Arthur Robert Ashe Jr. was born on July 10, 1943. He was born in Richmond, Virginia to Arthur Ashe Sr. and Mattie Cunningham. He lived with his parents along with a brother. At the age of four, by the direction of his mother, he was already reading and writing. But, just two years later, at age six his mother passed away. In his teens he got into tennis, and eventually becoming the first African-American male player to win the U.S Open in 1968 and Wimbeldon in 1975. Not only was he the first African-American man to be ranked No. 1 in the world in 1975, he was also the first African-American to be inducted into the international Tennis Hall of fame in 1985. …show more content…
From that point on his health dramatically declined due to an unknown cause at the time. He underwent two major surgeries involving a quadruple bypass operation in 1979 and a second bypass surgery in 1983. It wasn’t until he experienced paralysis of his right arm that they realised just want the problem was. After undergoing an emergency brain surgery, they performed a biopsy during one of his hospital stays, revealing that he has AIDS. He had contracted the virus while receiving a blood transfusion, in which the needles used were not