscripted drama and joy, such unsavory topics as sexual assault, spousal abuse, cheating through steroid use or blood doping, and trash talking now punctuate sports coverage in newspapers across the world.

  Fortunately for its participants and fans, tennis, among all major sports, seems to have had the most success bucking this trend. The game’s best players—Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal, Andy Murray, and Novak Djokovic on the men’s side; and the Williams sisters, Serena and Venus, on the women’s—are all among tennis’s best ambassadors—ind
ividuals as impressive off the court as on. None is as politically or socially active as Ashe was during the second half of his career, and none has reached the level of a true public intellectual. Indeed, tennis has generally lagged behind the other major sports in the willingness of its players to take a public stand on controversial political issues. Nevertheless, virtually all of tennis’s top players—along with many of their less successful colleagues—share a commitment to some form of community engagement, usually through unpaid public appearances or donations to private foundations. This is also true of many retired players, especially those once close to Ashe—loyal friends and admirers such as Pasarell, Smith, Drysdale, Noah, King, and McEnroe. All but King are less political than Ashe, but in every other way they reflect his legacy.34

  The power of Ashe’s legacy is still palpable. This became evident in October 2016, when President Barack Obama discussed the subject on a televised forum held on the campus of North Carolina A&T University at Greensboro, the birthplace of the 1960 sit-in movement. Billed as “A Conversation with the President: Sports, Race and Achievement,” the forum featured questions from an audience of students and alumni primed with an aphorism from Maya Angelou: “We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated.”

  Twenty minutes into the show, Sam Hunt, a starting guard on the school’s basketball team, rose to ask a question about mixing activism and sports. “Many athletes have taken a stand on social issues of today,” he posited. “What do you think is the most effective way for professional and collegiate athletes to make a change?” In response, the president acknowledged “there are so many ways to make an impact” but went on to offer two competing models of activism—one associated with Muhammad Ali and the other with Arthur Ashe. Looking back at the era of his youth, he identified these two black men as the sport figures he admired above all others. They were, he explained, “the most influential” athletes affecting “how I thought about what it meant to be a man.”

  President Obama described Ali as a bold and brazen champion who terrified much of white America in the tumultuous 1960s before gaining acclaim as a national treasure later in the century. “Ali was all personality and loud and noisy and truth telling, and self-promoting and brash, just a bigger-than-life personality,” he told the audience. But eventually his principled stands on issues of importance won the respect of millions, many of whom came to see him as a “grandfatherly, lovable figure.”

  The President deftly captured the differences in style and tone that separated his two heroes. In sharp contrast to Ali, “Arthur was button downed, spoke proper English, and conjugated his verbs, and looking all like a professor or something, and was perceived—because he was in a white sport—as always being gentlemanly and humble in how he spoke.” Yet both the boxer and the tennis player were highly effective activists who pushed the nation down the same path to freedom and democracy. “Ali gave people enormous pride,” the president recalled, “and ultimately convinced not just black Americans but white Americans to question what their government was doing and how they were thinking about racial justice.” “Arthur, in his own way,” Obama insisted, was no less “transformational in getting people to recognize the dignity of African Americans despite whatever might be thrown at them.” Moreover, on the international level he worked tirelessly to liberate black South Africans from the scourge of apartheid, “helping to create an entire movement here in the United States.”

  Closing out the segment on activism, the president declared: “How you do it is less important than your commitment to use whatever platform you have to speak to the issues that matter.” With more time, he could have elaborated on the heroic milestones of both men’s lives. But even his brief remarks—at least in Ashe’s case—captured the essence of a life that echoed the wisdom of Angelou’s sage dictum. Arthur Ashe suffered many defeats, including a cruel and untimely death. Yet he was undefeated in the realms that mattered most—heart, soul, integrity, and character. In this important sense, there is no shadow to darken his legacy. What remains is the radiance of a good and great man whose inner light shines outward for all to see.35

  1 Arthur Ashe’s mother, Mattie Cordell Cunningham Ashe, c. 1946.

  2 Arthur (right) and Johnnie Ashe with Mrs. Olis Berry, their live-in housekeeper and nanny, c. 1952.

  3 Twelve-year-old Arthur Ashe Jr. poses with his trophies in front of his Sledd Street home, Brook Field Park, Richmond, Virginia,1955.

  4 Lynchburg campers breach the color bar at Forest Hills; Ashe (right) and Hubert Eaton shake hands with John Botts (far left) and Herbert Gibson, their doubles opponents at the Eastern Junior Tennis Championships, July 18, 1959.

  5 Ashe reminisces with his mentor, Dr. Robert W. Johnson Sr., c. 1966.

  6 Ashe with Richard Hudlin, his tennis coach at Charles Sumner High School, St. Louis, Missouri, 1961.

  7 Ashe, the first African American to play Davis Cup tennis for the United States, with his Davis Cup teammate Marty Riessen and Coach Pancho Gonzales, September 11, 1963.

  8 Ashe serves to Orlando Bracamonte of Venezuela during a Davis Cup match, Cherry Hills Country Club, Denver, Colorado, September 15, 1963.

  9 The UCLA Bruins, winners of the 1965 NCAA national tennis team championship. Left to right: Ian Crookenden, David Sanderlin, Coach J. D. Morgan, David Reed, and Ashe.

  10 Ashe stretches to hit a forehand during his Davis Cup match against Antonio Palafox of Mexico, Dallas, Texas, August 2, 1965.

  11 Ashe meets UCLA freshman and future Hall of Fame basketball star Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), September 1965.

  12 Standing on the steps of Richmond’s city hall, Mayor Morrill M. Crowe presents Arthur with a proclamation naming February 2, 1966, “Arthur Ashe Day” in Richmond.

  13 Ashe, his doubles partner, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and their opponents, Charlie Pasarell and Donald Dell, at an exhibition match in Washington, D.C., August 3, 1967.

  14 Ashe instructs young players at an inner-city tennis clinic, Washington, D.C., July 23, 1968.

  15 Ashe stands arm in arm with his father after winning the first U.S. Open men’s singles title at Forest Hills, New York, September 8, 1968.

  16 Charlie Pasarell and Ashe: Davis Cup teammates, best friends, and fishing buddies, Maroubra Beach, near Sydney, Australia, January 2, 1969.

  17 1968 Davis Cup champions at a White House luncheon with President Richard Nixon, February 11, 1969. From left to right: Ashe, Clark Graebner, Dennis Ralston, Nixon, Captain Donald Dell, Bob Lutz, and Stan Smith.

  18 Friends and rivals, c. 1969. From left to right: John Newcombe, Tom Okker, Ashe, and Rod Laver.

  19 Ashe, clad in a West African dashiki, en route to the Tasmanian Tennis Championships in Hobart, Australia, January 1970. Later in the month, he won the men’s singles title at the Australian Open in Sydney.

  20 Ashe appears before the United Nations General Assembly’s Special Committee on Apartheid to advocate the expulsion of South Africa from the International Lawn Tennis Federation and Davis Cup competition, April 14, 1970.

  21 Ashe and Bob Lutz with World Championship Tennis (WCT) founder Lamar Hunt (center), after both players signed lucrative five-year contracts with WCT, September 9, 1970.

  22 Ashe and Ilie Nastase pose with the U.S. Open men’s singles trophy, September 10, 1972. Nastase defeated Ashe in the final.

  23 Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) leaders discuss a proposed boycott of the upcoming Wimbledon championships, June 18, 1973. From left to right: Cliff Richey, Ashe, Niki Pilic, Stan Smith, and Jack Kramer.

  24 Ashe talks with young fans in the black township of Soweto, South Africa, November 23, 1973.

  25 A moment of rest for Ashe and a ball boy at the WCT Masters Tournament, Dallas, Texas, May 11, 1975.

  26 Ashe and Bjorn Borg poke fun at their celebrity status with dueling cameras, 1975.

  27 Ashe and Jimmy Connors just prior to the men’s singles final at Wimbledon, July 5, 1975.

  28
Ashe stretches for a backhand volley during the third set of his Wimbledon match against Connors.