A Native Son Comes Home: The Life and Legacy of Arthur Ashe

On July 23, 2015, Eric Hall delivered a Banner Lecture entitled “A Native Son Comes Home: The Life and Legacy of Arthur Ashe.” Virginia’s own Arthur Ashe was one of the world’s best tennis players in the 1960s and 1970s, winning multiple Davis Cup titles and three Grand Slam events: the U.S. Open, the Australian Open, and Wimbledon. He was also deeply committed to human and civil rights causes, most notably the antiapartheid movement in South Africa. His career as an athlete and activist straddling the civil rights and Black Power movements, Ashe fought against racism and injustice from the political center and welcomed public and private debate. This lecture will explore Ashe’s early life in Richmond and Lynchburg as well as his legacy as a public intellectual. Eric Allen Hall is an assistant professor of history and Africana studies at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro. He is the author of Arthur Ashe: Tennis and Justice in the Civil Rights Era. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.