A Champion Beyond Tennis: Celebrating Arthur Ashe, 50 Years After Winning Wimbledon  

On July 05, 1975, Arthur Ashe played Jimmy Connors in an all American final at Wimbledon a few days short of his 32nd birthday. Ashe had never won the Wimbledon title and was trying to become the first black man to do so. Connors was the defending champion and heavy favorite to repeat as Wimbledon champion. Ashe had never beaten Connors before and changed his tactics from power to a finesse game.

Ashe played it to perfection with wide serves and underspin shots that flustered the defending champion. Ashe won the first two sets convincingly 6–1 & 6–1. Connors regrouped and won the third set 7–5. Ashe then finished Connors in the fourth 6–4 becoming the first black male to win Wimbledon. It was a major upset for Ashe who had never taken a set from Jimmy Connors in previous matches. Ashe played the match of his life on the biggest stage against the best player in the world.

He smashed the color barrier showing the world his talent and wit. Ashe had served in the U.S. Army and was extremely patriotic wearing his U.S. Davis Cup warm-up jacket during the award ceremony while receiving the Wimbledon trophy. After the final, Connors dropped a libel suit against Ashe for comments he had made in a letter.

Ashe officially retired from professional tennis in April 1980, at the age of thirty-six. He had suffered a heart attack the year prior, showing that even high-level athletes were prone to cardiovascular disease. Ashe also had a family history of heart disease with his mother who died at the age of twenty-seven while his father suffered two heart attacks in his fifties. In 1983, Ashe had a second heart surgery to correct a previous bypass and later became the national chairman for the American Heart Association.

In 1988, Ashe was hospitalized, and doctors discovered he was positive for HIV. He most likely contracted the disease from blood transfusions he received during his second heart surgery. Ashe had kept the illness private until 1992 when he decided to go public about having HIV. A year later, Ashe passed away from AIDS-related pneumonia at New York Hospital at age forty-nine. Ashe was buried alongside his mother in Woodland Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. At the time, Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder who was a personal friend of Ashe allowed his body to lie in state at the Governor’s Mansion in Richmond.

To this day, Arthur Ashe is still the only black male to have won the prestigious Wimbledon Championship. Ashe also won the US Open Championship in 1968 and the Australian Open in 1970. In 1993, Ashe was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton. In 1996, the city of Richmond honored Ashe’s life with a statue on Monument Avenue, traditionally reserved for statues of key Confederate figures. The main stadium court at the US Open in Flushing Meadows is named after Arthur Ashe.

Arthur Ashe was an American hero who not only was a great tennis champion on the court but off the court as well. He was a civil rights activist for equal rights and racial integration in society. He also worked to raise awareness about AIDS and founded the Arthur Ashe for the Defeat of AIDS. His own diagnosis showed that heterosexual men that were not IV drug users could still contract the disease and advocated for safe sex and more funding to fight the disease. He finished his memoir a week before this death, Days of Grace.

His legacy continues today impacting all Americans of different races and ethnicities through his persistence to succeed in a racially divided Richmond. Against all odds, Arthur Ashe became a champion and activists for different causes while doing it with grace and class. He is an American icon that will be remembered for his courage, character and generosity.