"ARTHUR ASHE AND THE RICHMOND ROAD"

“ARTHUR ASHE AND THE RICHMOND ROAD”

            When I was a boy, I dreamed of being a major league baseball player.  I was a smart player and fielded well, but my hitting was so-so.  When I got old enough to face pitchers who threw curve balls, I threw in the towel – I was too afraid of being hit by the ball.  So, I thought about tennis, since it was a non-contact sport.  We were  poor, so I could not go to the country club to practice, and there was only one public court.  It was segregated, but like our baseball fields, it was located in a black neighborhood.  I’ve often wondered what those black kids thought about us white kids coming into their neighborhood to play on venues on which they could not set foot.  Though I liked tennis, I never developed it much.  Our son, David, however, did – he became the #1 singles player on his high school team. 

            My interest in tennis in those days made me notice Arthur Ashe, the first person of African descent to play on the USA Davis Cup team and the first African-American to win a Davis Cup match.   In those days tennis was a white person’s sport, and in many ways, it still is, although Venus and Serena Williams have blown the doors open for women’s tennis.  Ashe was born in Richmond, VA, in 1943, and he became interested in tennis at age 7.  He was tutored in tennis by Ron Charity, who was the best black tennis player in Richmond, and likely he was the best player of any color, but he was not allowed to compete with whites in that segregated era. 

Ashe’s dad and Ron Charity helped him get noticed by local white tennis pros, who took him under their wings and opened doors for him.  He earned a tennis scholarship to UCLA, and while there he joined the USA Davis Cup team at age 20.  He later turned pro and made money – he had majored in business at UCLA, so he knew what to do with his money.

            Ashe died in February, 1993 of pneumonia, brought on by AIDS, which he had gotten from a blood transfusion after heart surgery in 1993.  As Black History Month rolled around in 1994, I decided to research Ashe and preach on him.  He was one of the few athletes of his time who would take political positions.  He was arrested several times in protest of South Africa’s apartheid policies.  I was also attracted to him because he was a Presbyterian – he attended First Presbyterian in Brooklyn, where my colleague (and former pastor at Hillside) Paul Smith was pastor.  As I began to read about him, though, I was shocked – he was so conservative!  He voted for Bush in 1988, and he was a frequent guest at the Reagan/Bush White House.  He opposed the idea of black power, and he stood against affirmative action as a way to do some reparations.

            So, I decided not to preach on him – he was the wrong kind of black man, not my kind of black man.  I wrestled with that.  I was turning him down because he didn’t seem black enough to me, a white man.  How could I know his struggles?  How could I judge his “blackness?”  So, I decided to preach on his life and witness, and I did it a year to the day after his death.  I discovered a remarkable passage in his autobiography “Days of Grace,” and I want to share part of it here.  He was being interviewed by a white reporter from People Magazine about how he was coping with AIDS:

            “Mr. Ashe, I guess this must be the heaviest burden you ever had to bear, isn’t             it?”  I thought for a moment, but only a moment. “No, it isn’t.  It’s a burden,

            all right.  But AIDS isn’t the heaviest burden that I’ve had to bear.” 

            “Is there something worse?  Your heart attack?”

            “You’re not going to believe this, but being classified as black is the greatest

            burden I’ve had to bear.”  She said, “You can’t mean that.”  My reply: “No

            question about it.  Race has always been my biggest burden.  Having to live

            as a minority in America.  Even now it continues to feel like an extra weight

            tied around me.”

            I can still recall the surprise and perhaps even the hurt on her face.  I may

            even have surprised myself, because I simply had never thought of

            comparing the two conditions before.”

I give thanks for the witness of Arthur Ashe, who overcame so many obstacles to become one of the best players in tennis history.  I also give thanks to him for being willing to reveal the cost of being classified as “black” in a white, racist society.  And, I thank him for revealing the continuing power of race in my life. So, with apologies to James Weldon Johnson,

Stony the road he trod,

Bitter the shoes he shod,

Difficult to be seen as odd,

But thank God

For Arthur Ashe

For his journey to sing his own song and that of his ancestors.    

And, Arthur Ashe’s statue now has a place on Richmond’s infamous Monument Avenue, where all the Confederate forebears can celebrate his great achievements!