Bio courtesy of arthurashe.org and biography.com

Arthur Ashe was a top ranked tennis player in the 1960s and 70s. Raised in the segregated South, he was the first African-American male tennis player to win a Grand Slam tournament. He was much more than an athlete though. His commitment to social justice, health and humanitarian issues left a mark on the world as indelible as his tennis was on the court.

Born on July 10, 1943, in Richmond, Virginia, Arthur Ashe became the first, and is still the only, African-American male player to win the U.S. Open and Wimbledon. He is also the first black American to be ranked No. 1 in the world. Always an activist, when Ashe learned that he had contracted AIDS via a blood transfusion, he turned his efforts to raising awareness of the disease, before finally succumbing to it on February 6, 1993.