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Arthur Ashe (Black Americans of Achievement)
Arthur Ashe - Black Americans of Achievement Author:Ted Weissberg, Nathan Irvin Huggins (Editor) A trailblazer in the white-dominated world of tennis, cool, gentlemanly Arthur Ashe remains the only black ever to attain the number one ranking on the men's tour. — Born in 1943, Ashe was six years old when he first picked up a racket outside his home in Richmond, VIrginia. He sharpened his ground strokes on the area's blacks-only ... more »courts and showed so much talent by the age of 10 that Dr. Robert Johnson, a leading member of the all-black American Tennis Association (ATA), agreed to train him. Ashe went on to win the ATA's boy's, junior's, and men's national titles and poised himself to break through the sport's racial barrier in 1961, when he received a scholarship to the University of California, Los Angeles.
"You are never really playing an opponent," Ashe says. "You are playing yourself, your own highest standards." And his standards have indeed been lofty. A pioneer of serve-and-volley tennis, he became America's best collegiate player in 1965 and the nation's highest-ranked amateur three years later, after he netted the U.S. Open men's singles title. He also helped his country win the Davis Cup in 1968 -- one of 7 times he was part of a victorious U.S. squad -- and reached the top of his profession when he was almost 32, by defeating a much younger Jimmy Connors at Wimbledon in 1975.
A heart attack followed by coronary bypass surgery brought Ashe's playing career to a halt in 1980. Nevertheless, when he was accorded the honor of being inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame five years later, his admirers could accurately say that Arthur Ashe was the exception to the rule that nice guys finish last.
Black Americans of Acheievement tells the stories of black men and women who have helped shape the course of modern history. Written in a straightforward, colorful style for young adults, the series is richly illustrated with photographs, art, and documents. Each volume contains a bibliography and complete chronology of the subject's life. Coretta Scott King's inspirational essay, "On Achievement," gives additional meaning to these diverse biographies. « less