THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 18, 1995 TAG: 9506180079
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
The city of Richmond, which banned the young Arthur Ashe from lighted tennis courts because he was black, is now considering enshrining him alongside the heroes of the Confederacy.
The Richmond Planning Commission will debate a proposal on Monday to place a statue of Ashe, the champion of Wimbledon and civil rights, on Monument Avenue, a boulevard lined with granite giants of the Confederacy.
The proposed site has angered both whites and blacks. Some whites say they want Monument Avenue to remain a memorial to rebel valor. Black opponents of the site say they are dismayed by the idea of erecting a statue of Ashe in a neighborhood where he would not have walked.
Ashe left the segregated city in disgust in 1961, while he was in high school. His race precluded participation in city tennis tournaments.
Thomas N. Chewning, a white Richmond tennis champion who was a contemporary of Ashe's, did not meet him until they played in an integrated tennis tournament in West Virginia. ``Arthur wound up No. 1 in the world and unranked in the city,'' said Chewning, who is the co-chairman of the committee that was formed three years ago to raise money for the statue.
Shortly before his death of AIDS in 1993, at the age of 49, Ashe approved a design for the statue. Chewning's committee proposed the Monument Avenue site.
Ashe's stepmother, Lorene K. Ashe, of Gum Spring, Va., said family members had mixed feelings about placing the statue on Monument Avenue. ``Wherever the children can see it, that's what Arthur would want.''
On Monument Avenue, sweeping from downtown to the University of Richmond five miles away, Ashe would be nestled in the city's symbolic heart. Two cannons mark the earthen defense lines built to repel Union troops when Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy.
The 24-foot memorial to Ashe would join a 61-foot statue of Robert E. Lee astride his horse Traveller. At other plazas, Stonewall Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart rein in their chargers. Jefferson Davis is saluted as the president of ``the Confederate States of America'' and a ``defender of the rights of states.''
To some natives, the street is holy ground. Merle N. Meyer, 56, who lives two blocks from the planned site of the Ashe sculpture, said selection of the site was ``an in-your-face gesture'' by city leaders seeking to portray a progressive image. ``He didn't take his millions and give it back to Richmond,'' Meyer said. ``He sent it to South Africa and was living in New York.'' by CNB