by Arthur Ashe
FOR ALL THE strength of my opposition to apartheid, I deplored—and continue to deplore—all the violence that has taken place in South Africa, including not only the violence of the police, the African National Congress, and the Inkatha or Zulu group but also the intellectual violence that would allow, for example, the Dutch Reformed Church there to defend apartheid. Still, I am with Thoreau, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr., in their belief that violence achieves nothing but the destruction of the individual soul and the corruption of the state.
With mounting excitement, I read the news, as the 1980s drew to a close, that the famous winds of change in Africa, announced by Britain’s prime minister Harold Macmillan more than a generation before, finally seemed to be blowing democracy into South Africa. Change was coming imperfectly, through the concessions and maneuverings of South Africa’s prime minister F. W. de Klerk in response to the pressures exerted on apartheid; but it was coming. I treasured the many letters and telephone calls that came to me from my friends there, because they were often far more enlightening than the news reports. Although I refuse to be cynical or pessimistic about the possibilities of social change, I also had to resist making too much of what those same winds had actually brought thus far to South Africa. Thus, in September 1989, at the United Nations Plaza Hotel in New York, I made a plea to the board of the Association of Tennis Professionals, which was on the verge of approving two tournaments in Johannesburg for the coming year, not to do so. Passionately at times, I stressed that the major black South African leader, Nelson Mandela, wanted the sports boycott maintained, that the organizers of the Olympic Games were skeptical about South African promises, and that other sporting bodies were insisting on more telling signs of the demise of apartheid. To my intense satisfaction, the ATP board decided not to include the tournaments.
Accompanying me on that mission, at my invitation, was Mark Mathabane. Fifteen years before, as a boy of fourteen or so, he had followed me around Ellis Park in Johannesburg and stunned me with his remark that I had been “the first truly free black man” he had ever seen. Now he himself was free (in so far as any of us is ever free), and the author of an acclaimed book, Kaffir Boy, about growing up in South Africa, as well as other books.
In Kaffir Boy, Mark wrote about what my example and my first visit to South Africa had meant to him. “The more I read about the world of tennis,” he recalled, “and Arthur Ashe’s role in it, the more I began to dream of its possibilities. What if I too were someday to attain the same fame and fortune as Arthur Ashe? Would whites respect me as they did him? Would I be as free as he? The dreams were tantalizing, but I knew they were only dreams. Nevertheless, I kept dreaming; after all, what harm could that do me?” Finally, at Ellis Park, he saw me play. “How could a black man play such excellent tennis,” he wrote about my victory over a white opponent, “move about the court with such self-confidence, trash a white man and be cheered by white people?” Eventually with the help of Stan Smith and others, Mathabane came to the U.S. to attend college and find expression for his literary talents that easily might have been destroyed in South Africa.
I THANK GOD that I lived long enough to see Nelson Mandela come to the United States and be welcomed with a ticker tape parade through the canyons of Wall Street in New York. I was seldom more proud of America and my fellow Americans than when I saw the way we welcomed him as a hero. The success of the parade was a sure and gratifying sign that many people, black and white, rich and poor, recognize his sacrifice and applaud the almost superhuman way he preserved his dignity, his humor, and his unquenchable moral sense through the nearly three decades of his imprisonment.
To have spent twenty-seven years in jail for political reasons, to have been deprived of the whole mighty center of one’s life, and then to emerge apparently without a trace of bitterness, alert and ready to lead one’s country forward, may be the most extraordinary individual human achievement that I have witnessed in my lifetime. I marvel that he could come out of jail free of bitterness and yet uncompromising in his basic political beliefs; I marvel at his ability to combine an impeccable character, to which virtually everyone attests, with the political wisdom of a Solomon. In jail, I am told, his white guards came to have such respect for him that in some ways he was their warden and they the prisoners, more prisoners of apartheid.
He became one of my heroes long before I met him, so it was a special thrill when we first came together. When the ABC-TV journalist Ted Koppel held an internationally televised “town hall” meeting with Mandela at City College in New York—a sensational appearance by the South African—I sat with other guests in a special section near the stage. At the end of the program, I approached David Dinkins, the mayor of the city and an old friend, and asked him to introduce me to Mandela. I knew that Nelson loved sports, but I had no idea whether he would know who I was on sight.
I watched David go over to Mandela and whisper in his ear. I saw Nelson’s head raise abruptly, and he broke into a beautiful smile.
“Arthur is here?” he asked, with obvious surprise and delight.
“He’s right here,” David said, turning to me.
“Oh my brother,” Nelson said, looking straight at me. “Come here!”
He threw his arms around me and held me for a moment in a most affectionate embrace. He told me that in prison, he had read my three-volume work A Hard Road to Glory, about black American athletes. A mutual friend, Yusuf Surtee, a prominent Indian merchant in Johannesburg and a financial supporter of the African National Congress party, had given him the books as a present. I didn’t want to delay Mandela’s exit from the hall, so I moved him along up the aisle and into the lobby, talking with him all the way. I could scarcely believe he was there at my side, I was so thrilled.
Ironically, I had first heard of Mandela in the 1960s, from a white man, a tennis professional. In fact, he was a South African, Ray Moore, with whom I used to discuss the philosophy and ways of apartheid all the time.
“I think there is one man in South Africa capable of leading my country out of this mess,” Moore told me one day.
“Is he white?” I asked Moore.
“No, he’s not,” Moore replied. “He is a black man, a lawyer imprisoned on Robben Island, in the Atlantic. His name is Nelson Mandela.”
“Mandela? I’ve never heard of him.”
“Well, you will,” Moore insisted. “In fact, I think he will become president of South Africa one day.”
After that, I looked for news of this black man who apparently possessed the personal magnetism, intellectual ability, and moral character that Moore described. The idea that a black man could be president of South Africa in the foreseeable future also seemed farfetched. But since Moore, while quite liberal by South African standards, was himself not a political radical, his assessment of Mandela was really quite intriguing.
I thank God that I lived long enough for one last visit to South Africa, in November 1991, which I made in a delegation of African Americans invited by Mandela himself. To go to South Africa, I was compelled to lie on my application for a visa and declare that I did not have an infectious disease. I try never to lie, but I lied. I had to see South Africa at least one more time, to talk directly to friends there and see some of the changes for myself.
In many ways, Johannesburg, where we spent three days, had not changed much since 1977; but in at least two ways it was drastically different. The apartheid signs—WHITES ONLY, NONWHITES ONLY—were gone, except in a few instances. And, more astonishing, the black people seemed transformed. The old subservience and obsequiousness had vanished, and the same people now seemed self-assured and even fearless. They were ready for the future.
We saw a great deal of Mandela on this visit. I never entered his home but saw where he lived—a walled compound, replete with armed guards, built by the African National Congress with security, uppermost in mind. I had several stirring conversations with him, which formed the highlight of my visit. As I had done once in the pa
st, I stayed at the home of a wealthy, liberal Jewish merchant—not the same merchant, but another friend of Yusuf Surtee.
I visited the Colored poet Don Mattera, the author of the poem smuggled to me at the airport at the end of one of my visits in the 1970s. Mattera had fallen into official disfavor and, overnight, had become a nonperson, forbidden to publish his work, travel abroad, speak in public, and attend certain functions. Now he was free again. I had a private lunch with a group of whites, who peppered me with questions about President Bush’s attitude to the changes that were beginning to sweep their country. All of us were absolutely certain that, in the wake of his military triumphs in Kuwait and Iraq during the 1991 Gulf war, Bush’s reelection was assured.
Not least of all because our visit would have been unthinkable even two years before, it was a glorious occasion for most of us Americans on the trip, whose aim was to see justice for blacks in South Africa, because the prize seemed almost within their grasp. On the airplane flying back to the United States via London, we were almost euphoric about the unexpected improvements that had come to pass in so short a time in South Africa. The end of apartheid seemed a miracle at hand. The musician and producer Quincy Jones, the executive Adam Clayton Powell III, Randall Robinson, the radio station owner Bert Lee, Earl Graves of Black Enterprise magazine, and many of the rest of us talked enthusiastically about the prospect of raising money, lots of money, to boost the funding of TransAfrica. Hollywood was a major source of support, and Quincy promised to throw a gala party at his home in Los Angeles to attract prospective donors.
Then someone—Randall, I think—brought us back to reality.
“We are getting awfully excited,” he said quietly, “and yet I keep thinking about one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“For all the changes we have seen, Nelson Mandela still cannot vote in his own country.”
That simple fact made us sober. We became quiet and reflective as our airplane flew on through the darkness toward London.
THE NEXT TIME I saw Mandela, I had made my announcement to the world about having AIDS. A few months later, at his invitation, I visited him in his hotel suite in New York City, which he was visiting quietly. Our main topic now was AIDS, both as it affected me personally and as an international scourge. I was pleased to see that he knew a great deal about the subject and was free of the prejudices that prevent many political leaders from confronting it. He stressed to me how poor the medical facilities are for blacks in South Africa, and how much help his country needs to cope effectively with its health problems. I told him about my foundation to fight AIDS and the extent to which I hoped it would contribute to the fight in Africa.
Once again, I was struck by Mandela’s courage and wisdom. He faces as difficult a road as any political leader in the world, but I have every confidence in him. To me, he stands with Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia and few other living men and women as my ideal of the political leader today. I hope Bill Clinton does half as well. Compared to Mandela’s sacrifice, my own life, like that of most other people who talk about the need for sacrifice and change, has been one almost of self-indulgence. When I think of him, my own political efforts seem puny.
I am sure I will never know with full understanding why I held back from the fray when I did and why I plunged into the fray, in my own fashion, when I did. All I know is that I have tried at all times to do what I thought was right and appropriate, and that sometimes the effort to do right, and above all not to do wrong, led me into inaction. My only true regret, however, is that now that I see the world more clearly than ever, as I believe I do, I don’t seem to have the time left to try to translate my vision into action as I would like.
All of us, as I have said, can learn from the example of Mandela. For African Americans, however, he may have a greater lesson. On the most basic level, that lesson is about the need to resist oppression. But his lesson is also something more complicated and challenging. Mandela’s example leads us to ask certain questions, on which I believe our future may depend. Can we African Americans emerge from the prison house of our history with true dignity, as he did—that is, with a determination to remain free but also without bitterness or any other compromise in our moral principles? Can we prevent our outrage at the wrongs we have suffered in America from destroying our spirit, from depriving us of the high moral ground we once held? Can we avoid the temptation to sink utterly into despair, cynicism, and violence, and thus become abject prisoners of our past?
When I was a youngster growing up in Richmond, I could answer these questions boldly and in the affirmative, as our parents and teachers and elders had taught us we must do. Now I grope for a response, which is at least part of the reason I see race as a burden, a grave burden, one that outweighs all others in my life.
Chapter Five
The Burden of Race
I HAD SPENT more than an hour talking in my office at home with a reporter for People magazine. Her editor had sent her to do a story about me and how I was coping with AIDS. The reporter’s questions had been probing and yet respectful of my right to privacy. Now, our interview over, I was escorting her to the door. As she slipped on her coat, she fell silent. I could see that she was groping for the right words to express her sympathy for me before she left.
“Mr. Ashe, I guess this must be the heaviest burden you have ever had to bear, isn’t it?” she asked finally.
I thought for a moment, but only a moment. “No, it isn’t. It’s a burden, all right. But AIDS isn’t the heaviest burden I have had to bear.”
“Is there something worse? Your heart attack?”
I didn’t want to detain her, but I let the door close with both of us still inside. “You’re not going to believe this,” I said to her, “but being black is the greatest burden I’ve had to bear.”
“You can’t mean that.”
“No question about it. Race has always been my biggest burden. Having to live as a minority in America. Even now it continues to feel like an extra weight tied around me.”
I can still recall the surprise and perhaps even the hurt on her face. I may even have surprised myself, because I simply had never thought of comparing the two conditions be fore. However, I stand by my remark. Race is for me a more onerous burden than AIDS. My disease is the result of biological factors over which we, thus far, have had no control. Racism, however, is entirely made by people, and therefore it hurts and inconveniences infinitely more.
Since our interview (skillfully presented as a first-person account by me) appeared in People in June 1992, many people have commented on my remark. A radio station in Chicago aimed primarily at blacks conducted a lively debate on its merits on the air. Most African Americans have little trouble understanding and accepting my statement, but other people have been baffled by it. Even Donald Dell, my close friend of more than thirty years, was puzzled. In fact, he was so troubled that he telephoned me in the middle of the night from Hamburg, Germany, to ask if I had been misquoted. No, I told him, I had been quoted correctly. Some people have asked me flatly, what could you, Arthur Ashe, possibly have to complain about? Do you want more money or fame than you already have? Isn’t AIDS inevitably fatal? What can be worse than death?
The novelist Henry James suggested somewhere that it is a complex fate being an American. I think it is a far more complex fate being an African American. I also sometimes think that this indeed may be one of those fates that are worse than death.
I do not want to be misunderstood. I do not mean to appear fatalistic, self-pitying, cynical, or maudlin. Proud to be an American, I am also proud to be an African American. I delight in the accomplishments of fellow citizens of my color. When one considers the odds against which we have labored, we have achieved much. I believe in life and hope and love, and I turn my back on death until I must face my end in all its finality. I am an optimist, not a pessimist. Still, a pall of sadness hangs over my life and the lives of almost all African Americans because of what we as a p
eople have experienced historically in America, and what we as individuals experience each and every day. Whether one is a welfare recipient trapped in some blighted “housing project” in the inner city or a former Wimbledon champion who is easily recognized on the streets and whose home is a luxurious apartment in one of the wealthiest districts of Manhattan, the sadness is still there.
In some respects, I am a prisoner of the past. A long time ago, I made peace with the state of Virginia and the South. While I, like other blacks, was once barred from free association with whites, I returned time and time again, under the new rule of desegregation, to work with whites in my hometown and across the South. But segregation had achieved by that time what it was intended to achieve: It left me a marked man, forever aware of a shadow of contempt that lays across my identity and my sense of self-esteem. Subtly the shadow falls on my reputation, the way I know I am perceived; the mere memory of it darkens my most sunny days. I believe that the same is true for almost every African American of the slightest sensitivity and intelligence. Again, I don’t want to overstate the case. I think of myself, and others think of me, as supremely self-confident. I know objectively that it is almost impossible for someone to be as successful as I have been as an athlete and to lack self-assurance. Still, I also know that the shadow is always there; only death will free me, and blacks like me, from its pall.
