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Arthur Ashe did many things in his life; he was a great tennis player, father, son, role model, and social activist. It is amazing to think that Arthur Ashe as a black man was able to achieve all he did coming from where he did, and that he was able to do it in a society dominated by white people. Born in Richmond, Virginia to a lower class black family, Arthur Ashe had to deal with many hardships at an early age. Despite the hardships he was able to succeed in the game of tennis, and won many major tournaments. Away from tennis, Arthur Ashe was an important activist against apartheid in Africa and he also had a voice in the United States. When he contracted the AIDS virus, he became an activist on the AIDS epidemic. After his death, Arthur Ashe was honored in his home state of Virginia like only confederate general Stonewall Jackson had been before. Arthur Ashe was born in Richmond, Virginia on July 10, 1943 to mother, Mattie Cunningham, and to father, Arthur Ashe Sr. He always had a strong relationship with his parents. His mother died in 1950, when he was only seven, of complications in pregnancy. It was very hard on him to live without her. “I eventually had no memory of what she was actually like, how her voice sounded, how her touch felt. I wanted desperately to know these things.” Although he does not remember much of her, Ashe’s mother exerted a very strong influence on him in the few years she was with him. “My last memory of her alive; I was finishing breakfast and she was sitting in the side of the doorway looking lovingly at me. I remember the last time I saw her, in a coffin at home, she was wearing her best dress, made of pink satin” (Ashe and Rampersad 3-5). Ashe’s father was the single greatest influence on his life. He was both a father and a mother to him from 1950 onwards. “I guess I have never misbehaved because I am afraid that if I did anything wrong, my father would come straight up from Virginia and find me wherever I happened to be, and kick my ass” (Ashe and Rampersad 4-6). Because Ashe was born into a lower class black family in a society tainted with prejudice and segregation, like any typical black adolescent, he had to deal with many hardships early in his life. As a boy, Ashe was very bright and innocent, and loved to read. He always had a hard time understanding segregation and racism when he was young. Ashe once asked a man on a bus to get up and give his mother a seat. The man replied by saying: “if you have the nerve to ask me that, I will get up and give her a seat”. (Grimsley 26) When Ashe was seven he began playing tennis, the game that would shape the rest of his life. He showed surprising flair for the game as soon as he picked up a racquet. One day, Ashe was playing tennis with his father at a public court. Dr. Robert Walter Johnson, the man who taught Althea Gibson, the first black tennis player to win a major tournament, saw Ashe playing and offered to teach him the finer points of the game of tennis. Ashe continued to play with Dr. Robert Walter Johnson over the years. Dr. Johnson taught Ashe to have good court etiquette, and to repress his anger on the tennis court. This trait was a characteristic that stuck with Ashe throughout his extensive career, and it was a trait that he became very popular for. Once Ashe reached his teen years he began to play in some junior tournaments and to make a name for himself. He developed a very tough serve and volley style of play that made him virtually unbeatable on grass. He was highly regarded on the ABATA (All Black American Tennis Association). He became the first black person to win the USLTA (United States Lawn Tennis Association) interscholastic tournament. He was featured in Sports Illustrated’s, Faces In The Crowd, and he also won several amateur and junior events. Despite his success as a tennis player, he was constantly being banned from tournaments because he was black. When he reached his senior year in school, he moved to St. Louis, Missouri, which was a place where he hoped he could escape the racial injustices of Richmond, Virginia, and play against whites and blacks all year round. (Sports Century) Ashe graduated high school with the highest grades in his class, and he received an athletic scholarship to UCLA to play tennis. He was able to excel and thrive at UCLA both academically and athletically, although racism and prejudice always seemed to find a way to bring him down. At one point, he said to one of his friends on his tennis team that he “felt like a piece of coal in a snow bank” at most of the clubs he played at. One year, the tennis team received an invitation to play at the Balboa Club. The invitation extended to every player except Arthur. The coach told Ashe that if he wanted to fight it, he would support Ashe. But Arthur felt that it just was not his time, and he chose not to make too much noise on the issue. He found a way to not let prejudice hold him down, and he really stood out in his four years at UCLA. In 1963 he was named to the U.S. Davis cup team, and became the first black man to do so. Later the same year he competed in Wimbledon, a grand slam tournament, for the first time. In 1965 his senior year at UCLA he led his tennis team to win the NCAA men’s singles title.
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