Arthur Ashe

by Raymond Arsenault

  2 DG, 262–65; NYT, September 5, 10, 1992; “Ex-Tennis Star Ashe Arrested in Protest of Haitian Policy,” USA Today, September 10, 1992; Gary Lee and Molly Sinclair, “Refugee Policy Protested,” WP, September 10, 1992; Washington Times, September 10, 1992; Robinson int. See the clippings and correspondence in folder 8, box 1, AAP.

  CHAPTER 1: UNDER THE DOMINION

  1 OTC, 19; AA, 13; Hall, Arthur Ashe, 7–8; PIM, 27; LG, 62; and Marvin Martin, Arthur Ashe: Of Tennis and the Human Spirit (New York: Franklin Watts, 1999), 13. On the history of Jim Crow segregation, see C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (Commemorative Edition) (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); and Jane Dailey, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, and Bryant Simon, eds., Jumpin’ Jim Crow: Southern Politics from Civil War to Civil Rights (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

  2 On the distinctive history and mythology of Virginia, see David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 207–418; Carl Bridenbaugh, Myths and Realities: Societies of the Colonial South (New York: Atheneum, 1972); Wilbur J. Cash, The Mind of the South (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941); Virginius Dabney, Virginia: The New Dominion (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971); Virginius Dabney, Virginius Dabney’s Virginia: Writings on the Old Dominion (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1986); Virginia Moore, Virginia Is a State of Mind (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1942); Jean Gottman, Virginia at Mid-Century (New York: Henry Holt, 1955); Jean Gottman, Virginia in Our Century (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1969); Parke Rouse Jr., We Happy WASPS: Virginia in the Days of Jim Crow and Harry Byrd (Richmond: R. Dietz Press, 1996); and Marshall Fishwick, Virginia: A New Look at the Old Dominion (New York: HarperCollins, 1959). On Richmond, see Virginius Dabney, Richmond: The Story of a City (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976); Maurice Duke and David P. Jerdas, eds., A Richmond Reader, 1733–1983 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983); Francis E. Lutz, Richmond in World War II (Richmond: R. Dietz Press, 1951); John A. Cutchins, Memoir of Old Richmond (Vernon, VA: McClure Press, 1973); Emily J. and John S. Salmon, Remembering Richmond (Nashville: Turner Publishing, 2010); Benjamin Campbell, Richmond’s Unhealed History (Richmond: Brandylane, 2011); Walter S. Griggs Jr., Hidden History of Richmond (Mount Pleasant, SC: History Press, 2012); Walter S. Griggs Jr., World War II Richmond, Military (Mount Pleasant, SC: History Press, 2013); and Amy Waters Yarsinske, Richmond Through the 20th Century (Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia, 2016). On the historical and cultural significance of Monument Avenue, see Marie Tyler McGraw, “Southern Comfort Levels: Race, Heritage Tourism, and the Civil War in Richmond,” in James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, eds., Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory (New York: New Press, 2006), 151–67; Robert Hodder, “Redefining a Southern City’s Heritage: Historic Preservation Planning, Public Art, and Race in Richmond, Virginia,” Journal of Urban Affairs 21 (1999): 437–53; Matthew Mace Barbee, “Race, Memory, and Communal Belonging in Narrative and Art: Richmond, Virginia’s Monument Avenue, 1948–1996” (PhD thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2007); and Matthew Mace Barbee, Race and Masculinity in Southern Memory: History of Richmond, Virginia’s Monument Avenue (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). For a discerning fictional treatment of current-day Richmond’s Confederate mystique, see Lee Irby, Unreliable (New York: Doubleday, 2017).

  3 OTC, 22 (third q), 23 (first and fourth qs), 27 (second q); AA, 17–18.

  4 OTC, 15–16 (qs); LG, 12–13; Martin, Arthur Ashe, 13.

  5 OTC, 16 (qs); LG, 11; Martin, Arthur Ashe, 13.

  6 AA, 109–10 (first q); OTC, 16, 17 (second q), 18; “The Name and Family of Ash(e),” fourteen-page typescript prepared by Roots Research Bureau LTD (New York, 1984), in folder 1, box 1, AAP; LG, 11–12; Hall, Arthur Ashe, 10–11; Martin, Arthur Ashe, 13–14; Richard Steins, Arthur Ashe: A Biography (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2005), 4.

  7 LG, 61–62; OTC, 17–18; Martin, Arthur Ashe, 14; Christopher Silver and John V. Moeser, Separate City: Black Communities in the Urban South, 1940–1968 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995), 1–14, 24–30, 42–48. See also J. Douglas Smith, Managing White Supremacy: Race, Politics, and Citizenship in Jim Crow Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); and Michael P. Claibourn, “Blacks in Virginia: Demographic Trends in Historical Context,” Numbers Count: Analysis of Virginia Population (Demographics of Workforce Group, Weldon Cooper Center, University of Virginia) (April 2012): 1–16.

  8 LG, 62 (first q); OTC, 18 (second and third qs).

  9 Griggs, World War II Richmond, Military; Rick Atkinson, Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–44 (New York: Henry Holt, 2007); OTC, 19, 21; LG, 62–66. On the Double V campaign popular among African Americans during World War II, see Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014).

  10 OTC, 19; Silver and Moeser, Separate City, 25–30, 42–47; LG, 62; Thompson int. On Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, see Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (New York: William Morrow, 1990); and Meghan Cunningham, Bill Bojangles Robinson (New York: Cavendish Square, 2016).

  11 LG, 64 (q); Raymond Pierre Hylton, Virginia Union University (Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia, 2014); Reginald Green and Thompson ints.

  12 OTC, 19, 28; LG, 64–65 (qs); AA, 12–13, 16; Einwick int.

  13 OTC, 17–18 (qs); AA, 110; Hall, Arthur Ashe, 10–11; Martin, Arthur Ashe, 17; AATC, 58.

  14 OTC, 24 (q); AATC, 35; Chewning and Einwick ints.

  15 OTC, 34–35 (q); LG, 35–36; AATC, 16, 25–35.

  16 OTC, 35 (q); Martin, Arthur Ashe, 16; AATC, 26; Johnnie Ashe and Loretta Ashe Harris ints; Johnnie Ashe int, SSAA.

  17 OTC, 24–26; AA, 17 (second q)–18 (first q); Martin, Arthur Ashe, 16–17; Johnnie Ashe int, SSAA.

  18 LG, 62–66; OTC, 19–20 (qs); AA, 16; DG, 3–4, 48; Johnnie Ashe int, SSAA.

  19 OTC, 20 (q); AATC, 13, 15.

  20 OTC, 21 (q).

  21 DG, 48 (first q), 50 (second q).

  22 OTC, 22 (q), 24–25; AA, 16; AATC, 17–22; Martin, Arthur Ashe, 16. Olis W. Berry was born in Brunswick County, Virginia, in 1879, and died in Richmond in 1971. See Social Security Death Index, available on archives.com.

  23 DG, 49–50 (first q); LG, 65–66; OTC, 14, 22, 25–26 (second q), 34, 36, 48; AA, 13, 31.

  24 AA, 13 (first q); B. Drummond Ayres Jr., “Ashe Returns to the City He Disowned in Youth,” NYT, May 7, 1992 (second q); RFP, April 16–18, 1992 (third q); AATC, 9–10, 30.

  25 RFP, April 16–18, 1992 (q); AA, 14; OTC, 33, 35; LG, 37–38; AATC, 40–44. Gordon was one of the first blacks to graduate from the Univeristy of Virginia (1964) and went on to be the district manager of Bell Atlantic Telephone Company. See October 13, 2000, obituary in Legacy.com.

  CHAPTER 2: PLAYING IN THE SHADOWS

  1 AA, 12–15, 19 (qs); OTC, 33; AATC, 68.

  2 OTC, 33 (first q); AA, 15 (second q); Einwick int; Eric Perkins, Tom Wood, and John Packett, Richmond: One of America’s Best Tennis Towns (Richmond: Dementi Milestone Publishing, 2012), 5–6; John Packett, “Early Help Spurred Parrish to Greater Heights,” October 8, 2013, available online at the Richmond Tennis Association website richmondtennis.org.

  3 BCHT, 3–16; Heiner Gillmeister, Tennis: A Cultural History (New York: NYU Press, 1998), 191, 207–22; Allison Danzig and Peter Schwed, eds., The Fireside Book of Tennis: A Complete History of the Game and Its Great Players and Matches (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972), 3–28; E. Digby Baltzell, Sporting Gentlemen: Men’s Tennis from the Age of Honor to the Cult of the Superstar (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2013), 13–162; Eugene Scott, Tennis: Game of Motion (New York: Crown, 1973), 30–49; HRG, vol. 2, 59–60; CTN, 3; W, 42–43; Frank Deford int, SSAA.

  4 Gillmeister, Tennis, 211; BCHT, 8; Danzig and Schwed, eds., Fireside Book of Tennis, 14–20; CTN, 106–9, 239–42; W, 4–5, 41–47; BATN, 1–27; HRG, vol. 2, 60–62.


  5 CTN, 106–9, 239–42; W, 4–5, 41–47; BATN, 4–27. On the “Golden Age” of white tennis in the 1920s, see BCHT, 15–42; Danzig and Schwed, eds., Fireside Book of Tennis, 130–266; and Baltzell, Sporting Gentlemen, 163–218. For early coverage of black tennis in the black press, see The Chicago Defender; the Baltimore Afro-American; and The Pittsburgh Courier.

  6 CTN, 108, 239, 242; W, 48; BATN, 5–8; HRG, vol. 2, 62–63; Ryland, Bobby Davis, and Willis Thomas ints; Ben Rothenberg, “African-American Tennis, Fostered for 100 Years,” NYT, August 27, 2017.

  7 See Baker, Jesse Owens; Chris Mead, Champion: Joe Louis, Black Hero in White America (New York: Penguin, 1986); Roberts, Joe Louis; LeRoy (Satchel) Paige, as told to David Lipman, Maybe I’ll Pitch for Ever (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993); and Tye, Satchel.

  8 Ryland int; W, 92–97.

  9 W, 1, 19, 28, 44, 58, 104; CTN, 3, 7, 95, 108–9; BATN, 6–9; Ryland int.

  10 Ryland int. See Woody Strode and Sam Young, Goal Dust: The Warm and Candid Memoirs of a Pioneer Black Athlete and Actor (Aurora, IL: Madison Press Books, 1993); Robert W. Peterson, Pigskin: The Early Years of Pro Football (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Steve Bisheff, Los Angeles Rams (New York: Macmillan, 1973); Bob Oates, The Los Angeles Rams (Hollywood, CA: Murray & Gee, 1955); and Jules Tygiel, Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 3–9, 30–208. On the Marian Anderson controversy, see Raymond Arsenault, The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert That Awakened America (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009).

  11 BATN, 9–13; BCHT, 61–63, 66, 554–55; CTN, 110–11, 242; W, 46 (first q), 48; Steven M. Tucker, “Against All Odds,” Racquet (Fall 1991): 58–60; Al Laney, “2,000 Negroes,” New York Herald Tribune, July 30, 1940 (second q); HRG, vol. 2, 63–64.

  12 W, 46.

  13 CTN, 111 (q); BATN, 18; W, 59; BCHT, 586, 606–7; Ryland int. On Alice Marble, see Marble, with Leatherman, Courting Danger; and Alice Marble, The Road to Wimbledon (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947).

  14 Ryland int; CTN, 110, 238; W, 58.

  15 NYT, March 9, 1948 (q); CTN, 108–9; Trabert int.

  16 HRG, vol. 3, 145 (q); BATN, 14–15; Trabert int.

  17 W, xi–xv, 3, 7–41, 48–49 (q), 50–54, 64–72; LG, 36–41; CTN, 112–13; AA, 21–45; OTC, 39–41; HRG, vol. 3, 150–51; BATN, 18–21; Ben Rothenberg, “Bringing to Light a Seminal Figure,” NYT, August 27, 2017; Jolyn Johnson Smith and Simpson ints.

  18 W, 75–76, 78, 83; Jolyn Johnson Smith and Simpson ints.

  19 CTN, 52–54, 64; W, 54–57; BATN, 28–30; HRG, vol. 3, 146; Hubert A. Eaton, Every Man Should Try (Wilmington, NC: Bonaparte Press, 1984); Gibson, I Always Wanted to Be Somebody, 36–39; Gibson, with Curtis, So Much to Live For, 17; Gray and Lamb, Born to Win, 34–36; Jennifer H. Lansbury, A Spectacular Leap: Black Women Athletes in Twentieth-Century America (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2014), 11–26, 74–100; Althea (PBS American Masters series, directed by Rex Miller, 2015).

  20 Lansbury, A Spectacular Leap, 80–93; Gray and Lamb, Born to Win, 36–51; Gibson, I Always Wanted to Be Somebody, 40–57; Althea.

  21 HRG, vol. 3, xxi, 1–7, 77, 162–64; Lansbury, A Spectacular Leap, 65–74; CTN, 54.

  22 BCHT, 73, 86–88, 94, 581–82, 644. On Segura, see Seebohm, Little Pancho; and NYT, November 20, 2017 (obituary). On Gonzales, see Pancho Gonzales, Man with the Racket: The Autobiography of Pancho Gonzales (n.p.: Ulan Press, 2012); Doreen Gonzales, Tennis Legend: Pancho Gonzales (Goodyear, AR: Gregory Gonzales Publishing, 2007); Danzig and Schwed, eds., Fireside Book of Tennis, 294–306, 701–9; and Pancho Gonzales: Warrior of the Court (Spike/PBS television documentary by Higher Ground Entertainment, 2009); RFP, April 16–18, 1992 (q). Both Segura and Gonzales mentored and practiced with Ashe during his years at UCLA. See HRG, vol. 3, 153–54.

  23 Alice Marble, “A Vital Issue,” American Lawn Tennis (July 1950): 14; W, 2, 58–60; CTN, 54–55; Lansbury, A Spectacular Leap, 93–94; Gibson, I Always Wanted to Be Somebody, 61–68; Gray and Lamb, Born to Win, 51–58; BATN, 30–31; Althea.

  24 CTN, 55–56; HRG, vol. 3, 147–49 (q), 150; BATN, 15.

  25 Gibson, I Always Wanted to Be Somebody, 68–75; Gray and Lamb, Born to Win, 41–42, 58–67; CTN, 56–57 (q); Lansbury, A Spectacular Leap, 95–96, 100–101; W, 59–60; HRG, vol. 3, 150–51; Danzig and Schwed, eds., Fireside Book of Tennis, 710–11; Althea.

  CHAPTER 3: DR. J AND THE LYNCHBURG BOYS

  1 W, 1–2 (q); LG, 23, 26–27; George McGann, “ ‘Doc’ Johnson, Dedicated to Medicine and Junior Tennis, Wins July Marlboro Award,” WT (July 1965): 32–34.

  2 W, 3–4; LG, 23–27.

  3 W, 3 (qs), 70; LG, 27–28.

  4 W, 4 (q), 5, 71; Dell int.

  5 W, 70–72.

  6 CTN, 58 (q); HRG, vol. 3, 146, 151.

  7 Simpson, Willis Thomas, and Bobby Davis ints; CTN, 94; AA, 26, 30–34.

  8 OTC, 30 (q); LG 29–30; AATC, 44–47, 54–55.

  9 PIM, 56, 57 (q); AA, 20–22.

  10 PIM, 56 (q).

  11 CTN, 112 (first q), 113; AA, 25 (second q); OTC, 40–41; LG, 41–42; AATC, 51–54.

  12 AA, 24, (qs), 26 (last q); OTC, 40; AATC, 50; Willis Thomas and Bobby Davis ints.

  13 AA, 25 (fourth q)–26 (first and second qs), 29 (third q); LG, 42–43.

  14 OTC, 25 (q), 43; DG, 42, 262; AA, 18; LG, 55–57; Loretta Ashe Harris int; AATC, 62–63.

  15 W, 77–79.

  16 Ibid., 80–81.

  17 “Bringing to Light a Seminal Figure” (q); Koger and Jolyn Johnson Smith ints. On the gathering force of white supremacist resistance in Virginia in 1955, see Benjamin Muse, Virginia’s Massive Resistance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961); Robbins Ladew Gates, The Making of Massive Resistance: Virginia’s Politics of Public School Desegregation, 1954–1956 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1964); J. Harvie Wilkinson, Harry Byrd and the Changing Face of Virginia Politics (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1968); Ronald L. Heinemann, Harry Byrd of Virginia (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996); and Matthew Lassiter and Andrew B. Lewis, eds., The Moderates’ Dilemma: Massive Resistance to School Desegregation in Virginia (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1998). On the murder of Emmett Till, see Stephen J. Whitfield, A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988); Dewey S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2015); and Timothy B. Tyson, The Blood of Emmett Till (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017).

  18 W, 83–85 (qs); LG, 28–29; “Bringing to Light a Seminal Figure”; Simpson int.

  19 W, 87 (q); AATC, 5; “Bringing to Light a Seminal Figure.”

  20 AA, 29 (first q), 32 (second q).

  21 W, 80; AA, 30.

  22 OTC, 42 (first q), 43; AA, 30 (second q); Simpson and Willis Thomas ints.

  23 HRG, vol. 3, 4–14, 72–80. See Haygood, Sweet Thunder; Remnick, King of the World; Willie Mays, with Lou Sahadi, Say Hey (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988); Hirsch, Willie Mays; Tygiel, Baseball’s Great Experiment; Rampersad, Jackie Robinson; Steve Jacobson, Carrying Jackie’s Torch: The Players Who Integrated Baseball—and America (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 2007); Cal Fussman, ed., After Jackie: Pride, Prejudice, and Baseball’s Forgotten Heroes: An Oral History (New York: ESPN Books, 2007); Roger Kahn, Boys of Summer (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006); Peter Golenbock, Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers (New York: Dover, 2010); Joseph Thomas Moore, Larry Doby: The Struggle of the American League’s First Black Player (New York: Dover, 2012); Douglas Branson, Greatness in the Shadows: Larry Doby and the Integration of the American League (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016); Bryant, The Last Hero; and Marannis, Clemente.

  24 HRG, vol. 3, 55–63, 116–19; Mike Freeman, Jim Brown: The Fierce Life of an American Hero (New York: William Mo
rrow, 2006); J. Thomas Jable, “Jim Brown: Superlative Athlete, Screen Star, Social Activist,” in David K. Wiggins, ed., Out of the Shadows: A Biographical History of African American Athletes (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2006), 241–61; Jimmy Brown with Myron Cope, Off My Chest (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964); Lenny Moore and Jeffrey Jay Ellish, All Things Being Equal: The Autobiography of Lenny Moore (New York: Sports Publishing, 2005); Mike Burns, Night Train Lane: Life of Hall of Famer Richard Night Train Lane (Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 2001); Goudsouzian, King of the Court; William F. Russell and Taylor Branch, Second Wind: The Memoirs of an Opinionated Man (New York: Random House, 1979); Bill Reynolds, Rise of a Dynasty: The ’57 Celtics, The First Banner, and the Dawning of a New America (New York: New American Library, 2010); Nelson George, Elevating the Game: Black Men and Basketball (New York: HarperCollins, 1992); and Ron Thomas, They Cleared the Lane: The NBA’s Black Pioneers (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002).

  25 HRG, vol. 3, 151–52; Lansbury, A Spectacular Leap, 104–8; CTN, 59–69; Gray and Lamb, Born to Win, 81–111; Gibson, I Always Wanted to Be Somebody, 88–150; Althea.

  26 W, 58–75; HRG, vol. 3, 151–52 (q); Gibson, I Always Wanted to Be Somebody, 151–57, 158 (q), 159–76; Gibson, So Much to Live For, 15–128; Gray and Lamb, Born to Win, 112–61; Althea.

  27 W, 62 (first q); AA, 31–32 (second and third qs); Simpson, Willis Thomas, and Bobby Davis ints.

  28 AA, 32–33 (first q), 38–39; W, 101 (second q), 102. On Baltimore’s racial climate in the 1950s and 1960s, see Howell S. Baum, Brown in Baltimore: School Desegregation and the Limits of Liberalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010); and Antero Pietila, Not in My Backyard: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2010).

  29 AA, 32 (q).

  30 Ibid., 33 (q), 34; W, 101.

  31 AA, 33 (q); W, 93–97.

  32 AA, 29–30 (q); AATC, 60; Simpson, Willis Thomas, and Bobby Davis ints.