| Interment Location | Visited | |
|---|---|---|
| East Highland Park, VA | April 28, 2024 |
Arthur Ashe compiled a hall of fame career as a tennis player, winning three Grand Slam singles titles and two more in doubles. Yet he never wanted to think of himself as an athlete, or to be remembered for winning the Wimbledon Championships. “[I]t’s not the end-all of everything,” he said in an interview conducted the year before his death. So I will note that Arthur Ashe, who is buried beside his mother just outside Richmond, Virginia, distinguished himself as a scholar, a family man, an activist, and a barrier-breaker in his abbreviated lifetime.
Ashe’s grave monument includes a bas-relief of his likeness and one of a book with the words “A Hard Road To Glory” across it. Ashe wrote a book with this title that was published shortly before his death. The publication explores the history of African American athletes between 1619 — the year enslaved Black people were first brought to North America — and 1918. For early African American athletes, wrote Ashe, “the competition was often the least imposing obstacle; there was also discrimination, vilification, incarceration and ultimate despair to overcome. Sadly, only a few of the historic sports greats were able to live out their post-athletic days in peace and prosperity. The book […] is designed to ensure that they are not forgotten.”
Though it was not what was most important to Ashe, his spectacular tennis résumé is included on his grave, above a bas-relief of crossed tennis rackets. Ashe was ranked the number one tennis player in the world in 1968 and 1975, the years he won the U.S. Open and Wimbledon, respectively. He also was victorious at the Australian Open in 1970 and the World Championship Tennis Finals in 1975. Among other achievements the monument lists are his ten years as a member of the U.S. Davis Cup Team. The first African American to make the U.S. Davis Cup squad, he helped his country win five championships between 1963 and 1978.
Hereditary heart disease caused Ashe to retire from tennis in April 1980 at age 36. The previous December, he had suffered a heart attack and undergone quadruple bypass surgery. Following a second, corrective surgery conducted in 1983, he received blood transfusions. It is from these procedures that Ashe is believed to have contracted acquired human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). At that point in the HIV/AIDS pandemic, it was not yet standard medical practice to test blood for the virus. Ashe was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988. His condition was kept private until April 1992, when a reporter for USA Today, having heard he was ill, “confronted me with rumors.” Ashe opted to get in front of the story and unveil his AIDS diagnosis in a press conference before the newspaper could print it. While he lamented that he felt forced to reveal his condition, he added, “I’m feeling very optimistic about getting on with my life in as normal a way as possible.” In his remaining ten months of life, Ashe gave interviews and speeches that advocated for greater awareness about facts pertaining to AIDS and decreasing the stigma surrounding those afflicted. He spoke at the United Nations on World AIDS Day, established a foundation to defeat AIDS, and pushed for governmental health care reforms.
Fast Facts
Born: July 10, 1943 in Richmond, Virginia
Spouse: Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe (m. 1977-1993)
International Tennis Hall of Fame: Class of 1985
Presidential Medal of Freedom: Posthumously Awarded by Bill Clinton (1993)
Died: February 6, 1993 in Manhattan, New York, New York
Cause of Death: AIDS-related Pneumonia
Age: 49
Interment: Woodland Cemetery, East Highland Park, Virginia
"I'm not emotionally very open, no I'm not. But I don't think it's a crime. Control is very important to me. You grow up Black in the American South in the late forties and the fifties, you have no control. White, segregationist laws tell you where to go to school, which bus you can ride on, where you can ride on the bus, which taxis to take, what you can say — your life is proscribed. And then in the sixties — what we call the American Black Social Revolution — then you had Black idealogues trying to tell me what to do. And so I'm...all the time, I am saying to myself, 'Hey, when do I get to decide what I want to do?' And so I've always been fiercely protective — with anyone — of my wanting to do and to control my life as I saw fit."
- Arthur Ashe
in a BBC interview conducted by Lynn Redgrave, broadcast July 1, 1992
Sources Consulted and Further Reading
Asmelash, Leah. “How tennis legend Arthur Ashe became one of the most vocal HIV/AIDS activists.” CNN. June 24, 2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/24/us/arthur-ashe-citizen-ashe-hiv-aids-activism-cec/index.html.
BBC Archive. “1992: ARTHUR ASHE Interview | Fighting Back | Classic Sports interview | BBC Archive.” YouTube video, 7:15. October 2, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2otHNQKVm8k.
Freeman, Mike. “ARTHUR ASHE ANNOUNCES HE HAS AIDS.” Washington Post. April 8, 1992. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/04/09/arthur-ashe-announces-he-has-aids/eeb305b9-e36e-4e7c-8fba-c7912a2d5368/.
International Tennis Hall of Fame. “Arthur Ashe.” Accessed May 9, 2024. https://www.tennisfame.com/hall-of-famers/inductees/arthur-ashe.
UCLA Social Sciences. “A Hard Road to Glory.” Accessed May 9, 2024. https://arthurashe.ucla.edu/a-hard-road-to-glory/.
