National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day

Spotlight: Arthur Ashe

Biography Reports

November 16, 2021

Arthur Ashe

Who Was Arthur Ashe?

Arthur Ashe became the first (and remains the only) African American male tennis player to win the U.S. Open and Wimbledon singles titles. He was also the first African American man to earn the No. 1 ranking in the world and the first to earn induction into the Tennis Hall of Fame. Always an activist, when Ashe learned that he had contracted AIDS via a blood transfusion, he turned his efforts to raising awareness about the disease, before finally succumbing to it on

 February 6, 1993.

CNN Reports

June 24, 2022

How tennis legend Arthur Ashe became one of the most vocal HIV/AIDS activists

Ashe speaking at the World Health Organization at the United Nations headquarters in New York during a meeting on World AIDS Day in 1992. Hai Do/AFP/Getty Image

It’s believed Ashe contracted HIV from a blood transfusion for an open-heart surgery, eventually learning of his condition in 1988.

At the time, HIV/AIDS was heavily stigmatized. And Ashe, having retired from tennis eight years earlier, chose to keep his diagnosis a secret.

That is, until 1992 – when USA Today contacted him saying it was about to break the story. So, on April 8, at a press conference with his wife, Ashe came forward.

The reactions were largely positive, said Eric Allen Hall, an associate professor at Northern Illinois University and author of “Arthur Ashe: Tennis and Justice in the Civil Rights Era.” Ashe was a beloved figure at the time and many supported him. He had contacts around the world, endorsed products, sat on boards of corporations – he had even written a book, Hall said. President George H.W.

Bush, a friend of the tennis icon, gave him a call following the reveal.

“He was a squeaky clean figure, so it was hard to look at him and think ‘Oh, he deserves it because X, Y, and Z,’ like many folks would say when they would find out that somebody gay had AIDS, for instance, or a drug user had AIDS,” Hall said. “He was the ideal person to destigmatize the disease.”

Mayo Clinic Proceedings

March 2023

Arthur Ashe, Jr: Tennis Star and AIDS and Urban Health Activist

As a member of a 31-person delegation to South Africa in 1991, Ashe noted the political changes in the country since the 1970s, as the apartheid era was ending and the country was moving toward integration. At an event in New York, he met Nelson Mandela, who had been incarcerated for 27 years by the South African government and was finally released in 1990. Mandela stated during his imprisonment that Ashe was the first person he wanted to talk to after getting out of prison, after reading so much about the tennis star.

In April 1992, since the newspaper USA Today was planning to go public about Ashe’s diagnosis of AIDS, he and his wife held a press conference and announced the diagnosis. He became active in efforts to raise more funding for AIDS research, emphasizing the disease was a major problem all over the world. That same year, Ashe was named “Sportsman of the Year” by Sports Illustrated. He founded the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health and also finished his memoir, “Days of Grace” only a few months before his death.

History Reports

February 6, 1993

Tennis great Arthur Ashe dies of AIDS

On February 6, 1993, tennis champion Arthur Ashe, the only African American man to win Wimbledon and the U.S. and Australian Opens, dies of complications from AIDS, at age 49 in New York City. Ashe’s body later laid in state at the governor’s mansion in Richmond, Virginia, where thousands of people lined up to pay their respects to the ground-breaking athlete and social activist.

Arthur Ashe's Final Message on HIV/AIDS Awareness