Arthur Ashe was the first African American to win the men’s singles titles at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, and the first African American man to be ranked No. 1 in the world.
Who Was Arthur Ashe?
Arthur Ashe became the first (and remains the only) African American male tennis player to win the U.S. Open and Wimbledon singles titles. He was also the first African American man to earn the No. 1 ranking in the world and the first to earn induction into the Tennis Hall of Fame. Always an activist, when Ashe learned that he had contracted AIDS via a blood transfusion, he turned his efforts to raising awareness about the disease, before finally succumbing to it on February 6, 1993.
Early Life
Arthur Robert Ashe Jr. was born on July 10, 1943, in Richmond, Virginia. The older of Arthur Ashe Sr. and Mattie Cunningham’s two sons, Arthur Ashe Jr. blended finesse and power to forge a groundbreaking tennis game.
Ashe’s childhood was marked by hardship and opportunity. Under his mother’s direction, Ashe was reading by the age of four. But his life was turned upside down two years later, when Mattie passed away.
Ashe’s father, fearful of seeing his boys fall into trouble without their mother’s discipline, began running a tighter ship at home. Ashe and his younger brother, Johnnie, went to church every Sunday, and after school they were required to come straight home, with Arthur Sr. closely watching the time: “My father … kept me home, out of trouble. I had exactly 12 minutes to get home from school, and I kept to that rule through high school.”
