Arthur Ashe
CBC Books | | Posted: December 5, 2018 9:11 PM | Last Updated: December 13, 2018
Raymond Arsenault
Born in Virginia in 1943, by the age of eleven, Arthur Ashe was one of the state's most talented black tennis players. Jim Crow restrictions barred Ashe from competing with whites. Still, in 1960 he won the National Junior Indoor singles title, which led to a tennis scholarship at UCLA. He became the first African American to play for the US Davis Cup team in 1963, and two years later he won the NCAA singles championship. In 1968, he won both the US Amateur title and the first US Open title, rising to a number one national ranking. Turning professional in 1969, he soon became one of the world's most successful tennis stars, winning the Australian Open in 1970 and Wimbledon in 1975. After retiring in 1980, he served four years as the US Davis Cup captain and was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1985.
In this revelatory biography, Raymond Arsenault chronicles Ashe's rise to stardom on the court. But much of the book explores his off-court career as a human rights activist, philanthropist, broadcaster, writer, businessman, and celebrity. In the 1970s and 1980s, Ashe gained renown as an advocate for sportsmanship, education, racial equality, and the elimination of apartheid in South Africa. But from 1979 on, he was forced to deal with a serious heart condition that led to multiple surgeries and blood transfusions, one of which left him HIV-positive. In 1988, after completing a three-volume history of African-American athletes, he was diagnosed with AIDS, a condition he revealed only four years later. After devoting the last ten months of his life to AIDS activism, he died in February 1993 at the age of forty-nine, leaving an inspiring legacy of dignity, integrity, and active citizenship.
Based on prodigious research, including more than one hundred interviews, Raymond Arsenault's insightful and compelling biography puts Ashe in the context of both his time and the long struggle of African-American athletes seeking equal opportunity and respect. (From Simon & Schuster)
In this revelatory biography, Raymond Arsenault chronicles Ashe's rise to stardom on the court. But much of the book explores his off-court career as a human rights activist, philanthropist, broadcaster, writer, businessman, and celebrity. In the 1970s and 1980s, Ashe gained renown as an advocate for sportsmanship, education, racial equality, and the elimination of apartheid in South Africa. But from 1979 on, he was forced to deal with a serious heart condition that led to multiple surgeries and blood transfusions, one of which left him HIV-positive. In 1988, after completing a three-volume history of African-American athletes, he was diagnosed with AIDS, a condition he revealed only four years later. After devoting the last ten months of his life to AIDS activism, he died in February 1993 at the age of forty-nine, leaving an inspiring legacy of dignity, integrity, and active citizenship.
Based on prodigious research, including more than one hundred interviews, Raymond Arsenault's insightful and compelling biography puts Ashe in the context of both his time and the long struggle of African-American athletes seeking equal opportunity and respect. (From Simon & Schuster)
From the book
As the first black player in the long history of the nation's Davis Cup competition, Arthur attracted considerable attention in the national press, which was searching for positive stories to offset the disheartening headlines marking the rise of violent resistance against an expanding and increasingly insistent civil rights movement. In his January inaugural address, Alabama's new governor, George Wallace, pledged to defend 'segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever,' and in May, much of the nation was shocked by the arch-segregationist Bull Connor's use of attack dogs and fire hoses to intimidate nonviolent protestors, many of whom were adolescents or children, in the streets of Birmingham.
A month later, on June 11, Governor Wallace defiantly stood in the 'schoolhouse door' in a futile effort to prevent the desegregation of the University of Alabama, and the next day Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers was assassinated outside his house in Jackson by a white supremacist extremist.
Arthur's selection to the Davis Cup team was welcome news to Americans shaken by the racial turmoil and violence of recent events. (Team captain) Bob Kelleher had been hinting for several months that Arthur would eventually be put on the team, but when the selection became official the young UCLA star broke out into a broad smile that left no doubt how much this meant to him. His selection put him in the same category as Althea Gibson, who had played well in the Wightman Cup matches against Great Britain in 1957 and 1958.
From Arthur Ashe by Ray Arsenault ©2018. Published by Simon & Schuster.