Citizen Ashe

 

Althea Gibson

Althea Gibson at Wimbledon

Arthur Ashe with his father

Ashe with the Davis Cup team

Ashe on his wedding day with Jeanne Moutoussamy

Jeanne Moutoussamy

Harry Edwards

Ashe and his wife publicly announcing he has HIV

Ashe meeting Nelson Mandela

Director Sam Pollard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CITIZEN ASHE                    B                                                                                                     USA  (94 mi)  2021    co-director:  Rex Miller

Among the unsung heroes of the 60’s, Arthur Ashe was always known for his soft-spoken dignity and grace.  A quiet man, known for his contemplative reflection, he grew up in the Jim Crow South in Richmond, Virginia, the Capitol of the Confederacy, under the shadow of statues of Confederate leaders Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart, Jefferson Davis, and others on Monument Avenue, a street where blacks were forbidden, pillars of a racist legacy of the past, growing up in a time when lynchings in the South were all too common, yet a telling moment in his childhood was the murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year old kid who was beaten and mutilated before being lynched in Mississippi in 1955, suggesting all black kids growing up in the South could identify with Till, about the same age as Ashe, and a reminder of how you could completely disappear overnight for the slightest of offenses.  He also grew up in a home inside a segregated 18-acre sports complex known as Brookfield Park, which included basketball courts, a pool, three baseball diamonds and four tennis courts, as his father was the caretaker of the complex, so the tennis courts were literally 10 yards from his home.  His mother died when he was only six, raised by his father, something of a strict disciplinarian, advising him “Don’t do anything that will hurt yourself later,” but losing a mother at such a young age may have turned him inward, never one to show his emotions, exuding a cool veneer, an apt description for the man he would become, a professional tennis player and global humanitarian.  As a young sports fan, he idolized Jackie Robinson, as did most black kids in the late 40’s and early 50’s, also inspired by Althea Gibson, Bill Russell, and Sugar Ray Robinson.  Called “Bones” because he was so skinny, among his childhood dreams was becoming the Jackie Robinson of tennis, viewed at that time as a country club sport exclusively serving privileged whites.  At a young age he was discovered by local physician Dr. Robert Walter Johnson in his Junior Development Program, the tennis legend who had coached Althea Gibson, the first black athlete to win Grand Slam titles in tennis, winning 56 national and international female singles and doubles titles in an amateur era when there was no prize money at major tournaments, and direct endorsement deals were prohibited.  Johnson instilled social values into his game, learning not to argue points, how to maintain sports etiquette, never stepping out of line, while insisting he be “unfailingly polite on the court, unfalteringly calm and detached, so that whites could never accuse (him) of meanness.”  This professional composure would follow him throughout his distinguished career, also developing a habit of reading books beside the tennis courts when he wasn’t playing, a habit that would continue during tournaments in later years, while he was also a straight A student all through school. Ashe played baseball in high school, but Dr. Johnson kept him from playing on the high school baseball team, as that would distract him from playing tennis.  Black high schools in Richmond, in that era, had no tennis teams, but before long, because of him, they would all have tennis teams.  In Richmond, blacks were prohibited from using indoor tennis court facilities, the site of many major tournaments, effectively excluding blacks from participating, so Ashe received instructions in a tennis court built into Dr. Johnson’s back yard, eventually moving to St. Louis where he finished his senior year of high school under the tutelage of Richard Hudlin, captain of his University of Chicago collegiate tennis team in the 1920’s, the first black captain of a Big Ten athletic team (the school departed the Big Ten in 1946), who also successfully coached Althea Gibson.  Hudlin sued the city of St. Louis in 1945, forcing the city to open public tennis facilities to all players, particularly players of color, enabling blacks to participate in tournaments at municipal facilities, where Ashe led his Sumner High School, the first black high school west of the Mississippi, to win the United States Interscholastic Tennis Tournament, receiving a barrage of racial slurs, yet also becoming the first black to win the National Junior Indoor tennis title.  Scouted by UCLA, they offered him a tennis scholarship which was accepted “in about 3 seconds,” yet the casual Southern California lifestyle opened up doors for Ashe, allowing his tennis game to expand and accelerate with newly discovered freedoms, such as dating white women on campus with no negative repercussions.  Always known for having a thunderous serve and volley game, with an elegant backhand, never wanting to extend points, so while he was overly cautious off the court, he was a slashing, risk-taking attacker on it.  While in college, he was the first black player to be selected to the United States Davis Cup tennis team, which at the time was the most prestigious tennis tournament, as you were representing your country, while also winning the U.S. Men’s Hardcourt championships in 1963, winning the NCAA singles and doubles championship, helping UCLA win the team NCAA tennis championship in 1965, when he was named the #3 player in the world.  Since this was the era of the Vietnam War, he joined the ROTC program, a program training commissioned officers on college campuses, which also helped him offset his college expenses, so if he ever joined the Army it would not be as a private, but as an enlisted officer, eventually assigned to West Point, where he worked as a data processor, but was also put in charge of their tennis program.     

Part of the problem with this film is that it has a very narrow scope in who is chosen to offer their views, who is quoted, and who provides expertise, as many more are left out, so this feels more like a family portrait, surrounded by stories and photographs from his family, with a blend of archival newsreel and reenactments centering the story around only those closest to him, so naturally they’re going to offer the highest praise.  But what’s perhaps most interesting are the recorded comments from Ashe himself, which are surprisingly lucid, revealing his psychological state of mind at various points in his life.  After all, it’s his perspective that makes this film so interesting, feeling as if he’s providing comments specifically about the film, which was a technique used in another recent biographical portrait, Jamila Wignot’s Ailey (2021), with both eerily offering personal viewpoints from beyond the grave.  Ashe described 1968 as a year that was bad for all black people, starting with the assassination of Martin Luther King, which led to urban riots in black neighborhoods across the country, unable to contain their rage, followed by another assassination of Robert Kennedy, which really stung Ashe, as he had been with him just the day before, both gone in an instant, two of the leading advocates for blacks and marginalized people, creating a spiritual void, as both were among the best speakers in lifting the human spirit.  Making matters worse, segregationist George Wallace won 46 Electoral College votes for President.  But 1968 is also the year that Grand Slam tournaments agreed to allow professional players to compete with amateurs, the first time tennis players could make a living playing professional tennis, known as the Open Era.  Ashe had won 28 titles prior to the Open Era, becoming the first black man to win the U.S. Open title, winning the very first tournament, becoming the only player to have won both the amateur and Open National Championships in the same year.  It was also the only time his father would come down to the court to proudly congratulate his son.  In order to maintain Davis Cup eligibility, however, and have time away from army duty for important tournaments, Ashe was required to maintain his amateur status, so he could not accept the $14,000 first-prize money (The payout in 2022 is $2.5 million).  Struck by the activism from black athletes such as Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their fists in a black power salute at the Summer Olympics, Muhammad Ali refusing his army induction, and Nelson Mandela’s 27-year imprisonment to fight for the right to vote in South Africa, Ashe was impressed that more than 100 black athletes boycotted the New York Athletic Club for its discriminatory membership policies, discovering there was a new breed of black athletes, sparking a particular interest in fighting for social justice, but he had yet to find his voice.  Ali had a profound impact on Ashe’s evolving sense of what it meant to be a black athlete, yet when sociologist Harry Edwards, a San Jose State professor and mentor to black athletes called for a boycott of the Olympics by black athletes, Ashe responded “That’s not my way,” feeling fiercely protective with anyone trying to control his life.  Never part of the “angry black athletes,” as the media portrayed them, his inaction got him labeled an Uncle Tom by Edwards and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (also attending UCLA at the time), among others, with Abdul-Jabbar calling him “Arthur Ass,” while Billie Jean King, a trailblazer in her own sport, acerbically remarked, “Christ, I’m blacker than Arthur.”  Described by the New York Times in a 1966 article as “A pioneer in short white pants,” CBS reporter Charles Kuralt described Ashe as a lone black face in the “white country club, white suited white guys” world of tennis, a sport with a long history of white elitism, all of which left him feeling isolated and alone, wanting to rebut the commonly held misconception that athletes were “all brawn, no brains.” 

It’s unfortunate that Abdul-Jabbar, who is still completely accessible, was not part of this film, as he’s become a best-selling author and cultural critic, writing several books on black history, as it would be curious to understand how and when his perceptions about Ashe began to change, as he’s now mentioned prominently by President Obama, claiming the two athletes that he most emulated and admired were Muhammad Ali and Arthur Ashe, two opposite sides of the same spectrum.  Ali was flamboyantly outspoken, while Ashe was cautious and reserved, Ali excelled in a brutal sport, Ashe in a quietly genteel one, Ali refused induction into the Vietnam War, Ashe was a lieutenant in the Army, Ali joined Malcolm X into the Nation of Islam, Ashe followed the peaceful teachings of Martin Luther King, while in 1968, Ali appeared on the cover of Esquire magazine in April, Ashe appeared on the cover of Life magazine in September.  Born within a year of each other, in large cities in the segregated South (Ali was born in Louisville), both rose to the top of his sport, and, at the same time, transcended it.  Both entered the 60’s as the most promising black athletes, each becoming spokesmen for the black experience of the 60’s, taking their messages to Africa in the 70’s, and recording their final triumphs in 1975.  By the 1980’s, each man would show courage in the face of physical deterioration that tragically struck them early.  Both felt a deep kinship to Emmett Till and brought different messages to a country, and a black community, that had lived through a constant struggle for Civil Rights.  Ali’s experience growing up in the South led him to believe that America would never live up to its professed ideals of equality when it came to blacks, while Ashe’s experience led him to try to prove that the nation could.  Their lives can be read as a conversation about what it means to be black, and, by extension, what it means to be American.  The only time the two met was following a trip to Africa in 1973, with Ashe visiting Ali at his training camp in rural Pennsylvania, with Ashe recounting the experience, “Ali spoke in his usual folksy way, with the bad grammar and the colorful idioms.  But there certainly is no doubt in my mind that a very natively clever man lurks behind this façade.  We had a most forthright and intelligent conversation.”  Ashe continued to play on American Davis Cup teams, and in ten years representing his country he helped the U.S. win five championships (1963, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1978), while in 1969 he campaigned for U.S. sanctions against South Africa, marching against South African apartheid and the mistreatment of Haitian refugees, also winning the Australian Open in 1970.  But in 1973, he became the first black professional to play in South Africa, having his visa denied repeatedly for his outspoken remarks against apartheid, yet after asking for opinions from various activists, including Andrew Young, the American ambassador to the United Nations, who urged him to go, Ashe agreed so long as they went together, which finally allowed him to perform in the National Championships, losing to Jimmy Connors in the finals but winning the doubles championship.  While he took plenty of flak for that trip, it allowed persecuted blacks who were excluded from the event to see what was possible.  He also visited the slums of Soweto, where a 14-year old kid followed him around, learning he was “the first truly free black man” the kid had ever seen, offering a jolt of reality, yet he also met with high-ranking officials, and debated his trip with activists, though perhaps his biggest surprise was being called “master” by the domestic help at the home where he was staying in Johannesburg, something that felt like a surreal experience.  Ashe supported the founding of the Association of Tennis Professionals, was elected its president in 1974, while in May 1975, Ashe beat that John McEnroe nemesis Björn Borg to win the season-ending championship WCT (World Championship Tennis) Finals in Dallas, Texas.  Ashe was appointed captain of the United States Davis Cup team in 1981, the year after his retirement as a player, and his two first campaigns were successful, winning the competition in 1981 and 1982, largely due to the success of John McEnroe, whose temperamental style was often at odds with his captain, but they were successful together.

Like Ali’s Rumble in the Jungle, where his incredulous knockout of the heavily favored knockout artist George Foreman took the world by surprise, so too did Ashe’s carefully calibrated victory over brash upstart Jimmy Connors in the 1975 Wimbledon Finals, which remains one of the most epochal and popular upsets in tennis history.  Ashe had never beaten Connors, who was ranked #1 in the world and was playing with unprecedented confidence, seemingly invincible, having gone 99-4 the year before.  But there was bad blood between them, as Ashe believed fervently that playing for one’s country was an honor, yet Connors refused to join the Davis Cup team, and was leading a $3 million dollar lawsuit against Ashe for comments he made about it, calling him unpatriotic (the lawsuit was later dropped after the match).  Two years earlier, Ashe also helped lead a boycott against Wimbledon, which led to more player control for the first time in the sport, something that tremendously benefited Connors, who wanted no part of the boycott.  Wearing red, white, and blue sweatbands and his Davis Cup team jacket, with USA emblazoned across the front and back, Ashe personified his view of the beef, literally wearing America’s colors while masterfully executing a plan to eliminate pace, which Connors thrives on, and play only soft junk shots, dinks, drop shots and lobs, avoiding the hard serve, instead pushing him out wide with his sliced serves, leaving the rest of the court open, winning convincingly, like Althea Gibson had done nearly 20 years earlier, with Ashe turning to his player’s box and raising his fist, briefly, in celebration, continuing to show restraint, remaining the only black man to win the singles title at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, and the Australian Open, retiring four years later with 818 wins, 260 losses, 51 titles, and $1,584,909 in tournament winnings, where he is still the only black man to ever be ranked #1 in the world.  Afterwards, Ashe began speaking up more on social issues, making speeches, which caught the eye of Harry Edwards who realized they were more radical than his own speeches, but delivered in such a polite manner, realizing that the targeted audience was largely educated whites, where Ashe could bring all schools of thought to the table, even engage Republican leaders of business in stuffy white establishments, reaching an entirely different demographic than the typical black activist audience.  In October 1976, he met photographer and graphic artist Jeanne Moutoussamy at a United Negro College Fund benefit, daughter of architect John Moutoussamy, the first black architect to design a high-rise building in Chicago.  Four months later they were married, with their wedding performed by Andrew Young.  Her comments are priceless, explaining Ashe was a typical chauvinist man who never thought to consider women’s rights, but they brought out the best in each other, expanding the reach of their knowledge and potential, as his activism grew and embraced not only the Civil Rights movement, but all oppressed people throughout the world.  When Nelson Mandela was released from Robbins Prison, becoming South Africa’s first black President, he traveled to New York, where one of the first people he openly embraced was Arthur Ashe, seeking him out, remembering his earlier commitment to his country. 

At the age of 36, Ashe suffered a heart attack while holding a tennis clinic in New York, which drew plenty of attention to the hereditary aspect of the illness, as Ashe was a well-conditioned athlete, but his mother suffered from heart congestion, while his father suffered two heart attacks during his 50’s, one occurring just a week earlier.  Ashe underwent a quadruple bypass operation, but continued to develop symptoms afterwards, needing a second surgery four years later.  In 1988, however, he was diagnosed with HIV, quickly developing into AIDS, apparently contracted from a tainted blood transfusion during his second heart operation, a condition he kept private for a number of years, with Ashe teaching college courses, providing lectures at colleges and universities, commentating for ABC Sports, writing a regular column in The Washington Post, but also writing for Time magazine, Tennis magazine, The New York Times, and four autobiographical works before publishing a three-volumed book chronicling the participation of black athletes in American sport from 1619 to the present entitled A Hard Road to Glory: A History of the African-American Athlete, a project of extraordinary magnitude, having worked on it with a team of researchers for a period of six years, identifying people like Jack Johnson, Joe Gans, Isaac Murphy, Marshall Taylor and Howard P. Drew, athletic icons ignored in sports histories after WWII, but in their day, they were much better known and admired than Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Dubois, and Marcus Garvey, with Ashe contending scholars largely omitted the subject because so few books were written about it.  But by 1992, word got out about his condition, so he went public about his illness, founding the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS, working to raise awareness about the virus, dying not long afterwards at the age of 49.  His funeral attracted 6,000 mourners as his body lay in state at the Governor’s Mansion in Richmond, the first person to lie in state at the mansion since the Confederate general Stonewall Jackson in 1863, allowing an additional 5,000 mourners to pay their respects.  Cinematographer Rex Miller was contacted by Linda Zimmerman, the daughter of esteemed photographer John Zimmerman who was doing a photoshoot on Ashe from Life magazine, suggesting he make a film, “We have 41 rolls of film of Arthur Ashe that nobody’s ever seen before.”  Unlike Pollard’s earlier film, Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me (2017), this lacks the distinctive filmmaking and personal intensity and is much closer to the vest, still not telling the whole story about this man’s life, leaving gaping holes (which this review attempts to fill), where the reach of his influence is barely touched upon, as we don’t hear from historians, or the Williams sisters, Naomi Osaka, Simone Biles, Colin Kaepernick, LeBron James, President Obama, or for that matter Bill Russell or Jim Brown, or anyone from the Black Lives Matter movement, voices connecting that 60’s arc of activism to today’s black athletes.  While his brother Johnnie, who was in the Marines during the Vietnam War, states plainly that he added a second tour of duty to protect his brother (due to devastating family losses in WWII, the military drafted the Sole Survivor Policy, prohibiting drafting more than one family member), allowing his career to develop, taking satisfaction that he had a hand in his considerable success.  Billie Jean King and John McEnroe offer personal memories along with Andrew Young, while Ashe’s widow adds her own heartfelt commentary, “Arthur was the one who took on that role as an activist, like Jackie Robinson did,” both adopting a young daughter who lost her own father at the age of seven, much like Arthur lost his mother at the age of 6, sharing in her husband’s words, “We both want to distress the comfortable and comfort the distressed.”  Inspiring whites and blacks alike, Ashe was that rare athlete who transcended all boundaries. 

Postscript

Ashe was inducted into the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Hall of Fame, the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame, while also founding numerous charitable organizations, including the National Junior Tennis League, the ABC Cities Tennis Program, the Athlete-Career Connection, and the Safe Passage Foundation.  The U.S. Postal Service introduced a commemorative Arthur Ashe stamp, the main stadium at the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, New York is named in his honor, while his hometown of Richmond, Virginia honored him with a statue on Monument Avenue, something previously reserved only for Confederate leaders, renaming the street Arthur Ashe Boulevard.  A tennis club in Manayunk, Pennsylvania is named in his honor, also an Ashe Athletic Center in Richmond, Virginia, while the UCLA campus has the Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center.  Sports Illustrated named Ashe its Sportsman of the Year in 1992 and USA Today named him one of the twenty-five most inspiring people of the last quarter of the 20th century, a list including Nelson Mandela, Pope John Paul II, Ryan White, Mother Teresa, Oprah Winfrey, and Mohammad Ali.  President Clinton posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.