June 22 - BlackFacts.com Black History Minute

BlackFacts.com: Learn/Teach/Create Black History

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 22.

Arthur Ashe leads UCLA to the NCAA tennis championship.

Ashe was coached and mentored by Robert Walter Johnson at his tennis summer-camp home in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Johnson helped fine-tune Ashe's game and taught him the importance of racial socialization through sportsmanship, etiquette and the composure that would later become an Ashe hallmark.

In 1958, Ashe became the first African American to play in the Maryland boys' championships. It was also his first integrated tennis competition.

In 1963, he became the first black player ever selected for the United States Davis Cup team.

In 1965, ranked the number 3 player in the United States, Ashe won both the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) singles title and the doubles title (with Ian Crookenden of New Zealand), helping UCLA win the team NCAA tennis championship.

His criticism of South African apartheid racial policy led to denial of permission to play in that country’s open tournament, and, as a consequence, on March 23, 1970, South Africa was excluded from Davis Cup competition.

He was the only black man ever to win the singles title at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open.

After his retirement, Ashe took on many roles, including writing for Time magazine and The Washington Post, commentating for ABC Sports and HBO from the early 1980s.

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