that's it. >> new ball. >> shots are 2-2. >> got by him. >> comes back with it! >> you try to put your entire being mentally and physically on automatic pilot while you're playing tennis. everything is concentrated on the razor's edge and you forget the score. you forget where you are. you forget what your name is. i feel like my body's floating within myself. >> the game of tennis is a symphony in white. players in white suits hitting a white ball back and fort. in all white country clubs but a new, young player has come along and he is one of the greatest we have ever produced and he is not white. >> i sense confusion in what an athlete should be, especially an african american context. >> does still persist in the world about black athletes because we tend to do disproportionately well in athletes. i like to fight the myth. there are lots of us who can think as well as run, jump, hit tennis balls, dunk basketballs. and the challenge now is to convince young black athletes that they have the power and the ability and the opportunity to translate into real clout. >> are you not going to say anything today or just going to use these posters? >> winners are merely people who on any given day best their competition. >> the stay i stop fighting for equality will be the day i'm in my grave. >> but champions are people who want to leave their sport better than they found it. ♪ >> wimbledon. it's the most popular tournament in the world and most wildly broadcast tournament in the world. it is our showpiece event. i have been ranked number one in the world. i have played for a decade but i hadn't won wimbledon ever. i was over 30. getting toward the end of my career. >> arthur always had more things going on in his life than just tennis. did you recall the early '70s a lot of people felt that he was getting distrablgted. his tennis was suffering. no one needed to tell arthur that this was his last chance. >> we came up with a radical change of strategy from the on grass. but then the next question is could you do it? >> a black man had never won wimbledon. this was his moment. >> arthur ashe looks to be the coolest man on the court. this is certainly arthur ashe at his best. >> some people say that my notion or feelings of self sufficiency go too far. i think i can almost withstand just about anything. as an african american athlete, i have experienced racism as a tennis player going way back. i have played extraordinary matches under unbelievable circumstances. but wimbledon tied my whole life together. >> as we join the action in the first set ashe is upsetting the form book. superstar sir arthur ashe. ♪ ♪ carry me back ♪ ♪ but to old virginia ♪ ♪ that's where the cotton ♪ >> coming up black in the south in the city which was the old capital of the confederacy, see big statues of stone wall jefferson, robert e. lee. >> i had to sit behind the white line on the bus. i had to ride in black taxis. went to black schools. i went to black churches. we lived on a black playground. my father was a caretaker of the larmgest playground for riches in richmond, virginia. the house came with the job on the playground and four tennis courts just ten yards away. literally. >> we live on the playground. why do you want to play tennis? he said to me i want to be the jackie robinson of tennis. >> it suited me mentally. that was almost serendipity in a way. i would begin right there in the playground. ♪ i am fascinated by what people are. that one moment when their life changed completely. mine happened when i was 10 years old. on the courts next to my house in richmond, virginia, during an idle moment when the courts weren't being used and dr. johnson saw me during that moment. >> dr. johnson had been a physician. he built a tennis court in his backyard and started a junior development program for young black kids in the early '50s helping gibson to be terrific. >> if you were black and wanted to be good in tennis you had to go to dr. johnson. you get there and see the clay court in the yard. lights. this is our lich practice, practice, practice. hone the skills. that is called the junior development program. >> dr. johnson also made us read just about every tennis book there was and internalized the history of the sport. >> you playing a game that white guys dominated. it was so intimidating. >> when i would go out to competition i was often the only black kid. >> when we would arrive at white tournaments everybody was gawking at us. like we were some strange fish that they had never seen before. it was not a picnic, folks. we not only had to beat good players, but we had to go up against all of the words that we heard. they were not good words. >> you had the feeling that i'm not welcomed among those people. it was just brutal. >> dr. johnson literally picked his prospects on the ability to be cool, calm and collected in the face of difficulties on a tennis court. dr. johnson assumed that the black kids would be skrut niced more intensely and had to give the white tournament directors no excuse at all for ejecting you from the tournament so our behavior was to be above reproach always. >> that's what arthur ashe came up with. a nonconfrontational philosophy. >> in virginia, it is very easy for a young black child to think why even bother trying to excel? if racism is so bad no matter what i do it ain't going to make a difference. if we had more than a mattering of intelligence you had to leaf. that's what generations after generations of us did was leave try to make our mark some place. when i was a senior in high school i had to leave richmond because richmond had no indoor facilities and if they had some they would be in white hands and i would not be able to use them so i went to st. louis to finish high school. when i got on the plane to go to st. louis i could get off the plane and be anything i wanted. no one knew me. so not only did my permit start to change because here people with no preconceived notions about me and my tennis changed. i changed from being a puber to someone who was a fast court player. i started to take more chances on the tennis court. my forehand changed a little bit. my serve took a quantum lead up in speed and so forth. and that year i won the national junior indoor title. when i was about to graduate high school i got a phone call from ucla. and the tennis coach called up and out of the clear blue sky just said how would you like to go to ucla? i received a scholarship sight unseen. it took me all of three seconds to say yes. ♪ >> when arthur and i arrived at ucla california was the hot bed of tennis. if you wanted to expand the tennis career and become a top tennis player in the world california was the place to come. ucla was the perfect place for us. it was great. it was a coed dorm. a lot of the girls that lived in the dorm we all became friend. it was a very healthy social life. >> you mentioned the excitement about the first date with a white girl at ucla. >> yes. being a black southerner it was taboo especially when you have been taught and the ancestors during and after slavery were taught that the white woman is untouchable and just not to be defiled and not to have anything to do with lesser beings so you have a natural curiosity about white women. every southern black man does. but in california nobody bats an eye about interracial dating. a period of exploration for me. it was liberating. >> his thought patterns for his life were not relegated to what he learned in richmond. at ucla he started to become a citizen of the world that he became. >> you will be referred to as the first negro this and that. are there still country club in this country where you would n't be welcomed? >> oh sure. yes. >> really? >> yes. there are some tournaments i can't play in alabama or georgia why if they don't want me it's okay with me. i majored in business at ucla. that was a very busy time in my classes and also practicing with the team. but when blacks from black colleges in the south were getting the heads kicked in at the sit-ins i didn't like myself for not speaking out more. i was more single focused about tennis and i -- i felt very guilty about doing that. >> arthur was named to the davis cup team. it was the first time a person of color made the davis cup team. he was one of the guys and they didn't look at him as a black tennis player. they looked at him as a tennis player. >> the davis cup was in essence our olympics. for arthur that seemed like a no brainer. who wouldn't want to represent your country? what it entailed was that he had to play up to four weeks a year if you were going to win. like home and away series. if you get a davis cup that looks good on the resume. it was huge to play davis cup. >> arthur was quite an unusual type. he was very sort of skinny and gangly and he had a big serve. most people serve stationary but arthur kind of jumped into the court. he had a tremendous serve. whip like. but the backhand he could hit about seven different ways. he was a shot make jer he would always go for broke. he didn't really want to have ten hits in a rally and then try to win the point. >> here are four of the world's best internationally recognized players. practicing doubles. arthur ashe. bright young member of the united states davis cup team. star of the future. >> the fact my skin is brown. my hair is a certain way. people look at me. sure, he is a negro before anything else. but now it's -- well, it's almost like money in the bank. >> what do you mean? >> well, this world tennis now being the only one i'm a drawing card whether i like it or not. >> by the mid-1960s arthur ashe was a championship tennis player which in and of itself seemed strange. at that time we were still climbing the ladder of inclusion and access in terms of even basketball and football and here was in guy out at the country clubs. i said let me reach out to him, bring him into the movement. perhaps there's something that he can contribute in this form that he has in this lily white institution of top tier tennis. >> people in this country are beginning to recognize that black people are human beings also and that they should be treated as such and one thing to do at this point is to bring this point across. by whatever means is necessary and i think one means that's necessary is the black athlete in this country. >> athletes were the heroic figures that black people looked to as role models. so we in the olympic project for human rights were advocating boycotts like kareem ab dull jab before did. >> we try to point out the futility of the olympics. >> some of the negro athletes said that you will have trouble mounting this boycott. >> i think it is a matter of educating people. to thinking politically. >> civil rights era was in full bloom. it was a new breed of black man coming. demonstrations such as thomas smith and john carlos did, shut down of racist institutions. >> nothing i would like better than to see it shut down completely. >> when i contacted arthur the first thing he told me is, harry, i understand what you're doing but that's not my way. i thought, i know he gets it. he's in the bowels of the beast. the only one that's out there on the tennis court. the only one that's at the country club. so i know he knows what the deal is and still he says that's not my way. i said to myself, you know what? 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yes. self loathing? yes. there really were times that i felt like maybe i was a coward for not doing condition things. joining this protest or whatever. >> hell, no, we won't go. >> without going to where i would help my people receive their freedoms. you would have to draf me. i'm go tomorrow. >> in the 60s it was mohammad ali and arthur ashe. there were really two extremes. one very vocal and one not very vocal. one that identified in the black way. and one that could enter these environments that were the finest clubs and facilities of white america. ♪ i stay locked up in my room ♪ ♪ i know to you it might sound strange ♪ sn ♪ but i wish it would rain ♪ >> i can remember kareem referring to arthur ashe as arthur ash. he was our tennis hero but that's like o.j. can play football. that conjured up a whole image. internationalism. nice guy. crosses over. >> in the '60s i was much more impressionable. i had some friends who used to try to get me about civil rights issues put them on a shelf or down play their role because the tradeoff would be not doing so well on the tennis court. and if you every in the middle in those days if you're a moderate it's the same thing as being an uncle tom. >> at the time i don't really think that he wanted to be an outspoken leader of the civil rights movement and i think partly because of his father. his father had tremendous respect for authority and was anything but a flag burner or a bomb thrower. >> daddy was a strict disciplinarian. first day no matter what school we went to he would tell the principals this is my boy. if he does anything wrong at any time you discipline him here, give me a call and i'm going to discipline him at home. that discipline was designed to protect us. >> there was always a rather strong bond between my father, my brother and me because my mother died when i was 6 years old. imfeeling sort of lost. i with drew people told me. i remember feeling that i couldn't trust anybody. >> arthur had very few memories of her and one of them was the day that she died. she was wearing a blue robe. there was a bird singing in the tree and he remembered her leaving the house. she was being taken to the hospital and that she didn't come back. ♪ >> daddy had the spoent of bringing us up. but paramount in his mind is bringing us up in a way that our mother would approve. arthur would do his homework and he would read the newspaper to daddy. because daddy couldn't read. all over the south there were still people being hung. >> there was a time when if you were black, especially in the south, you cowered in fear of offending the sensibilities of somebody who was white. >> i remember that made an impression on me in my life when ift a kid. initial my mother dying. i remember that emmitt till -- boy. >> emmitt till 14 was kidnapped and killed allegedly for wolf whirsling at the wife of accused roy bryant. he and his half brother were acquitted by this jury and even though they admitted taking the boy from the house they were freed of kidnap charge. >> emmett till was beaten, mutilated, murdered. if you are black and my age and borp in america you know who emmett till. is even if you're ill literal. in the south if you got angry too quickly your life would be in danger. >> it was a deferent realist to a black kid than to a northern kid. we went to play tennis at a public school and the football team was throughout that day. i never heard nigger so much in my life. when i went down south i didn't know you could never really be seen again why that's what happened with emmett till. >> the incident with emmett till caused arthur to realize that there was another side of segregation that we had n't sperngsed. the true ugliness of it. he couldn't understand the nature of a person to commit an atrocity like that. >> feelings about it. keep your own counsel. and the inclination to push back and protest. that is still even now that's tensions that i feel. obviously that became smack up against the black social revolution when the bigger the afro was the more status you had. i'm african american. make no bones about it. but i'm more than. to be a stereotypical african american to say this, do that, act this way. you got the wrong person. >> 1965 arthur was in college. i got a letter from him telling me that he was in the rotc. that surprised me. i just never saw him going that way. >> arthur, did you ever contemplate avoid yans of military service because of the prejudice directed against your people in this country? >> no. because something is freedom to protect. i would rather be an american and slightly discriminated against than anything else. >> professional tennis didn't exist when i was at ucla so i had always planned to graduate, go into the army and then i was going to bum around the world as an amateur player and then go back to garagraduate school. ♪ my brother went into marine corps at age 17. not having graduated from high school. i volunteered for rotc. i wanted to be an officer, not a private. >> arthur's experience in the army was entirely different from mine. boot camp in the marine corps, there's no such thing as a social grace. you prepare for war. ♪ had arthur had to deal with vietnam it would have taken him away from tennis right at the time when he was becoming a very good tennis player. capable of winning the majors. i didn't want anything to get in the way of the possibilities of arthur's life. while i was in vietnam i realized that if i went home as i was scheduled that arthur would be subject to going to vietnam. because of families in the second world war losing all surviving sons the military came out with a rule that there would never be brothers in combat at the same time. so did the paperwork and i got a second tour. soon after that arthur was coming over to vietnam on a uso tour with the davis cup team. they were at camp and they got live fire. they were getting shot at. >> we walked into the hospital and it was really, really horrific scene. wounded soldiers. missing arms and legs. and ar chur just was so taken back that he literally ran outside of the hospital. he said, i was scared to the point of defecation. that sort of brought it home. and it caused me to realize that i had done the right thing at the right time for the right reason. ♪ hey, it's me...your skin. some cleansers get us clean - but take my moisture. i'm craving a balanced clean with cerave. cerave cleansers, developed with dermatologists, help me maintain my moisture balance with hyaluronic acid, known to attract moisture, plus 3 essential ceramides to help restore my natural barrier. with cerave, cleansing can be about giving not just taking, so we can be a healthy-feeling clean - cerave clean. cerave cleansers. from the #1 dermatologist recommended skincare brand. right now, we're all feelin' the squeeze. we're having to get creative. find a new way. but birthdays still happen. fridays still call for s'mores. you have to make magic, and you're figuring out how to do that. what you don't have to figure out is where to shop. because while you're ge