Monument Avenue Historic District marker near Arthur Ashe Monument Marker This small concrete block with two markers is directly southeast of the Arthur Ashe monument along Monument Avenue. The group had raised $200 thousand by the time Richmond City Council shot their plan down. And when I was a child, if you went to somebody’s house to work, you went to the back door.’ ”, He said, “I think the thing that struck me the most about [the unveiling] was how well it was received.” Wilder remembered “the people bringing their kids up, the children.” Donald Dell, Ashe’s longtime lawyer and friend, remembers such loveliness that he didn’t even notice the objectors marginalized in the distance. That would be Arthur Ashe, the first Black man to win the US Open, Wimbledon and the Australian Open, who grew up in Richmond. June 17, 2020 A monument to the black tennis legend Arthur Ashe in Richmond, Va., was vandalized with spray paint that read “WLM” and “White Lives Matter” on Wednesday. The statue of the African American tennis legend has … Drink it in so you can reach your potential.”, And even a Virginia-raised reporter who asked an ignorant question in Los Angeles got goodness in return. And he looked across toward Lee’s likeness and said, “As long as that man is up there, the same laws still apply.”, About 1⅓ miles from Lee, Ashe still stood Friday morning on the 77th anniversary of his birth, his goodness retold in a thousand recollections. Disagreement persisted into 1996 as, on New Year’s Day, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, Arthur’s widow, penned an op-ed column in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, preferring the idea of the statue at the prospective African American sports museum her husband had envisioned. Sculptor Paul DiPasquale heard Ashe speak at an event and was impressed by what he heard. “That is incredible.”, Johnnie Ashe said he hadn’t given any thought to the last-statue-standing concept but said: “I do think, in all this time, it was truly the first instrument of change in Richmond. Don’t let this moment pass you by. “Arthur Ashe, a true hero whose shining performance on and off the tennis court gave him world fame, deserves far more than Monument Avenue,” wrote Raymond Boone in June 1995. He explains how the Arthur Ashe statue on Monument Avenue was born. “He always believed more people were good than not.”. And I think the value of public art is it reflects the thinking of the culture at the time. “He couldn’t come to the dedication,” DiPasquale said, “but when he got out of jail, he said, ‘I would like to go see the statue with you.’ He looked at it, he said, ‘This could only happen in America, that a man like Arthur Ashe, being Arthur Ashe, could stand on an avenue with Confederate soldiers who fought to keep him enslaved!’ ”. “And then there were, of course, the Confederate sympathizers who said no.” Even the sculptor, Paul DiPasquale, who had discussed the work by telephone with Ashe two weeks before Ashe’s death in February 1993 of complications from AIDS after he contracted HIV from a post-surgery blood transfusion, had thought: “I felt like I knew Monument Avenue was going to be a fight, and I didn’t want to lose, and I thought it would dishonor Arthur Ashe [to lose]. The sculptor of Arthur Ashe’s statue, and my long-time neighbor, Paul Dipasquale talks to me in his backyard, explaining how the statue came to be nearly the last one standing on Monument Avenue. Traffic passes by the statue of tennis star Arthur Ashe on Monument Avenue, Friday, July 10, 2020, in Richmond, Va. Family members of Ashe and … Sculptor Paul DiPasquale heard Ashe speak at an event and was impressed by what he heard. So I was against it.”. Arthur Ashe Monument. 7/11/2020: The statue of J.E.B. [6][7] In 1960, Ashe moved to St. Louis to attend Sumner High School. In the letter, she argued that the monument "honors Richmond, Virginia, more than it does its son, his legacy, and his life's work. His uncle, Jeffery Peters, sat across the street from the Lee statue on a recent Friday — in the shade, in a lawn chair, keeping vigil. Arthur Ashe statue is staying put on Monument Avenue in Richmond By Staff and Wire Reports Updated July 11, 2020, 8:57 a.m. You walk down that street, people would be opening doors, ‘Boy, what are you doing around here?’ That was off-limits unless you were going to somebody’s house to work. Young II, was in the formerly whites-only Byrd Park. Arthur Ashe statue is staying put on Monument Avenue in Richmond. The statue is situated on a 16-foot granite pedestal on a traffic island, at the intersection of Monument Avenue and Roseneath Road. [12] One alternative location, supported by Mayor Leonidas B. RICHMOND — As the 21st century began, a motley mash of monuments lined gorgeous Monument Avenue here: five Confederate bigwigs and Arthur Ashe, five anti-Americans who lost their largest conflict and one African American who triumphed over so much — the six of them spaced blocks apart from one another so at least they didn’t have to fraternize. [7], On July 17, city council held an eight hour long hearing on the location of the statue, eventually voting 7-0 in favor of the Monument Avenue location. [15] Several days later, Moutoussamy-Ashe reached an agreement with Citizens for Excellence in Public Art, a group lead by gallary owner Beverly Reynolds, wherein both parties would help raise $20 million for the envisioned hall-of-fame, and the DiPasquale statue would be moved there upon completion. The words "White Lives Matter," as well as the letters "WLM," were spray painted on the figure. The Arthur Ashe Monument is a bronze sculpture by Paul DiPasquale installed along Richmond, Virginia's Monument Avenue. A statue of tennis legend Arthur Ashe in Richmond, Virginia was defaced on Wednesday. Reporter who covers national college football, college basketball, tennis, golf and international sports. That left two, and as Gov. 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