Arthur Ashe

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Arthur Ashe Page 92

by Raymond Arsenault

CHAPTER 4: THE ONLY RAISIN IN A RICE PUDDING

  1 AA, 34 (first q), 35, 44–45 (third q); W, 87–88, 98–100; LG, 71 (second q); CD, February 12, June 7, September 6, 1958; NYT, August 2–3, 1958; Sanderlin and Simpson ints.

  2 AA, 33–34; LG, 44–45; Chewning and Willis Thomas ints.

  3 Benjamin Muse, Ten Years of Prelude: The Story of Integration since the Supreme Court’s 1954 Decision (New York: Viking, 1964), 70–71, 146–50, 211; James Jackson Kilpatrick, The Sovereign States of America: Notes of a Citizen of Virginia (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1957); William P. Hustwit, James J. Kilpatrick: Salesman for Segregation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013); and Numan V. Bartley, The Rise of Massive Resistance: Race and Politics in the South during the 1950’s (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969).

  4 AA, 35 (first q), 36 (fourth q); OTC, 37–38, 81 (third q); Ken Wright, “News Stirs Childhood Memories of a Determined Fighter,” Virginia Pilot-Ledger Star, April 12, 1992 (second q); AATC, 63–64, 67; Gertrude Woodruff Marlowe, A Right Worthy Grand Mission: Maggie Lena Walker and the Quest for Black Economic Empowerment (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 2013); RNL, November 10, 1938, and Washington Afro-American, January 14, 1939, clippings in “Richmond: Education and Schools—Negro” folder, vertical files, Richmond Public Library; Patricia Battles Davis int; DG, 111; AATC, 29, 37–39, 47, 59–62; Robinson int; L. Spurlock and Johnnie Ashe ints, SSAA.

  5 AATC, 63 (first and second qs), 64; AA, 33–34 (fifth q), 35 (third q); OTC, 37 (fourth q).

  6 AA, 36–37, 60 (second q), 61, 148–50; PIM, 25 (first q); London Times, June 28, 1968 (third q); Danzig and Schwed, eds., Fireside Book of Tennis, 454; Pasarell, Dell, and Graebner ints; Charlie Pasarell int, SSAA. On the distinctive character of Miami’s race relations, see Raymond Mohl, “Miami: The Ethnic Cauldron,” in Richard M. Bernard and Bradley R. Rice, eds., Sunbelt Cities: Politics and Growth Since World War II (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), 58–99; Marvin Dunn, Black Miami in the Twentieth Century (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997); and N. D. B. Connolly, A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014). On Pasarell’s career, see BCHT, 133–35, 139–40, 147–48, 704, 738; NYT, December 13, 1967.

  7 AA, 37–38, 39–40 (q); W, 90–91; CD, May 9, 1959; Dr. R. Walter Johnson to William F. Riordan, July 10, 1959, folder 1, box 1, AAP.

  8 W, 88 (q); CD, May 9, 1959. On the desegregation of the University of Virginia, see Bryan Kay, “The History of Desegregation at the University of Virginia, 1950–1969” (Undergraduate Honors Essay, University of Virginia, 1979); Peter Wallenstein, “Desegregation in Higher Education in Virginia,” Encyclopedia Virginia (online at www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Desegregation_in_Higher_Education; nsstart_entry); Sarah Patton Boyle, The Desegregated Heart: A Virginian’s Stand in Time of Transition (New York: William Morrow, 1962); Coy Barefoot, The Corner: A History of Student Life at the University of Virginia (Charlottesville: Howell Press, 2001); and Susan Tyler Hitchcock, The University of Virginia: A Pictorial History (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012). See also Peter Wallenstein, ed., Higher Education and the Civil Rights Movement: White Supremacy, Black Southerners, and College Campuses (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008).

  9 AA, 38 (qs); CD, July 14, 1959; NYT, July 5, 1959; W, 101.

  10 DG, 61 (first q); NYT, July 14, 19, 21, 1959; WP, July 1959, clipping in folder 1, box 35, AAP (second q); Simpson int.

  11 AA, 19–20 (qs); AATC, 80; Chewning int; Tom Chewning int, SSAA.

  12 W, 92–97.

  13 NYT, September 4–5, 1959; AA, 40. In the 1959 U.S. National Championship singles competition, Laver lost to the American Ronald Holmberg in the quarterfinals. On Laver, see BCHT, 461, 600–601; Laver, with Collins, The Education of a Tennis Player; and Rod Laver, Rod Laver: A Memoir (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2014).

  14 AA, 35–37; OTC, 19, 63–64, 80 (q); Loretta Ashe Harris, Patricia Battles Davis, and Johnnie Ashe ints.

  15 AA, 40 (qs); OTC, 38.

  16 LG, 64 (q); OTC, 28.

  17 OTC, 37 (second q), 162 (first q).

  18 NYT, February 21, 23, 1960; RTD, February 21–23, 1960; Silver and Moeser, Separate City, 75; Reginald Green and Sherrod ints.

  19 Silver and Moeser, Separate City, 69–80; RTD, September 7–8, 1960; AA, 43. Arthur and Johnnie Ashe’s cousin Horace was also a student at Marshall during the early years of the school’s desegregation; Johnnie Ashe int. See Kenneth E. Whitlock Jr., “Segregation, Massive Resistance, and Desegregation: Personal Reflections on Growing Up in Richmond, Virginia—1950–1967,” January 21, 2013, typescript available online at www.mxschool.edu; “Negro Girls Enter John Marshall High School,” Southern School News 8, No. 4 (October 1961): 4; Carol Swann-Daniels, in Juan Williams, My Soul Looks Back in Wonder: Voices of the Civil Rights Experience (New York: Sterling, 2004), 65–71. See also Robert A. Pratt, The Color of Their Skin: Education and Race in Richmond, Virginia, 1954–1989 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993); and James W. Ely, The Crisis of Conservative Virginia: The Byrd Organization and the Politics of Massive Resistance (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976).

  20 DG, 116–17; OTC, 46 (first and fourth qs); W, 88 (second q); AA, 45 (third q); Koger and Simpson ints.

  21 AA, 41 (q); W, 83–89; Simpson int.

  22 W, 100–101 (first q); AA, 41 (second q), 42; OTC, 47.

  23 OTC, 46 (first q); CD, May 28, September 3, 1960; BAA, August 23, 1960; AA, 10 (second q), 44.

  CHAPTER 5: THE GATEWAY

  1 AA, 46 (q); OTC, 47.

  2 Cliff Buchholz int; OTC, 47; W, 104; CTN, 91; BATN, 6, 14; AA, 23 (first q), 45 (second and third qs), 46; LG, 139–40; AATC, 77–85; A. S. “Doc” Young, “Tennis Is Not a Stranger to Blacks,” LAT, July 22, 1972. According to Ashe, the origin of the arrangement was based on a misunderstanding: “Mr. Hudlin had started the wheel turning almost by chance. . . . One day in 1960 he dropped by Washington University, near his home, to get assistance for Wilbur Jenkins, another Negro who was high-ranked in the ATA. Somebody there said, ‘If you want to help somebody, why not Arthur Ashe?’ They thought I’d already finished high school. Their idea was for me to live with the Hudlins and go to Washington University on a tennis scholarship. Mr. Hudlin was all for that—especially because he wanted his son to become a good tennis player, and he thought being around me might inspire Richard Jr. to practice more. He and Dr. Johnson decided I should move to St. Louis anyway, and go to Sumner High School there.”

  3 AA, 46 (q).

  4 Ibid., 46 (q); NYT, September 4–6, 1960.

  5 AA, 46–48 (qs); Hall, Arthur Ashe, 37.

  6 AA, 48 (first q); PIM, 94 (second q). In 1974, Ashe offered a much more positive assessment of his St. Louis experience, writing, “I had a great year there.” See also Hall, Arthur Ashe, 36–37. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Eighteenth Census of the United States, 1960: Population (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1961). On segregation, civil rights, and race relations in twentieth-century St. Louis, see Clarence Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway: Class, Politics and Black Freedom Struggle in St. Louis, 1936–75 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009); Patricia A. Dowden-White, Groping Toward Democracy: African American Social Welfare Reformers, 1910–1949 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011); Ann Morris, ed., Lift Every Voice and Sing: St. Louis African Americans in the Twentieth Century (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999); John A. Wright Sr., The Ville (Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia, 2001); John A. Wright Sr., African Americans in Downtown St. Louis (Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia, 2003); and John A. Wright, St. Louis’s Disappearing Black Communities (Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia, 2005). On the recent racial scene in St. Louis, see Paul Kersey, Bell Curve City: St. Louis, Ferguson, and the Unmentionable Racial Realities That Shape Them (n.p.: CreateSpace, 2015).

  7 Cliff Buchholz int; Wright, The Ville, passim; Carolyn Hewes Toft, The Ville: Th
e Ethnic Heritage of an Urban Neighborhood (St. Louis: Landmarks Association of St. Louis, 1975). See also “The Ville: A Prosperous Black Community,” St. Louis Argus, April 28, 1977; Cynthia Todd, “The Ville: Where We Live,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, undated clipping; “Annie Malone,” undated clipping, all in “Black Neighborhoods in St. Louis” folder, vertical clipping file, St. Louis Public Library, St. Louis, MO. On the Shelley v. Kraemer case, which originated in St. Louis with the activism of Olivia Merriweather Perkins, see Jeffrey S. Copeland, Olivia’s Story: The Conspiracy of Heroes Behind Shelley v Kraemer (St. Paul: Paragon House, 2010). On Richmond Heights, which adjoins the larger community of Clayton, see www.richmondheigts.org; Our Storehouse of Missouri Place Names (second edition) (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1973); and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_Heights,_Missouri. The Hudlins lived at 1221 Laclede Station Road, a few blocks southwest of Forest Park. St. Louis City Directory 1960 (Detroit: R. L. Polk, 1960).

  8 OTC, 48 (first q); AA, 48–49 (second q); Hall, Arthur Ashe, 36–37; Cliff Buchholz int. Named for Charles Sumner, the nineteenth-century United States senator and abolitionist from Massachusetts, Sumner High was the alma mater of several musical and theatrical celebrities, including the noted comic and civil rights activist Dick Gregory, a member of the class of 1951 and a high school track star in the late 1940s and early 1950s; the legendary rock ’n’ roller Chuck Berry, class of 1944; the singer Tina Turner (aka Anna Mae Bulloch), class of 1958; the actor Robert Guillaume, class of 1945; and the mezzo-soprano Grace Bumbry, class of 1955. See Dick Gregory, with Robert Lipsyte, Nigger: An Autobiography (New York: Pocket Books, 1976); Chuck Berry, Chuck Berry: The Autobiography (New York: Harmony, 1989); Bruce Pegg, Brown-Eyed Handsome Man: The Life and Hard Times of Chuck Berry (New York: Routledge, 2002); Tina Turner and Kurt Loder, I, Tina (New York: William Morrow, 1986); Robert Guillaume and David Ritz, Guillaume, A Life (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002); and Peter Bailey, “Grace Bumbry: ‘Singing Is Terrific, but Living Is an Art,’ ” Ebony (December 1973): 67–68, 73–75.

  9 AA, 47 (q); Cliff and Butch Buchholz ints.

  10 NYT, November 27–28, 1960; BCHT, 127 (first q), 162; OTC, 39; AA, 47 (second q); Hall, Arthur Ashe, 38; Froehling int. The win over Froehling earned Ashe his first mention in Sports Illustrated. See “Faces in the Crowd,” SI (December 12, 1960): 12.

  11 AA, 47 (first and fourth qs); OTC, 50 (second, third, fifth, and sixth qs); PIM, 94; Cliff Buchholz and Chewning ints.

  12 NYT, December 25, 27, 1960; OTC, 49–50; AA, 42; AATC, 85; Mandelstam int. Mandelstam returned to Miami in the fall of 1960 to enroll at the University of Miami, where he assumed the number one singles position in 1962 and 1963, earning All-American honors. He later earned a law degree at the University of Miami, played intermittently on the men’s tour until 1973, and eventually headed several Miami-based corporations, including Tennis Schools International, Inc. For a time, he built tennis courts, including one at the Ashes’ Doral home. He and Arthur were close friends for three decades. See “All American Monday: Rodney ‘Rod’ Mandelstam,” an online article posted December 3, 2012, at www.hurricanesports.com/ViewArticle.dbml?ATCHD=205819628.

  13 Pasarell and Froehling ints; OTC, 51–52; AA, 49.

  14 OTC, 51 (first and fourth qs); AA, 49–50 (second and third qs); AATC, 85.

  15 AA, 39, 49.

  16 Pasarell and Ralston ints; OTC, 51; AA, 49; http://www.NCAA.com/sports/tennis-men/history.

  17 AA, 50–51; Pasarell int.

  18 See “Athens of Athletics,” Chapter 13 in Andrew Hamilton and John B. Jackson, UCLA on the Move During the Fifty Golden Years, 1919–1969 (Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie Press, 1969), 169–86; Brian Urquhart, Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 37–43; Rampersad, Jackie Robinson, 56–82, 242–43; Rafer Johnson, with Philip Goldberg, The Best That I Can Be (New York: Doubleday, 1998); Slaughter int; AA, 50 (q).

  19 OTC, 48 (qs); Cliff Buchholz int.

  20 Raymond Arsenault, Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 93–97, 106, 112–16; Charlotte Devree, “The Young Negro Rebels,” Harper’s 223 (October 1961): 133–38; Reginald Green int.

  21 LG, 140 (first q); OTC, 51–52 (qs).

  22 OTC, 48 (q); Cliff Buchholz int.

  23 AA, 49 (first q), 80; OTC, 47 (second q), 51; W, 105; AATC, 71–73; NYT, June 23, 1961; WP, June 23, 1961; Harry Gordon, “Arthur Ashe Has to Be Aware That He is a Pioneer in Short White Pants,” NYT Magazine (January 2, 1966): 164; AATC, 70–71; Pasarell and Cliff Buchholz (third q) ints.

  24 “Ashe Takes Tennis Title,” NYT, June 23, 1961; “Ashe Captures School Tennis,” WP, June 23, 1961; “Tennis the Menace,” SI (July 3, 1961): editorial (qs); “An Unfair Rap,” unidentified clipping, July 1961, in folder 1, box 35, AAP; Paul M. Gaston, Coming of Age in Utopia: The Odyssey of an Idea (Montgomery: NewSouth Books, 2009), 193–94; Hall, Arthur Ashe, 38–39.

  25 NYT, June 28, July 1, 9, August 7, 1961; Hall, Arthur Ashe, 39–40; Martin, Arthur Ashe, 54; OTC, 51–52; “Arthur Ashe, Tennis Star,” Life (October 15, 1965): 64 (first q); AA, 94 (second q); AATC, 71; Cliff Buchholz, Graebner, and Pasarell ints.

  26 AA, 51 (q); NYT, August 20, 1961.

  27 NYT, August 30–September 3, 1961; OTC, 52 (q).

  CHAPTER 6: THE GOLDEN LAND

  1 See Kevin Starr’s multivolume study of “Americans and the California Dream”: Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915; Inventing the Dream: California Through the Progressive Era; Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920s; Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California; The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s; Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940–1950; and Golden Dreams: California in the Age of Abundance, 1950–1963 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973, 1985, 1990, 1996, 1997, 2002, 2009).

  2 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Eighteenth Census of the United States, 1960: Population (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1961); Lawrence DeGraaf, “The City of Black Angels: The Emergence of the Los Angeles Ghetto, 1890–1930,” Pacific Historical Review 59 (Spring 1970): 323–52; Lawrence DeGraaf, Negro Migration to Los Angeles, 1930–1950 (San Francisco: R&E Research Associates, 1974); Scott Kurashige, The Shifting Grounds of Race: Blacks and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Douglas Flamming, Bound for Freedom: Black Los Angeles in Jim Crow America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Darnell Hunt and Ana-Christina Ramon, Black Los Angeles: American Dreams and Racial Realities (New York: NYU Press, 2010); Josh Sides, L.A. City Limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); R. J. Smith, The Great Black Way: L.A. in the 1940s and the Lost African-American Renaissance (New York: PublicAffairs, 2006); Lawrence B. DeGraaf, Kevin Mulroy, and Quintard Taylor, eds., Seeking El Dorado: African Americans in California (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001); Delilah Beasley, The Negro Trail Blazers of California (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969); Kenneth Goode, California’s Black Pioneers: A Brief Historical Survey (Santa Barbara: McNally & Lofton, 1973); Rudolph Lapp, Afro-Americans in California (San Francisco: Boyd & Fraser, 1979); Black Angelenos: The Afro-American in Los Angeles, 1850–1950 (Los Angeles: California Afro-American Museum, 1989); Mike Garcia and Jerry Wright, “Race Consciousness in Black Los Angeles, 1886–1915,” and Eugene J. Grigsby, “The Rise and Decline of Black Neighborhoods in Los Angeles” (Feature Series: Black Angelenos), UCLA CAAS Report 12 (Spring–Fall 1989): 4–5, 16–17, 42–44. See also James Fisher, “The History of the Political and Social Development of the Black Community in California, 1850–1950” (PhD thesis, UCLA, 1971); Frederick Anderson, “The Development of Leadership and Organization Building in the Black Community of Los Angeles from 1900 Through World War II” (PhD thesis, University of California, 1976); and Patricia Adler, “Watts: From Suburb to Black G
hetto” (PhD thesis, University of Southern California, 1977).

  3 Singleton, Anderson, Slaughter, Willard Johnson, Nash, and Carson ints; Anne Allen, “This Way Out: Slum Youngsters Choose College, but It Takes Courage to Stick,” American Education (July–August 1967): 2–4, 28–29.

  4 Verne Stadtman, ed., Centennial Record of the University of California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 330–72; Ernest Carroll Moore, I Helped Make a University (Los Angeles: Dawson’s Bookshop, 1952); William C. Ackerman, My Fifty Year Love-in at UCLA (Los Angeles: Fashion Press, 1969); Edward A. Dickson, University of California at Los Angeles: Its Origin and Formative Years (Los Angeles: Friends of the UCLA Library, 1955); and Hamilton and John Jackson, UCLA on the Move During the Fifty Golden Years, 1919–1969. On Murphy’s tenure at UCLA, see Record Series #401, Chancellor’s Office, Administrative Subject File of Franklin Murphy, 1935–71, in UCLAUA. “Image UCLA,” DB, December 14, 1961, cites a magazine article by Martin Mayer, “UCLA: The College as a Country Club,” and Steve Allen’s television show Campus USA, both of which “portray the typical student as a screaming, faddish, amoralistic, uneducated boor who cuts Roy Harris and Willard Libby lectures to go surfing or dancing!”

  5 See “Athens of Athletics,” Chapter 13 in Hamilton and Jackson, UCLA on the Move During the Fifty Golden Years, 1919–1969, 169–86.

  6 AA, 58; Hamilton and Jackson, UCLA on the Move During the Fifty Golden Years, 1919–1969, 171, 187; Ackerman, My Fifty Year Love-in at UCLA, 90–91; John Matthew Smith, The Sons of Westwood: John Wooden, UCLA, and the Dynasty That Changed College Basketball (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013); Rampersad, Jackie Robinson, 62–83. On Washington and Strode, see Strode and Sam Young, Goal Dust; Charles K. Ross, Outside the Lines: African Americans and the Integration of the National Football League (New York: NYU Press, 2001); the documentary film The Forgotten Four: The Integration of Pro Football (EPIX, Ross Greenburg Productions, 2014); and Cynthia Lee, “Forgotten Story of Four Who Broke Color Bar in Pro Football,” UCLA News, August 21, 2014, available online at news.ucla.edu. On Rafer Johnson and C. K. Yang, see Johnson, with Goldberg, The Best That I Can Be; and David Marannis, Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 10–12, 34–37, 101–2, 114–16, 265–90. Johnson’s younger brother Jimmy played on the UCLA football team.

 

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