Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 20, 1995 TAG: 9506210051
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
As a young man, Arthur Ashe left segregated Richmond in disgust because it banned him from playing in city tennis tournaments.
Now, the city is expected to honor the late sports hero and civil rights leader by allowing a statue of him on a boulevard studded with monuments to Confederate generals.
Richmond's planning commission voted unanimously Monday to place a 24-foot-tall statue of Ashe, who died in 1993 of complications from AIDS contracted from a blood transfusion, on Monument Avenue. Some Southerners call the five-mile, tree-lined boulevard graced with stately homes ``the most beautiful street in America.'' Some Northern detractors have termed it ``Loser's Row.''
The Ashe proposal now goes to the City Council, which is expected to approve it, Councilman Timothy Kaine said.
The monument's sculptor, Paul Di Pasquale, hopes to break ground July 10, the 52nd anniversary of Ashe's birth. The Planning Commission, however, approved a site about two blocks from the one Di Pasquale presented to them, which casts doubt on his original schedule. Efforts are under way to raise the $400,000 the statue will cost.
The idea of placing Ashe, the first black man to win Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, in the company of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and other Confederate heroes disturbs some residents who want to keep the street's Civil War heritage uncluttered.
It also bothers some of Ashe's admirers, who say he never would have supported a memorial in the predominantly white neighborhood. Ashe, who approved a design for the bronze and granite statue shortly before his death, grew up in a poor neighborhood several miles away.
``Why not put the monument where he came [from]?'' Eugene Price, 54, a middle school classmate of Ashe, told the planning commission. Growing up, ``we couldn't ever go to Monument.''
Ludwell Johnson, a retired Civil War history professor at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, said, ``Arthur Ashe had no debt of gratitude to white Richmond. He should be someplace where young black boys and girls can see him.''
As a youth, Ashe was banned from playing on lighted tennis courts because he was black. He left the city in 1961 when he was in high school and entered UCLA later that year. Within seven years, he was ranked No. 1 in the world.
Ashe's widow, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, and other family members support the Monument Avenue memorial, said Randy Ashe, a cousin of the tennis great.
``You can't please everyone,'' said Randy Ashe, 40, a high school physical education teacher who sat on a site selection committee. But ``the family feels that Monument Avenue ... wouldn't be an area where the monument would be allowed to get run down.''
The 62-foot-tall Lee statue, erected in 1890, was the first to be erected on the street. Memorials to Jeb Stuart and Jefferson Davis followed in 1907; Stonewall Jackson in 1919 and Matthew Fontaine Maury in 1927.
Over the years, community members have proposed memorials to Thomas Jefferson, Woodrow Wilson, Edgar Allen Poe and other non-Confederates, but the suggestions went nowhere.
Kaine said integrating Monument Avenue would help the city get beyond its image as the Capital of the Confederacy.
``The avenue is named Monument Avenue, not Civil War Monument Avenue,'' Kaine said. ``We're opening it up to be an avenue of more of Richmond history.''
Others say the Ashe monument has become an issue of political correctness.
``In such circumstances, the statue would be less a tribute than a revisionist pawn,'' the conservative Richmond Times-Dispatch said in a Sunday editorial.
The Rev. Henry C. Garrard, 67, a retired black Baptist minister, told the Planning Commission he opposed the site because many elderly people wouldn't be able to see an Ashe memorial on Monument. But, he said, he liked the idea of adding a humanitarian to the line of Confederates. ``Perhaps that would add dignity to Monument Avenue,'' he said.
by CNB