Ashe, Arthur Robert, Jr.

▪ 1994

      U.S. tennis player and social activist (b. July 10, 1943, Richmond, Va.—d. Feb. 6, 1993, New York, N.Y.), captured centre court when he won the men's singles title at the debut of the U.S. Open championship in 1968, becoming the first African-American man to win a Grand Slam event, one of the four major tournaments of the sport. He followed this with men's singles titles at the Australian Open in 1970 and at the All-England (Wimbledon) championship in 1975. He was a poised and eloquent spokesman for effecting social change and publicly championed his convictions with support for such causes as the antiapartheid movement in South Africa, the plight of U.S. inner-city children and Haitian refugees, and the education of people about AIDS, the disease that claimed his life. Ashe honed his tennis skills while attending the University of California at Los Angeles, which he led to the National Collegiate Athletic Association tennis championship. His powerful serves, stunning backhand, and hard-hit, topspin ground strokes helped bedevil his opponents, most notably the heavily favoured Jimmy Connors, whom Ashe, slender and tall (70.2 kg [155 lb], 1.83 m [6 ft]) yet nonetheless powerful, calmly defeated in the 1975 Wimbledon final. In 1963 Ashe had become the first black to be named to a U.S. Davis Cup team, and he compiled a 27-5 singles record from 1963 to 1978. When he served as a nonplaying captain of the Davis Cup team (1981-85), the U.S. won championships in 1981 and 1982. Though his Grand Slam and numerous professional victories (he held 33 tournament titles) and product endorsements made Ashe tennis's first black millionaire, his wealth did not impede his social activism. After three attempts Ashe was finally granted a visa to South Africa in 1973, and he became the first black to reach the final of the South African Open. In 1979, after having ranked among the top 10 players for 15 years, Ashe was stricken with the first of three heart attacks. He underwent quadruple bypass surgery in 1979 and double bypass surgery in 1983. Though his third attack did not require surgery, Ashe had announced his retirement as a player in 1980. It was reportedly through a transfusion during his second surgery that he contracted AIDS. In 1985 Ashe was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. He published an autobiography, Off the Court (1981), and the three-volume A Hard Road to Glory: A History of the African-American Athlete (1988). That year he suffered a severe bacterial infection in his head, and blood work revealed that he had AIDS. Ashe announced his condition to the public in April 1992 after he learned that a newspaper was preparing a scoop. Part of his legacy was the organization of the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS.

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