ABSTRACT

At the Wimbledon Championships in 1964, excitement on the court gave way to political controversy outside the lines. Soviet Alex Metreveli announced he would forfeit his match with Cliff Drysdale in protest of South African apartheid. Then, Hungary’s István Gulyás, citing apartheid as well, refused to take on Abe Segal, a white South African. Reporters scrambled to get reactions from the players, and a young Arthur Ashe did not mince words. ‘This no doubt is some sort of political strategy on the part of the Russians’, he said. ‘I don’t think you want political protests of this kind in sports – especially here at Wimbledon’. Ashe declared, ‘I am a Negro and apartheid objectively concerns me. But I would play Segal any time’ ( Los Angeles Times 27 June 1964, p.A5). Back in the US, veteran sportswriter Sam Lacy, a columnist for the Baltimore Afro-American, was flabbergasted. He wrote, ‘That [Ashe] presumes to [be an] expert on international “politics” … clearly demonstrates that he is either educationally puerile or politically naïve’ (Lacy 1964, 30 June). Lacy challenged Ashe to study the history of apartheid and consider the nightmare that blacks and coloreds lived before speaking to the press. 1