Doing Right by Ashe

With regard to what happened in Richmond over the summer, concerning statues of Confederate heroes on Monument Avenue, this may be a good time to think about what to do with the Arthur Ashe statue (and pedestal) now standing at the intersection of Roseneath Ave. and Monument Ave. First, here's a quote from Arthur Ashe's widow, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, via Tennis.com:

It was never an idea of Arthur’s to be on Monument Avenue. You have your white Confederates there, and then you have a Black favorite son. It felt divisive, and Arthur wasn’t divisive.

For Moutoussamy-Ashe, that apparently still remains true, even today, with most of the Confederate memorials kaput. The recently-published article in Tennis.com is worth reading. It provides plenty of good background material. 

Next, here's a little more background, from my point of view: In 1996 I was working as a freelance videographer and I took an interest in the Arthur Ashe Monument controversy that surrounded the decision to place an Ashe sculpture at the intersection of Roseneath and Monument. Then there was the aesthetic controversy about the art, itself. It seemed then that some folks in Richmond, including some art critics, of a sort, weren't all that fond of sculptor Paul DiPasquale's depiction of Ashe.

Since Ashe, a fellow Richmonder, was a hero of mine, I decided to assemble a video report of the situation. Accordingly, I taped dozens of interviews of random passers-by opining at the site of the memorial. And, I sought out a few people, in particular, to get their views. Among those I sought out was Tom Chewning, who had been one of the most significant fundraisers for the project.

At the time, Chewning was an top shelf executive with Dominion Energy. He was a prominent tennis player as a teenager, so I remembered him from Thomas Jefferson High School. (He was three years ahead of me and Tom was kind enough to pretend he remembered me, too.) More important, in 1960 he became friends with Ashe. They met at a tennis tournament in West Virginia.

When I asked Chewning about his opinion of the art he laughed and ducked the question. Basically, he said he would leave that part of it to others; he was focused on the fundraising and seeing to it the monument became a real thing. So I asked him why it mattered so much to him. His answer bowled me over.

After telling me about meeting Ashe and becoming friends with him, he told me a story. It seems he was addressing a group of teenagers about Ashe, sometime not long after Arthur's death. Chewning explained how while he and Ashe were both top flight local tennis players, when they were in high school, Ashe wasn't allowed to play in the boys' city championship tournaments in Richmond.

Then one of the kids in the audience asked Chewning a question: If you and Arthur were friends, why didn't you boycott the tournaments he was banned from playing in, simply because he was black?

Chewning was flabbergasted. He tried to explain how different it was in Richmond then. How it wouldn't have changed anything. He told the kids it just never occurred to him…

After his awkward struggle to answer that simple question, Chewning knew he had not satisfied his polite audience. Thinking about it later, he knew he had to do something to put it right. Eventually, that realization became a mission to raise whatever money it took to erect a statue to remember the friend maybe he should have stood by, all those years ago.

Debt paid. 

 

The people who raised money and worked to make it possible to put the Ashe statue on Monument Avenue surely meant well. No doubt, DiPasquale meant well. And since Ashe is a hero of mine I was, and remain, glad he is being honored with a memorial placed in the public way. Still, I recognize it might have originally been placed elsewhere and, yes, perhaps there was a better place. But in 1996 former-Governor Doug Wilder wanted it to go exactly where it is now. 

 

Wilder had his reasons. And it seems to me, that was that. 

 

In 2020, if we Richmonders have learned anything about this sort of thing, it's that public art is something that needs to be considered carefully. And, that includes the matter of who should make the decisions about what it ought to look like and where it should be placed. 

 

So, going forward, I'm not saying Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe's opinion is the only one that should be considered. Nonetheless, I am saying it should be considered and from what I've gathered, it was not given proper deference in 1996. 

-- Image from Tennis.com