The event will commemorate Ashe’s trailblazing efforts in 1963 and 1973.
Decades ago, Arthur Ashe broke barriers, becoming the first Black man to be welcomed by the American tennis establishment while becoming a respected player, champion, and model global citizen. Navigating the touring tennis professional landscape during a time known as the African American (Black) Social Revolution, Ashe was thrust into the spotlight throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and Ashe’s influence on the sport and society continues to be a distinguishing feature of his legacy.
Photo courtesy of the Arthur Ashe Legacy at the University of California, Los Angeles
Born on July 10, 1943, in Richmond, Virginia, Ashe was a 19-year-old UCLA student when he was named to the United States Davis Cup Team in 1963 and (with that) gained international attention. Frank Litsky writing in The New York Times at the time, said, “His understanding of the game and agility leave little to be desired.”
Arguably, the biggest news from 1963 was the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy. However, for African Americans, 1963 served as a pivotal year for the modern Civil Rights Movement, often being recalled as the year of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The year was punctuated by moments of political theater, including the Woolworth’s Sit-In, the Free Southern Theater campaign, and the Chicago School Boycott, alongside acts of violence, including the Ku Klux Klan bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, the assassination of Medgar Evers, and pervasive police brutality in Mississippi’s Winona Jail.
Some ten years later, Ashe achieved another milestone, gaining entry into the apartheid-ruled country of South Africa, and became the first Black man to play in South Africa’s national tennis tournament. According to one black figure in South Africa, Ashe “was an inspiration—and a challenge,” mainly because sport is a “civic religion” in South Africa. It isn’t hyperbole to assert that–as did South African tennis professional Cliff Drysdale–that Ashe’s trip was instrumental in beginning the two-decade process of dismantling apartheid.
Arthur Ashe visited Soweto in 1973. “His condemnation of apartheid made him one of us,” a young tennis player later wrote (photo, Alf Kumalo, The New York Times)
Speaking in Black Champions (1986), Ashe said, “Having done so much travel, as a result of chasing the tennis ball all over the world, you also see that some of the same problems that beset ordinary people at home—in America, in Virginia, in Richmond—beset people all over the world. So, in that sense, problems are not local or provincial; they’re international. They’re the same concerns that everybody else has. But, I do feel like an internationalist because the barriers that divide people are artificial. Whether religious, racial, cultural, or linguistic, they’re all artificial.”
To commemorate those two momentous occasions, Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. members are planning a fundraising event, ALL L🎾VE. Ashe, a member of the UCLA chapter as an undergraduate student, is now forever affiliated with “Chapter Invisible.”
Contact the ALL L🎾VE Planning Committee at allloveinitiatives@gmail.com for details on the fundraising event, which will be held in New York City on August 25, 2023.
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Directors Rex Miller and Sam Pollard explore the enduring legacy of tennis legend and humanitarian Arthur Ashe in Citizen Ashe (2021), an elegant and poignant feature documentary produced by Magnolia Pictures & Magnet Releasing.
