Arthur Ashe

July 10, 1943. Born at Richmond, VA, Arthur Ashe became a legend for his list of firsts as a black tennis player. Chosen for the US Davis Cup team in 1963, he became captain in 1980. He won the US men’s singles championship and US Open in 1968 and in 1975 the men’s singles at Wimbledon. Ashe won a total of 33 career titles. In 1985 he was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. He helped create inner-city tennis programs for youths and wrote the three-volume A Hard Road to Glory: A History of the African-American Athlete. Ashe announced Apr 8, 1992, that he had contracted HIV, probably through a transfusion during bypass surgery in 1983. In September 1992 he began a $5 million fund-raising effort on behalf of the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS and campaigned for public awareness regarding the AIDS epidemic. He died at New York, NY, Feb 6, 1993, from pneumonia.

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