Arthur Ashe, Confederate Hero?

Great Debates
1

My recent trip to Virginia has spawned some racial debate, so I thought I’d throw this one in.

On my way home, I stopped to visit my brother in Richmond. He took us fo a tour of the city.

We saw Monument Boulevard.

Lee Circle has a great big statue of Lee on his horse.

Stonewall Jackson has his own circle, and is similarly mounted.

Jeb Stuart who burned the town I live in has a great big horse statue.

Jefferson Davis is seated in a Lincolnesques kind of setting, surrounded by pillars and such.

Everybody we saw on that road was a notable Confederate.

Except…
Arthur Ashe.

He stands at one end holding a Bible in one hand, and a tennis raquet in the other. His hands are upraised in dramatic fashion, as hordes of small children with black features reach towards him.

Allrighty then.

Now, I happen to be a big fan of Arthur Ashe. He played inhumanly surgically precise tennis. His lean physique moved like a demon on the courts. In public he was softspoken and undemonstrative. He brought quiet class and dignity to the game, when it was bogged down by Prima Donnas. In fact, he is the the epitomy of soft-spoken southern gentility and courtesy. His untimely illness and death and the great grace and power with which he handled his infirmity is a testament to humanity in general. He had what I can only describe as rare and real class.

Arhtur Ashe stadium is a wonderful and appropriate testament to this unique man.

I think you would diminish the man to say that he was an inspiration to black people. It would diminish him to say that he was an inspiration for those with heart disease, or those with HIV, or for those who yearn to excel at a sport. He was all those things and more.

But, to the best of my knowledge, I don’t recall that he was a Confederate General.

I also don’t beleive he was much of a Bible Thumper.

As he stands there on Monument Boulevard, seemingly about to service the Bible like a tennis ball into the faces of these kids, I can’t help but think that something is wrong with this picture.

Now, it seems like there’s a Lee Circle in every Southern city, just as there’s a Martin Luther King Boulevard in every Major urban area.

I’m not to sure about the appropriateness of lining a street with statues to Confederates either. Lee I can understand. I can understand Stonewall Jackson.

Jefferson Davis, and Jeb Stuart, not so much. Even if your a Confederate apologist you have to admit that Stuart was an impetuous fool, and is at least partly responsible for the loss at Gettysburg.
How Arthur Ashe fits in here, I’m not sure.

I suspect his statue is fulfilling the role of token, and that’s a pity. He deserves more than that, and it’s a poor justification for the rest (if they need it.) A better statement would have been to have Sherman at the North end, grinning evilly at the rest of the statues.

As it is, having Arthur Ashe there just seems stupid and wrong.

2

Politically, my friend. Politically.

Well, as a matter of political and historical fact, the statue is there as a result of Virginia (and Richmond) black community action, not the conservatives thinking of the least offensive black man to have as a token. If you would like to come on down and stand up next to the statue and give voice to your opinion, I suspect you would need a good sized contingent of State Police for protection (and not from the white folk).

Your opinion may be shared by some of the people down here in Virginia; some may be white, and a few may even be black. But if they say it, they pick their company and don’t say it too loudly. Welcome to the new, PC South.

3

Richmonder here…As I remember correctly there was quite a bit of debate as to where the statue would be placed. The Arthur Ashe Center seemed logical but Monument Avenue (Avenue BTW not Boulevard) is fine by me. What fried my cookies about the statue is how damned ugly it is, looks like KMart art. Little kids bodies cut off at the waist. It’s just not attractive. Has a kind of cheap look to it. The committee that picked the damned thing had crappy taste if you ask me.

Monument Avenue is a beautiful street not just because of the statues. The row houses are magnificent. Richmond is a beautiful little city, and rather clean too for the most part. I don’t see anything wrong with erecting a statue to honor a black man or even with the placement of it. We have a statue of Bill Robinson too, you know, the tap dancer from the Shirley Temple movies. It’s a shame but for a couple of hundred years or so black people were pretty much shut out from contributing much of anything to society in the South but back breaking labor.

Richmond’s population is predominately black. That isn’t news and it isn’t new. It’s not just PC for black people to want to be recognized for their contributions, it’s human nature. And now that they have a voice they are demanding it.

Needs2know

4

You can name something after the person. But, unless you were about to build something, you’d be ‘re-naming’ it. And, suddenly, you’ll discover that the street you’d traveled for 20 years was really named after some Civil War leader you’d never heard of before. Renaming streets, in particular sets folks to edge 'cause it costs real people/businesses $$ (have to re-do their stationary etc).

In my state (MI), little road side ‘rest stops’ often have a sign in front of them “in memory of George L. Brooks” or whatever, and this apparently was considered an honor (leading me to ‘the few, the proud, the latrines’ - Ha! I knew I could work that particular pun into something some day)

Or you could put up a statue. This has several advantages since you can often convince groups to raise the funds necessary w/o government/taxpayer help, the maintenance is low, and you can point at it and say ‘eyap, we’ve done something here’.

Now, as for the rest of the crew there - you’re focusing on the wrong angle. Once erected, barring a tornado or something similar, you’re stuck with it. If you think renaming a street is a tall order, just try and take down a statue!

So, there’s what happened. Years ago, folks in power made gestures to folks who would sing the praises of Jeb Stuart et al. Now they’re stuck with him.

And I agree w/ya - Arthur Ashe was a classy man, in all senses of the word.

5

the south is just quarky like that. At the University of Texas, where I go to school, George Washington’s statue in the center of the main mall is flanked to his right by Woodrow Wilson ( Why Wilson ?) and Jeff Davis. I find it funny that we have a man that waged war on our country next to the founder of our country. If one wants to make a statue to any rebel he or she should either A) Have a good cause B) Win the war ( Might makes right). Davis had neither. UT also has a dozen other Confederate guys. Oddly enough I have never seen on campus a statue of Sam Houston, the George Washington of Texas and the coolest president of a country ever. He was adopted into an indian tribe, Had lots of women, shot guns, and a whole bunch of neat westernesque stuff. When he was later the governor of Texas he even refused to succeed from the Union (Travis County where Austin is also voted against succession). Which might explain the lack of a major statue. Everyday in our school newspaper somebody demands the statue of Davis be taken down and everyday someone else will talk about “southern pride” and other stuff to that effect. But thats the south for you. But I like living in the south anyways. You got to love a region where you get free refills in most every restaurant and people will actually appologize for bumping into you. With deals like that they could put up big pictures of Chairman Mao for all I care.

6

Nah, just strange placement of a statue, sounds like to me.

7

You’re all missing something here. There’s a statue of Arthur Ashe in Richmond because he was born there. Bill “Bojangles” Robinson was also born there. There are statues of Confederate generals and politicians there because Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy.

It’s not surprising that in the years after the Civil War the citizens of Richmond decided that heroes of the Confederacy were the obvious people to honor with statues. By the late twentieth century though, the people of Richmond, who were by then majority black, decided that there should be some statues of African-Americans, and when Robinson and then Ashe, both born in Richmond, died, they were the obvious ones to be honored with statues.