New York —
Martin Blackman wasn’t thinking about representation or race when he and his family listened to the 1975 BBC radio broadcast of Arthur Ashe upsetting Jimmy Connors in four sets to become the first and still only Black man to win the Wimbledon singles title.
But his parents were.
“For my parents, I think, understanding how high the barriers were in terms of the lack of accessibility to tennis in the US, they understood what an achievement that was for Arthur. They also understood the gravity of how poised he was in representing himself and opening doors for other African Americans, and I think that was very compelling for them,” Blackman, now 56, told CNN Sports. “I was just a five-year-old listener.”
All he knew at that time was that tennis became the family’s sport. Ashe’s success as a Black man on a big stage had played some small role in Blackman’s introduction to the sport that would shape his life.
