The Champion
Arthur Robert Ashe Jr. was born July 10, 1943, in Richmond, Virginia — a city that was, at the time, thoroughly segregated. He learned tennis on the segregated public courts of Brookfield Park under the mentorship of Dr. Robert Walter Johnson, the same coach who developed Althea Gibson. He went on to become the first Black player on the University of California, Los Angeles tennis team, and he served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army while continuing to compete.
In 1968, he won the first US Open of the professional Open era and became the first Black man ranked number one in the world.[2] In 1975, at Wimbledon, he defeated the heavily favored Jimmy Connors in one of the greatest upsets in tennis history — becoming the first Black man to win that championship.[3] In January 1970, he won the Australian Open, defeating Dick Crealy in the final — his second Grand Slam singles title.[4] Three Grand Slam titles. A Davis Cup career spanning 1963 to 1978. A record that would have defined any athlete's entire legacy on its own.
But Ashe was never only an athlete. He served on the board of the NAACP and was a vocal opponent of apartheid in South Africa, arrested at one point for protesting outside the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C. He was also a writer — he authored A Hard Road to Glory, a three-volume history of the African American athlete. He understood, long before 1992, that what happened to him in public carried meaning beyond himself.
That understanding would be tested in a way he could not have anticipated.
The Diagnosis
In 1979, Ashe suffered a heart attack at age 36. He underwent quadruple bypass surgery and retired from professional tennis the following year.[5] In 1983, he needed a second heart surgery. During or shortly after that operation, he received a blood transfusion from the hospital's blood supply. Ashe later said doctors were "100% sure" he acquired HIV through a transfusion connected to one of his two heart surgeries, and "95% sure" it was the 1983 operation.[6]
In 1988, Ashe lost use of his right hand and was admitted to New York Hospital for brain surgery. The workup revealed toxoplasmosis, an opportunistic infection strongly associated with HIV. The diagnosis was confirmed: Ashe was living with HIV.[7] He had acquired the virus not through any behavior of his own, but through a medical procedure meant to save his life — years before blood banks screened donated blood for HIV.
He told his wife, photographer Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, right away. He told a small, carefully chosen circle of friends and medical advisors. He did not tell the public. He believed — and said so later — that he had a fundamental right to keep his medical condition private. For nearly four years, he and Jeanne lived with that knowledge quietly, raising their daughter Camera, continuing his advocacy work, and managing his health.
He was not hiding. He was living.
HIV Through Blood Transfusion
Before U.S. blood banks began routinely screening donated blood for HIV in the spring of 1985, people who received transfusions had no way to know whether that blood was safe. Federal health officials estimated in the late 1980s that roughly 12,000 people who received transfusions between 1978 and April 1985 may have been infected with HIV before screening began, and the CDC later documented thousands of confirmed transfusion-associated AIDS cases from that period.[8] Ashe was one of them. Since 1985, screening has made transfusion-related HIV transmission extremely rare in the United States. His story remains one of the clearest reminders that HIV did not — and does not — discriminate, and that no amount of personal behavior could have protected him from a contaminated blood supply.
The Forced Disclosure
On April 7, 1992, Doug Smith — a USA Today tennis writer who had known Ashe since they played tennis together as teenagers in Richmond — came to see him. Smith's editors had gotten a tip that Ashe had AIDS and wanted him to confirm or deny it before they ran the story.[9] Ashe would not confirm or deny it that day. But he understood what was coming.
He had not chosen this moment. He had not chosen this audience. He had not chosen to make his diagnosis part of the public record. The newspaper's decision to pursue the story — regardless of his wishes — threatened to strip him of the medical privacy he had maintained for nearly four years. He later called it one of the most painful experiences of his life.
He called a press conference for the very next day, April 8, 1992.
He stood in front of more than 30 television cameras and said: "I am HIV positive." He explained how doctors believed he had contracted the virus. He said that he and Jeanne had known since 1988. He said he had not disclosed sooner because he believed he had the right to keep his medical condition private — the same right he felt any American should have. He said he was angry at being forced into the open. And then he pivoted: since the choice was no longer his to make, he would use the moment to do something useful.
Within days, he announced the creation of the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS.[10]
“I am not running away from this. I just didn’t want to burden people with it.”— Arthur Ashe, at his April 8, 1992 press conference
His Response
What happened after Arthur Ashe's forced disclosure is, in some ways, the most remarkable part of the story. He had every reason to be consumed by the violation. He was not. He organized.
The Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS went on to raise millions of dollars for research and education. He also helped found Athletes and Artists for a New South Africa's AIDS-awareness efforts and became one of the most prominent public faces of the epidemic at a moment when that face was desperately needed — not as a gay man, not as a person who used injection drugs, but as a heterosexual Black man who had acquired the virus through a medical procedure. That visibility mattered enormously. It expanded the public's understanding of who the epidemic touched, at a time when stigma and misinformation about HIV were widespread.
In September 1992, Ashe addressed the United Nations General Assembly during its 47th session, speaking about the global scope of the epidemic and the urgent need for greater international resources and cooperation, including the devastation already unfolding in sub-Saharan Africa.[11] He was seriously ill by then. He stood at the podium anyway.
He also spoke publicly, in a television interview that generated enormous response, about something that surprised many people: living with HIV was not the hardest thing he had faced. Being Black in America, he said, was harder. He was not minimizing his diagnosis. He was being precise about the layered, everyday weight that Black Americans carried — and refusing to let HIV become the single defining fact of his life.
What Ashe Said About Being Black in America
Asked whether living with HIV was the heaviest burden he had carried, Ashe said no — that being Black in America was harder, because it was a weight he had carried every day of his life, in every room he entered, without relief. The remark drew intense discussion at the time. Ashe was clear that he was not ranking sufferings against each other; he was naming the systemic, everyday nature of racism as something distinct from illness. It was a characteristically precise and honest thing to say from a man who spent his life navigating both.
Days of Grace
In his final months, Ashe worked on a memoir with the biographer and literary scholar Arnold Rampersad. He proofread the final galleys just two days before his death. The book, Days of Grace, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in June 1993, a few months after he died.[12] It is part autobiography, part meditation — on tennis, on race, on illness, on parenthood, on faith, and on what it means to live a dignified life under conditions you did not choose.
He wrote about Camera, his daughter, then five or six years old. He wrote about Jeanne. He wrote about what he wanted to leave behind. He wrote about his faith and his composure not as performances, but as genuine ways of orienting himself toward a life he believed was still worth living fully, even as it was ending.
He was 49 years old.
On February 6, 1993 — less than ten months after his forced disclosure — Arthur Ashe died of AIDS-related pneumonia at New York Hospital.[13] An estimated 60,000 people filed past his casket as he lay in state at the Governor's Mansion in Richmond, Virginia — the city where he had learned tennis on segregated public courts decades earlier.[14]
President Bill Clinton posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.[15] In February 1997, the USTA announced that the new main stadium being built for the US Open in Flushing Meadows, New York, would be named Arthur Ashe Stadium in his honor. It was not a renaming of an existing court — it was a brand-new stadium, and it opened on August 25, 1997, as the largest tennis stadium in the world.[16]
A Timeline
The Man Who Turned a Violation Into a Platform
Arthur Ashe did not choose to become a symbol. He was a private man who believed, reasonably, that his medical condition was his own business. When that belief was overridden — when a newspaper decided the public's curiosity outweighed his right to privacy — he did not collapse or retreat. He built something out of it.
That is not a small thing. Most people would have every right to be undone by a violation like that. Ashe was angry, and he said so plainly. And then he organized: the foundation, the UN address, the memoir, public advocacy conducted from a body that was failing him. None of it was compelled. All of it was chosen, drawing on a character forged over decades of navigating racism, athletic competition, illness, and public life.
He also gave the epidemic something it badly needed in 1992: the visible, public face of a heterosexual Black man who had acquired HIV through no fault of his own — a champion, a father, a person of unimpeachable integrity who did not fit any of the stigmatizing narratives the era relied on. His visibility, forced as it was, widened the public's understanding of who HIV could touch.
He spent the last year of his life doing something generous with the time he had left. Days of Grace endures because it is honest — about illness, about race, about love, and about what it means to face the end of life with your values intact.
Read Rock Hudson's story → · Read Elizabeth Taylor's story → · Explore the Learning Hub →
References & Sources
- ATP Tour. "Arthur Ashe: Bio." ATP Tour. atptour.com/en/players/arthur-ashe/a063/bio ↩
- Andscape. "US Open marks 20th anniversary of Arthur Ashe Stadium." Andscape, August 30, 2017. andscape.com/features/us-open-marks-20th-anniversary-of-arthur-ashe-stadium ↩
- USTA. "Australian Open: American Success 'On This Day.'" USTA, January 26, 2021. usta.com — Australian Open: American Success ↩
- The New York Times. "Ashe Beats Crealy in 3 Sets For Aussie Open Tennis Title." The New York Times, January 27, 1970. nytimes.com/1970/01/27/archives ↩
- Los Angeles Times. "Tennis Great Ashe Reveals He Has AIDS." Los Angeles Times, April 9, 1992. latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-04-09-mn-372-story ↩
- UPI. "Arthur Ashe confirms he has AIDS." UPI Archives, April 8, 1992. upi.com/Archives/1992/04/08 ↩
- UPI. "Arthur Ashe confirms he has AIDS." UPI Archives, April 8, 1992 (brain surgery and 1988 diagnosis details). upi.com/Archives/1992/04/08 ↩
- The New York Times. "AIDS Tests for Transfusions Before 1985?" The New York Times, March 17, 1987; Tampa Bay Times, "Blood officials knew of AIDS risk," 1994 (CDC transfusion-associated AIDS case data). nytimes.com/1987/03/17/science ↩
- STAT News. "Did the public have the right to know Arthur Ashe had AIDS?" STAT, June 26, 2022. statnews.com/2022/06/26/arthur-ashe-and-aids ↩
- Los Angeles Times. "Struggles On and Off the Court: Days of Grace." Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1993 (founding of the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS). latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-07-04-bk-9732-story ↩
- United Nations Digital Library. "Provisional verbatim record of the 12th meeting, General Assembly, 47th session," September 25, 1992. digitallibrary.un.org/record/151901 ↩
- Kirkus Reviews. "Days of Grace, by Arthur Ashe with Arnold Rampersad." Kirkus Reviews; publication date June 23, 1993, Alfred A. Knopf. kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/arthur-ashe/days-of-grace ↩
- Los Angeles Times obituary coverage and Chicago Tribune, "Last Words of a Champion," June 13, 1993 (date and cause of death). chicagotribune.com/1993/06/13/last-words-of-a-champion ↩
- Andscape. "US Open marks 20th anniversary of Arthur Ashe Stadium." Andscape, August 30, 2017 (mourners at Richmond viewing). andscape.com/features/us-open-marks-20th-anniversary-of-arthur-ashe-stadium ↩
- Andscape. "US Open marks 20th anniversary of Arthur Ashe Stadium." Andscape, August 30, 2017 (Presidential Medal of Freedom). andscape.com/features/us-open-marks-20th-anniversary-of-arthur-ashe-stadium ↩
- Tennis Majors. "August 25, 1997: The day the US Open officially opened Arthur Ashe stadium court." Tennis Majors, August 25, 2025 (stadium built new and named in 1997; opened August 25, 1997). tennismajors.com — Arthur Ashe stadium court ↩