Shima Grover watched patiently from her seat along the center aisle of the Richmond City Council’s second-floor chambers on Tuesday afternoon. The three-member Land Use, Housing and Transportation Standing Committee was to consider at its 3 p.m. meeting a proposal to rename the Boulevard in honor of Richmond native son and international icon Arthur Ashe — the tennis champion who was not allowed to play on the courts at Byrd Park as a youth but returned to play on those courts as the first African-American to compete for the United States in the 1968 Davis Cup, the same year he became the first African-American man to win the U.S. Open in September.
On Tuesday, the three-member council committee comprising 2nd District member Kim Gray, Ellen Robertson of the 6th Distirct and Michael Jones of the 9th voted 3-0 at the end of a four-hour meeting to forward the proposal to the full council for consideration at its Feb. 11 meeting.
For the third time in as many decades, City Council will consider renaming the Boulevard from its northern intersection with Brookland Parkway and Westwood Avenue south to Byrd Park in Ashe’s honor.
“He is the comeback story of our city,” Gray emphasized during discussion of the proposal in Tuesday’s meeting.
Gray introduced the ordinance in early September after Ashe’s nephew, David Harris, asked for her support in honoring his uncle’s legacy. The item initially was scheduled for the full council’s consideration on Nov. 13, but the proposed renaming met with significant resistance — mostly from residents along the Boulevard — at an Oct. 9 community meeting at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts attended by more than 150 people. After the VMFA event, Gray continued the measure to allow time to solicit more community feedback.
More than 150 people attended the Oct. 9 meeting at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to discuss renaming the Boulevard in honor of Richmond native, tennis champion and activist Arthur Ashe (Photo by Sarah King)
“This is a beautiful Richmond story that I believe should be preserved in our history,” Gray said in remarking on Ashe’s homecoming to compete in the 1968 Davis Cup. “This, in my opinion, is a unifying force and is something we can exhibit to the world as forward movement for our city.”
The first failed Boulevard renaming in honor of Ashe was shortly after his death in February 1993 from complications of AIDS, which he contracted from a blood transfusion during open heart surgery. He was buried at Richmond’s historically black Woodland Cemetery beside his mother — but just 10 weeks after his funeral, a Washington Post article noted that “The road that leads to the historically black Woodland Cemetery again has become a dumping ground for appliances, tires and other trash, and a city official wants to move Ashe's coffin from the cemetery to ‘a more dignified setting.’ ”
Again in 2003, a proposal to rename the stretch of the Boulevard in Ashe’s honor fell flat in the face of public division and outcry. In April 2004, City Council adopted an ordinance placing certain conditions on name change requests for the name of a road, right-of-way and/or street signage, stating, “[Places] indicated on general usage maps for 50 years or more should only be changed under exceptional circumstances.”
Gray told the committee she believes this instance meets the “exceptional circumstances” requirement of the City Code, and noted that representatives for the Scott’s Addition Boulevard Association, Monument Avenue Preservation Society and West Grace Street Association — all also within Gray’s 2nd District and abutting the Boulevard — spoke in favor of the renaming at the Oct. 9 meeting. Others at the event who spoke in support of Gray’s proposal knew Ashe personally — including Shima Grover, a member of the Richmond Tennis Association Advisory Board who has worked to make tennis accessible to underserved youth, persons with disabilities and injured veterans.
On Tuesday, Grover was one of more than two dozen residents who waited nearly three hours to share public comments on the renaming. When the clerk called for comments in support, Grover slipped to the front of the line — a manilla file folder clasped in front of her with both hands.
“Here I have a letter written by Dr. Martin Luther King, whose birthday was nationally celebrated yesterday,” Grover said, “And he thanked Arthur Ashe for his support of the fight for justice, freedom and dignity for all people in this country — and he had hoped he would meet Arthur Ashe someday, which sadly did not happen.”
At the dawn of 1968 — just as King’s focus was shifting to economic justice through the “Poor People’s Campaign” — Ashe was asked to speak at a house of worship in Washington, D.C., on the role of black athletes within the political climate. Ashe agreed to participate, and the speaking event marked a changing tide in the athlete’s own approach to protest and public service on and off the court.
King wrote to thank Ashe for his commitment to “solidarity in the fight for justice, freedom and dignity for all people in this country” — a political display for which Ashe was later reprimanded by the Army while he was a lieutenant at West Point.
“Your eminence in the world of sports and athletics gives you an added measure of authority and responsibility,” King wrote to Ashe in the Feb. 7, 1968, letter, wherein he concluded, “I look forward to the pleasure of meeting you in person when the opportunity presents itself.”
The opportunity never did present itself, because two months after King’s February letter to Ashe, King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, where he delivered his last public speech — “I Have Been to the Mountaintop” — in support of the Memphis sanitation workers strike the night before.
“Something is happening in our world,” King exclaimed within the walls of the past-capacity Mason Temple in Memphis, the sky splitting open as he began his last public address, with rain pummeling the tin church rooftop. “The masses of people are rising up — and wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry is always the same: ‘We want to be free.’”
In September of that year, Ashe won the U.S. Open — but his activism quickly transcended the court. Ashe campaigned fiercely against apartheid in South Africa after being denied a visa in 1970, returning to the U.S. to teach college courses on the intersection between race, sports and the social world; he founded programs to make education and sports more accessible to youth and at the end of his life was fiercely outspoken about awareness of HIV and AIDS — a heavily stigmatized disease that at the time was claiming a disproportionate number of black male lives.
On Tuesday, Gray explained as she introduced the proposal to the committee before public comment that she found Ashe’s legacy to fulfill the “exceptional circumstances” requirement of the City Code.
Section 8 of the City Code does also note that “with rare exception for individuals whose service or contributions are extraordinary, memorials shall only be made recognizing persons who have been deceased for five years or more in order to ensure that actions being recognized stand the test of time.”
Opposing the renaming at Tuesday’s meeting were roughly a dozen individuals representing residents who live on the Boulevard or in the surrounding Fan and Museum districts. Most of those speakers insisted that their reluctance to rename the thoroughfare was not personal to Ashe or his legacy, but that it would be costly, inconvenient and they were tired of the proposal cropping up before council every few years. One member of the Boulevard Civic Association said he would support an honorary designation as long as it didn't involve address changes.
Some who want the Boulevard's name to remain as it is have set up a Facebook page titled "Keep the Boulevard," encouraging Richmonders. A flier posted on the page states, "Based on a recent survey of Boulevard residents and business owners, there is overwhelming support to keep the Boulevard. Boulevard is a city historic district on the National Register of Historic Districts and Virginia Landmarks Register — all designed to preserve neighborhoods. Renaming also has financial impacts for Boulevard residents and business owners."
A related website, boulevardrva.org, quotes property owner Dick Wright as saying, "I knew Arthur Ashe personally and admired him greatly. But this is not the additional way to honor his memory. ... With the host of challenges facing the city this should not take valuable resources and time which could be applied to other more important needs." The site links to a "No Boulevard name change" petition started by real estate agent Christopher Small and signed by 1,257 people. The petition supports an honorary designation recognizing Ashe.
Councilman Jones was quiet throughout most of the comment period, but broke into a grin when a speaker asked rhetorically during public comment in support if anyone in the room was a Kappa Alpha Psi. To some attendees’ surprise, Jones stood up alongside a handful of other men in the audience. Later, during discussion of the item, Jones offered more pointed commentary.
“I will say this upfront: I am not for an honorary designation,” he said. “If you want to honor him; honor him. If he’s the native son of Richmond, let’s do right by him if that’s what the choice is, and I will say this: This should’ve been done long ago — he is far too deserving to have this discussion in 2019 just flat out. And honestly it’s kind of alarming we waited this long to honor this man.”
As he wrapped up his remarks, Jones added, ”This shouldn’t be something that divides our city. We have an opportunity to make a statement as a city and I hope we truly find a way to recognize my frat brother — 1986 Kappa Alpha Psi.”
Ashe with his family. (Photo courtesy Loretta Ashe Harris)
Richmond Free Press Editor Bonnie Winston grew up in the same neighborhood as Ashe, whom she recalls watching play at the tennis courts near their home in Byrd Park in grade school.
“I would've been 11 years old, and I know my dad told me about — he was friendly with Arthur's father — and he told us about how Mr. Ashe had said Arthur wasn't able to play on tennis courts in Richmond because of his race,” she recalls. “Mr. Ashe was the caretaker at the courts, even in Byrd Park, but Arthur couldn't play there, and then he was coming back home to play these matches and it was a really big deal.”
His poise in the face of callousness left a mark on Winston, whose family was among the first to integrate Mary Munford Elementary School when Winston was in the third grade.
"He has done so much — working against apartheid, getting arrested, working against apartheid elsewhere when he faced apartheid in his own hometown," Winston says, "everything that would perhaps sour someone on their hometown — and he still came back.”
She rattles off a few examples: the Virginia Heroes program placing mentors with Richmond Public Schools students, which Winston was selected to be a part of in its founding years, for example.
“He taught at an HBCU for a while in his life; he's written several books; he did the whole series on athletes; he was an advocate for AIDS ... when you didn't tell people you had AIDS — I mean what kind of courage did he have?”