Arthur Ashe
Throughout his twenty-year tennis career, Arthur Ashe won some of the most coveted singles championship titles in tennis: Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, the Australian Open and the World Cup Team Finals. Aside from Yannick Noah, he remains the only Black man to have won a Grand Slam title. Ashe was a member of the U.S. Davis Cup Team from 1963 to 1970, and in 1975, 1976, and 1978; as its captain, he led the team to victories in 1981 and 1982. He was a member of the U.S. World Cup Team from 1970 to 1976, and in 1979. Not only a singularly talented athlete, Ashe was also a vocal champion for human rights across the globe and marched against South African apartheid and protested against the mistreatment of Haitian refugees. He retired from professional tennis in 1980, and went on to become National Campaign Chairman for the American Heart Association and the only nonmedical member of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Advisory Council. Ashe contracted HIV from a blood transfusion in 1983, and later founded the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS. Sports Illustrated named him Sportsman of the Year in 1992: “Arthur Ashe epitomizes good works, devotion to family and unwavering grace under pressure.” He died in New York City on February 6, 1993. Ashe was married to fine art photographer Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, the author of Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers. They lived in New York City with their daughter Camera.
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