Arthur Ashe

On April 8, 1992, Arthur Ashe announced that he has AIDS, acquired from a blood transfusion during heart surgery.

Arthur Ashe was born July 10, 1943 in Richmond, Virginia. Arthur began learning tennis from an early age, in part because his father took a post at Brook Field in 1947. The position came with a house that was located in the middle of the blacks-only playground at Brook Field, which was an 18-acre park that included tennis courts.

In 1950, a few months before Arthur's 7th birthday, his mother died of complications from surgery. That same year, Arthur met Ronald Charity, one of the best black tennis players in the nation and a part-time tennis coach.  Charity later introduced him to Walter Johnson, who would become his lifelong coach and mentor. Dr. Johnson was also the coach of the only African-American competing in world tennis at that time, Althea Gibson.

In 1958 Ashe became the first African-American to play in the Maryland boys' championships. This was also his first integrated tennis competition. During the summer Arthur could travel and participate in competitive tournaments around the country; during the school year his competition was much more limited because he was limited to black opponents from Richmond and there were only outdoor tennis courts for blacks.

Ashe was featured in the December 12, 1960 issue of Sports Illustrated as a Face in the Crowd.  After graduating first in his high school class, Arthur went to UCLA, which had one of the best college tennis programs. That year he was also named to the U.S. Davis Cup team as its first African-American player.

After college, Ashe joined the Army and was stationed at West Point.  While in the Army, Arthur continued to play tennis and in 1968, he won the first U.S. Open.  He is the only African-American man to ever win the title.

In 1969 Arthur co-founded the National Junior Tennis League. The program was designed to expose children to tennis who might not otherwise have opportunities to play while fostering a sense of discipline and attention to academics. This was the first of many programs with which Arthur would become involved, many of them focusing on youths, minorities, education and tennis.

Arthur first applied for a visa to travel to South Africa and compete in the South African Open in 1969.  He was denied a South African visa despite his number 1 U.S. ranking due to Apartheid. In protest he used this example of discrimination to campaign for the expulsion of the nation from the International Lawn Tennis Federation. This was the beginning of his activism against Apartheid, which would become a central issue to him for the next two decades.

In 1979 Arthur suffered a heart attack while holding a tennis clinic in New York. He was hospitalized for ten days afterwards and later that year underwent quadruple-bypass surgery. He continued to suffer chest pains and in 1980 decided to retire from tennis with a career record of 818 wins, 260 losses and 51 titles.

In 1983 Arthur went through a second bypass surgery. After the operation, in order to accelerate his recovery, he received a blood transfusion, which resulted in him contracting HIV. Also in 1983, along with Harry Belafonte, he founded Artists and Athletes Against Apartheid, which worked toward raising awareness of Apartheid policies and lobbying for sanctions and embargoes against the South African government. Two years later he was arrested outside the South African embassy in Washington during an anti-apartheid protest.

In 1992 the newspaper USA Today contacted him about reports of his illness, which had been kept private until that point although it is believed that other news organizations new about his illness but decided not to report on it. Arthur decided to preempt the paper and go public on his own terms holding a press conference with his wife on April 8, 1992 to announce that he had contracted AIDS.

Two months before his death he founded the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health, to help address issues of inadequate health care delivery to urban minority populations. He also dedicated time in his last few months to writing "Days of Grace," his memoir that he finished only days before his death.

On February 6, 1993 Arthur Ashe died of AIDS-related pneumonia in New York at the age of 49. His body was laid in state at the Governor's Mansion in his hometown of Richmond, VA. He was the first person to lie in state at the mansion since the Confederate general Stonewall Jackson in 1863. More than 5,000 people lined up to walk past the casket. His funeral was attended by nearly 6,000 people.

In 1997, the main court at the US Open in Flushing, NY was named for Arthur Ashe. The US Open also includes an Arthur Ashe Day which focuses on kids by having celebrities and popular athletes compete and young musicians perform.



Arthur Ashe
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